Via Felix Salmon, we learn about this event happening next Saturday, Sept. 22, starting at 11 a.m.
Join Transportation Alternatives' Bike Ambassadors on a bike tour of some of our favorite Bike Friendly Businesses to commemorate the launch of New York City's first Bike Friendly Business District, in Manhattan's East Village and Lower East Side. We'll ride through the East Village and Lower East Side stopping by our favorite Bike Friendly Businesses and arts destinations along the way, including Pushcart Coffee, Veselka and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. The East Village and Lower East Side Bike Friendly Business District — the first of its kind — is a network of more than 150 businesses and cultural institutions dedicated to promoting safe bike riding and better bike infrastructure in their neighborhood. Free food provided, but bring your bike.
Find more details at BikeNYC.org. The group will meet at Veselka, Second Avenue at East Ninth Street.
And you're pleased with this...? Not pleased? Being part of the first Bike Friendly Business District and all.
20 comments:
As long as they ride responsibly I guess it's OK.
I'm all for the bicycle in theory. I ride mine all the time, to work, groceries, errands, anywhere I can. I like the idea of more bikes but I'm starting to see why people hate them so much. Most riders I see, they ride like complete pricks. Even the responsible looking ones, even the females, even the ones riding the most innocuous looking lady bikes, etc. I see too often a complete disregard for pedestrians, riding through red lights w/o even looking towards oncoming traffic, a ride-first-look-later approach to crossing intersections, "salmon"-ing, etc. Drives me insane. I used to vehemently defend the practice of bike riding, but I can't anymore. Everything's broken, everyone's an asshole now, everything here is dissonance, there is no harmony.
Anytime there's a "bike tour" of anything it's all people that don't know traffic rules. It's impossible to cross the street and they don't watch where they are going.
There's plenty of harmony. Of course the shitty-obnoxious-dangerous riders are going to stand out in your memory, and they deserve your scorn. But the majority ride by peacefully. Visual white noise. You don't notice them, but they're there.
If they're touring in large groups, where are they going to lock up all those bikes when they stop at the businesses? Or are they just doing drivebys? Or are they going to stop 50 bikes in the lane and cause a jam?
Anon 10:37, are implying that bicyclists that are not part of bike tours know (and obey?) the traffic rules.
a pedestrian is in danger these days. and yes some of them are inconsiderate.
however, since the bike lanes were instituted the number of inconsiderate, stupid, arrogant, whatever, bikers has increased so that a pedestrian now has to look in four directions before attempting to cross the street.
on some streets this does not leave enough time to safely cross (3rd avenue for one).
wrong way, wrong lane, on the sidewalk, too fast. feel free to add to this list.
it doesn't matter how many bad bikers there are, one on each block is enough to cause problems.
the only thing worse than hipster douches. Hipster douches on bikes.
I had one biker blow through a red light as me, my wife and 2 yr old were walking in the crosswalk and yelled at us "Watch out". I earmuffed my kid and called her a fat disgusting pig. But it's ok, she was a fat disgusting pig.
Was thinking about that while crossing Allen this morning. Then, an asshole blew through the light at top speed, riding in the wrong direction and gave me the finger as I hollered and jumped out of the way. Gimme a can of mace.
I was crossing 1st Ave at 13th street in the crosswalk when a young couple came riding down the bike lane in the wrong direction. I stopped in the bike lane and yelled out that it was inconsiderate and dangerous to be riding in the wrong direction and they yelled back "get out of the bike lane" and flipped me off. Half the bikers I see in the bike lane (including delivery guys) are riding in the wrong direction. I agree it's a broken system. But then NYC is not place where you follow the rules.
If it's any consolation to my fellow bike-haters, I offer this quote from Christopher Isherwood's "Berlin Diaries" story "The Last of Mr. Norris", based on journals he kept in the late 1920s: "Deeply attached as I am to Amsterdam, I shall always maintain it has three fatal drawbacks...secondly, there are the cyclists. They positively overrun the town, and appear to make it a point of honor to ride without the faintest consideration for human life. I had an exceedingly narrow escape only this morning."
That photo looks horrible- No I am not looking forward to this stupid idea and their forceful push of this Bike Friendly Business District- sorry but I work in the EV and most riders I see are totally clueless (wearing flip flops or worse, high heels, playing with phones, holding coffee cups or packages with one free hand, draping small kids over the front or back of their bikes the list goes on) This is encouraging ridiculous people who do not have urban riding skills to troll around the EV. Plus this is also the drunken nightlife district- isn't there some conflict between the two?
As a pedestrian crossing the street (with the light, at the crosswalk), I am routinely competed with (and sometimes nearly clipped) by trucks, cars, motorcycles, and bicycles. On several occasions I sidestepped or jumped out of the way of a motorcycle motoring down the sidewalk en route to a parking space on the sidewalk.
There is a class of folks, everywhere - not just in the EV, who won't obey the rules of the road unless they stand to be penalized with fines and loss of license.
And the problem is that NYPD has apparently been directed to not ticket moving violations, unless, as happened recently to a woman riding a scooter in SoHo, someone gets seriously injured or killed.
When was the last time you saw a motorist get flagged by a cop for passing a red light or hazardous driving? Have you ever seen a speeding garbage truck get stopped? How about if it was driving the wrong way on a one way street? Yeah, me neither.
I do see some really stupid behavior in the bike lanes ... From clueless pedestrians. People standing in the bike lanes outside bars ... People walking across the bike lanes without looking while texting. Delivery people abruply pulling into a bike lane. The usual.
But I have also seen some of the behaviors from cyclists cited above...
Gee, just sounds like everyone sited in these comments are simply typical New Yorkers. Putting them on a bicycle didn't change them into anything that they weren't already.
Typical New Yorkers? No. People who moved here 5 minutes ago and want the city to be like where they're from? Yes.
my favorite stupid trick that bikers perform is biking their dog. having the dog run besides the bike.
i wouldn't mind if this were to endanger the biker but i fear that the dogs are in real danger.
add to that biking your dog while texting. a true rocket scientist that one.
@anon 11:53
Yeah. We're talking about the same thing; "Typical New Yorkers" Everybody here moved here 5 minutes ago at one point in time.
Let's be honest here, in my experience, most of the rude bikers are ugly. They're more angry about being ugly than having pedestrians having the audacity to be crossing the street. They came to NYC expecting to be discovered for their amazing talent and end up biking to work at Sizzler for five years straight, taking their frustrations out on unsuspecting happy pedestrians expecting a modicum of law abiding from street cyclists.
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