Friday, September 23, 2016

I give you permission to begin your weekend just as soon as you've finished reading this Citi Bike guest post. You're welcome.

That's right, today's post is over on the Citi Bike blog, so wrangle that tank of a bike from the dock, mount up, and let's go!


(Click on the link above, or on the picture, or here.)

By the way, this post cost the hardworking SUV owners of Brooklyn a tiny handful of parking spaces, so in your face, suckers!


Before his brain explodes someone should remind him his property values have risen by a like a factor of 20 thanks in no small part to all these infrastructure improvements.

Anyway, see you Monday!

Love,


--Wildcat Rock Machine



76 comments:

Unknown said...

177. Needless to say, the scenarios outlined above do not exhaust all the possibilities. They only indicate the kinds of outcomes that seem to us most likely. But we can envision no plausible scenarios that are any more palatable than the ones we’ve just described. It is overwhelmingly probable that if the industrial- technological system survives the next 40 to 100 years, it will by that time have developed certain general characteristics: Individuals (at least those of the “bourgeois” type, who are integrated into the system and make it run, and who therefore have all the power) will be more dependent than ever on large organizations; they will be more “socialized” than ever and their physical and mental qualities to a significant extent (possibly to a very great extent) will be those that are engineered into them rather than being the results of chance (or of God’s will, or whatever); and whatever may be left of wild nature will be reduced to remnants preserved for scientific study and kept under the supervision and management of scientists (hence it will no longer be truly wild). In the long run (say a few centuries from now) it is likely that neither the human race nor any other important organisms will exist as we know them today, because once you start modifying organisms through genetic engineering there is no reason to stop at any particular point, so that the modifications will probably continue until man and other organisms have been utterly transformed.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Winner winner chicken dinner

Mike O. said...

I remember when I was growing up someone in my family using the phrase "You're nuthin but a south Brooklyn special" as an insult. What can you expect from Bensonhurst?

N/A said...

I told my boss I had Wildcat's permission to GTFO. He was none too happy, but what can you do?

recumbent conspiracy theorist said...

Early Scranus.

BamaPhred said...

First day of Fall, 95 Murican degrees. Scranus.
But I did mark my first sighting of migratory waterfowl, so it must be Fall somewhere.
And the hummingbirds are very nearly gone.

bad boy of the north said...

I was able to peruse the guest writings of our blogulator yesterday.it was an enticing bit of literature for sure and definitely made me want to visit.i've passed through parts of those neighborhoods in the 80's and 90's..they were rough back then...but seems a bit calmer now.i liked the photo of the old bridge.i didn't know of it.i learned something new.

Andy said...

Top ten!

BamaPhred said...

I always enjoy the travelogs. Makes me want to travel just to experience the experience! Enjoy the weekend.

Andy said...

I'm not sure you posted the video you meant to post.

Dave - Everywheere said...

Top tent? Scranus!

N/A said...

That's some fine guest-post writing, Wildcat. I felt like I was wheel-sucking through your journey. The way you describe the Gowanus canal brought tears to my eyes and just a little vomit to the back of my throat. Bravo!

dancesonpedals said...

I'm a mere Quizling

Serial Retrogrouch said...

...no quiz friday three fridays running. one concludes we have all graduated.

Serial Retrogrouch said...

...BTW, BoCoCa sounds more like a Japanese sex act.

The Narwhal said...

Bikesknob,

In retrospect, I'm going to say "Have a nice weekend!"

Anonymous said...

Nice. It almost made me forget that New York City uses 11, 000 Megawatt-hours of electricity on average each day. One megawatt represents the amount need to power 100 homes. (1 Megawatt = 1,000 KiloWatt = 1,000,000 Watt….. So New York uses 11 Billion Watt-hours per day.

It's ironic that the new denizens of Brooklyn extol the virtues of sustainability, while they dwell within the most consumption-oriented city in North America. How ironic. But they love irony, don't they?

BikeSnobNYC said...

Anonymous 11:48pm,

New Yorkers use less energy than the rest of the country. Density is efficient. So you'll have to pick on the Brooklynites for something else.

Nice try though.

--Wildcat Etc.

N/A said...

I require 1.21 gigawatts.

Anonymous said...

can a person get a BSNY sticker somehow? i have a scratch on my toolbox and don't want to buy a whole can of paint. thanks in advance.

Native of Babbleland said...

'Greatest natural harbour (Amer. harbor) the world has ever seen'... Huh! Really??! Even our word is bigger.

dop said...

I'm intrigued by a href="https://www.omsignal.com/products/ombra?gclid=CI63_q72pc8CFQtZhgoduPsDsA"> Jog-Bra that tracks one's* running. It eliminates bounce. I wonder if it's strava compatible.


*generally ladies

html down! said...

Jog-Bra that tracks one's* running.

Lieutenant Oblivious said...

25th or 26th to 4 on the 23rd, SCRANUS!

DB said...

Went to Starbucks this am. Bex Rad got a nice cappuccino. Barista didn't even look up when I gave the name.

Anonymous said...

cow anus canal

DB said...

Thanks for the travelogue.

N/A said...

Everybody likes to think that their rides are epic, but only one man truly gets gnar: Bex Rad.

Long Lost History said...

Nickolas Tesla lived in NYC, maybe Brooklyn? He was a pretty far out there guy (loved a pigeon as much as one could love a woman, or so he wrote), could have been one of Brooklyn's earliest bohemians.

Brooklyn's Maritime history includes the assembly and launching place of the USS Monitor. The turret and the ships armor plating were manufactured in Troy NY and floated by barge to NYC.

leroy said...

My dog is crushed - crushed I tell you -- because you visited his back yard and didn't ask for his guided cyclocross tour.

I told him everybody knows that as a guide dog, he's kind of unreliable.

Ride safe all!

Coffee Black, No Cream, No Sugar, No Nothin Else, in other words Low Tech said...

I've given Bare'asses coffee makers the name Max Headroom several times, never got caught once.

Old Man River said...

Capcha told me to Id "Rivers". One of the pictures was very clearly a pond, not a river. Yet if you didn't click on it you did not pass "Go". Small wonder 500 million Yahoo'ers got their Id info robbed (does anyone really believe Yahoo has 500 million users?).

bad boy of the north said...

Don't forget all that Tesla equipment in "Frankenstein" and again in "young Frankenstein".rip gene.

N/A said...

Not bike related but interesting nonetheless: If you have an interest in historical figures, read up on Nikolai Tesla. Really interesting fellow.

leroy said...

N/A - I like The Oatmeal's take on Tesla.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps many or most New Yorkers use energy efficiently. There is no debate about walkable density being efficient.

However: New York City, the Megalopolis, is an energy hog.

The consumption of electricity alone is staggering. How much gets consumed just to power the city's traffic lights? How about keeping the lights on in the high rises and skyscrapers for the suburban commuters who work in them? How much electricity does the subway consume? And what is the origin of that electricity? Coal? Nuclear reactors? Petroleum? Other fossil fuels? Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_New_York

Factor in the consumption of fossil fuels necessary to haul goods (such as food and selfie sticks) into the city, and waste out of the city, and you're looking at an unsustainable model. Or at the very least: a selfish model.

When solar panels and windmills are ubiquitous and your meats, veggies and fruits don't have to travel for thousands of miles, primarily by truck, to reach your plate, the city will be much more energy efficient.

The city harvests its water from rural and suburban areas. Half of your water comes from the Delaware River in the Western Catskill mountains. That water travels at least 60 miles to reach you. How much fossil fuel was burned to create that system? I'm talking about the bulldozers, back-hoes, drills, etc. that were used to make it.
How much is burned to maintain that system?

There's more to a city's footprint than meets the eye of the city's inhabitants.

BamaPhred said...

You don't need as much infrastructure when you live off Soylent Green.

BikeSnobNYC said...

Anonymous 3:42pm,

I wrote a lengthy reply and deleted it. Re: the NYC subway, it carries about 1.7 billion passengers a year and uses about 1.8 billion kilowatts doing it. Pretty efficient compared to a car.

Unless you live in a solar cabin where you grow your own food and drink rainwater the typical NYer is probably way more energy-efficient than you. At the same time, NYC is an important component in the national, regional, and global economy and a world cultural capital.

Not everybody can live in a cabin, and dense cities are both compratively efficient and essential to human civilization.

Best of all, you don't have to live in them. You just have to sit back and feel smug while we do all the work.

Deal with it.

--Wildcat Etc.

None said...

"“The way cities have grown since World War II is neither socially or environmentally sustainable and the environmental cost of ongoing urban sprawl is too great to continue,” says Dr Karen Seto, associate professor of the urban environment at Yale University."

Pathetic Old Cyclist said...

BamaPhred,
Dom't we,have about 11 million servings of soylent green walking around, waiting to be consumed?

I saw the guest blog last night, so I am claiming podi standing retrospectively.

Strunk White said...

"comprised of," bikesnob? You surprise me.

Anonymous said...

The energy consumed to heat and cool midtown office buildings alone is enough to farm enough food to feed the underfed. Let's not even think about how those buildings could shelter the homeless.

The information age makes geographically-dispered "hyper local" sustainability a reality. Which is ironic, because locally-sourced and curated consumption is now a marketing gimmick in Brooklyn.

BikeSnobNYC said...

None,

Postwar-style sprawl, sure. But dense cities are surely a comparatively efficient way for humans to live.

--Wildcat Etc.

BikeSnobNYC said...

Anonymous 5:15pm,

Buildings no doubt need to become way more efficient, but that's a ridiculously simplistic statement. You just find Brooklyn annoying--which is fine--but come on now.

--Wildcat Etc.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I only got as far as the first two paragraphs of your Citibike thing before feeling compelled to harrumph and return here to express my outrage.

I'm all for a little parochial hyperbole, but this: "the greatest natural harbors the world has ever seen."? Fuck off!

Rio's harbour, despite being infested with crime-ridden Zika is, by any objective measure, greater. My own modest Sydney harbour, despite being situated in the City of Cycling Armageddon, is far more fetching and spectacular and generally greater.

Now, I shall resume reading the Citibike thing and will be most upset if I discover you were being ironic or something. (Listing "industrial ruins" as one the areas "innate charms", has me wondering...)

BikeSnobNYC said...

Anonymous 5:28pm,

It should say "one of," that's a typo. Part of the reason this is true is its historical and economic significance.

And I don't wanna even hear about Australia anymore.

--Wildcat Etc.

Anonymous said...

Fair enough, but are you now abandoning us to the unspeakable horrors that await us?

At least hold a commemorative ride for us when we're gone.

***Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind... ***

Lieutenant Oblivious said...

Thanks for the travelogue WCRM Snob. As a young lad and new college graduate, I began my career in New York and my first apartment was in Carroll Gardens at the corner of Henry and President Streets. This was from 1980 to 1982, I don't think Red Hook was a place to visit then, I certainly never did! The Cammerari Bakery featured in Mooonstruck was two blocks North, at Henry and Sackett Streets. By the time the movie Moonstruck came out, I was living in suburbia on the wrong side of the George Washington Bridge! The last time I was near there was the last time I did the NYC Century which was in 1999 or 2000.

A great weekend and safe rides to all!

bad boy of the north said...

What?no more land of oz?

Olle Nilsson said...

In keeping with one of this week's topics, when I stumbled across this recall for Doodlezz Helmets I thought I had discovered a new gender category. The photo disappointingly clears up the pronunciation.

Lieutenant Oblivious said...

Bad Boy of the North I used to thing of Oz as some magical place I'd like to visit but New South Wales' policies on bieks and the fact that they had a refuge camp on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea whose sole purpose was to prevent refugees from ever getting asylum in Oz has me pretty much writing them off as a place I'd like to visit. As a country, a former penal colony is as much of a pain in the scranus as a reformed drunk at a party!

Chris P said...

I enjoyed reading this. Brooklyn is fascinating.

leroy said...

Dear Anon 5:55 -

My dog wishes to point out that according to the Gregory Peck/Ava Gardner classic "On The Beach," the unspeakable horrors that befall Australia will have been visited previously upon the rest of us.

I'm not sure Mr. Kramer's movie was a documentary though. At least I hope not.

And really, how could it be? Even my dog agrees I'm still not all here.

Anonymous said...

Dearest leroy 7:26 -

Global nuclear conflagration is a second order unspeakable horror compared to this unspeakable horror: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbvYkATHYMQ

Regards to the mutt.

Me2 said...

Trump Tower: Sustainable, Efficient, AND Stylish!

HDEB said...

Glad to see a photo of the greatest bike shop on earth in your Citi bike post-- Dog Day Cyclery : )

wishiwasmerckx said...

Interbike report:

-Wore my BSNYC cycling cap. STILL didn't get laid. Thinking of trying Fat Cyclist gear next year.

-Saw lotsa cool bikes and shit...

The end.

Waltzing Matilda said...


Kind of glad I read the comments before reading the post. I think I'll skip it.

As for the energy efficiency city debate, it is obvious that both sides are leaving out significant pertinent pieces of the argument. Which is what politicians and other chauvinists tend to do.

N/A said...

Leroy, thanks for the link to the Oatmeal treatise on Mr. Tesla, good reading.

Arizona redneck said...

I've been telling Al Qaida for years that they should blow up all of NYC,or at least those vampires on Wall Street, to no avail. Yeah,we'd miss Snob but the Banksters and Leroy's dog deserve a fiery end...

BikeSnobNYC said...

Waltzing Matilda,

You could also just not read it and shut up about it.

--Wildcat Rock Machine

Harboursnob said...

Well, there are lots of great harbours in the world. And both Sydney and New York are on a couple of them, but for my money Halifax beats them both.

Sydney loses points for being full of ignorant aussies (ozzies?) though.

Harboursnob said...

Copenhagen is also in the running.

The Narwhal said...

Hey guys I just had a brain wave, what if I got a second tablet and bluetooted to it from a second camera on the front end that way I can see what is going on both in the rear and front?! I love input as u can see so bring it on

ken e. said...

neko case sings quite a nice song, 'I missed the point', maybe it didn't get "down under", but.... moving towards sensible civic behavior and infrastructure is going to be a slow process. getting people to putter around on bikes and such is a good thing, and makes for an enjoyable travelogue.
submitting that vancouver has the best natural harbour of all, while on the topic of talking shit about nothing to do with anything significant. here's my proportional representation alternate ballot for nice places to dock a boat or bike. ride safe all.

DEEP COVE
TOFI NO
STEV STON

dancesonpedals said...

Of all the cities that have great harbors, Norfolk has the best high school cheer:

We don't drink or smoke. NORFOLK!!!

Flotsam said...

I see that in NYC, as well as here in Vancouver, the actual working area of the waterfront is shrinking and has been slowly replaced with residential and light, urbanite supportive businesses. This is a reflection of the gradual demise of our country's manufacturing sector and the eventual death of the economic middle class.
Oh my God! I'm starting to sound like Ted K.

bad boy of the north said...

Leroy,really liked the oatmeal/tesla link.thanks.Lt.O....you may have point there.perhaps the paul hogan/crocodile dundee shrimp on the barbee, had me bamboozled.Uluru still looks cool though.

Old timer said...

Snobby,

That was a very fine bike travelogue. Thanks for the tour. Most enjoyable!

Holy Roller said...

Once again, not one of you cycling sinners has given praise to our Lord. You waste your days quibbling and moaning about earthly related non-transcendental issues and forget that a clean drive chain is next to Godliness. 'On your left' should become 'Make way for Jesus'.

dop said...

Dear Mr. Roller:

I admire your religious satire, but I think we can all learn a lot from Harry Hutton.

Chase me, ladies, I'm in the cavalry

Friday, June 25, 2004 (meaningless hoaxes)


MY SNIPING REQUIREMENTS

Email to a gunsmith:

Dear Sir,
Could you possibly make me a high-velocity sniper's rifle, that could be disguised as a walking stick? It is for purely recreational sniping, you understand, and would not be used in acts of politically-motivated terror. I give you my word on that. I am not a murderer. Why would I wish to kill my fellow man, unless he was sinning?

Money is no object, but it must be accurate enough consistently to bring down sinners at distances of up to half a mile. I would never, I assure you, take up arms to smite my fellow man, without detailed and specific instructions from God our father, or one of
his angels. Woe unto the heathen on that day! The Lord shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

Please send me estimates on price, delivery time, etc. And could you get hold of some explosive-tipped ammunition (for the "right price", naturally)? If the worst came to the worst, and we were absolutely forced to liquidate a heathen, we wouldn't want to leave any ballistic evidence, you see.

But we pray it will never come to that.

Awake unto righteousness, and sin not.

Yours faithfully,

H.Hutton


He replies:

Good Morning Mr. Hutton, It is refreshing to find someone interested in carrying on God our fathers divine work. I have designs for such a device as you describe and even have pictures of the first samples. I have been reluctant to build such a fearsome weapon because of its possible use. Having now found a true believer to entrust it too, I am ready to proceed. I am unable to scan the pictures to email them to you. Is it possible you could give me a mailing address and I will happily mail you my prototype pictures to see of this will meet your requirements. This is with the understanding you will return them to me. Jerry

I can't decide whether this man really is prepared to make weapons for an apparent maniac, or whether he has contacted Homeland Security and this is all an ambush. I'd better send him my friend Kevin's address to be on the safe side.

If you are bored, copy and paste the email and see if you can find anyone willing to make a gun for Sheikh Nasrallah or Saddam Al Infidel-Slayer.


UPDATE: Kevin has been shot by a SWAT team.

Lieutenant Oblivious said...

Leroy, Thanks for the Oatmeal article on Tesla, I enjoyed it and maybe the folks at Gypsy Donut in Nyack did too, these were the dueling tip jars there this morning!

Mike Hunt said...

Has anyone seen my cock?

bad boy of the north said...

lantern rouge?

JLRB said...

GOWAN and post today's post already