Shafted Again. @bikesnobnyc rebuttal to @nytimes
Cyclists.
Can we ever get a break?
Apparently not.
Just three weeks after Delia Ephron unleashed the stupid with her New York Times op-ed about how we shouldn't have bike share because the color blue doesn't look good in rom-coms, that same august periodical has published another opinion piece that is, on the surface, a work of bicycle advocacy.
However, probe deeper, and it is something far more insidious even than that Ephron crap.
Here it is:
Ostensibly this piece is about how drivers who kill cyclists don't get in trouble and how this needs to change. All very good, right? Who could argue with that? (Well, besides the police, and the auto industry, and the auto insurance industry, and the oil industry, and the tabloids, and your local lawmakers, and...) Well, the first warning sign is the stupid knuckle tattoo illustration evoking the evoking the darkest days of the insipid fixie trend circa 2007. Then, the writer opens with this:
SAN FRANCISCO — EVERYBODY who knows me knows that I love cycling and that I’m also completely freaked out by it. I got into the sport for middle-aged reasons: fat; creaky knees; the delusional vanity of tight shorts. Registering for a triathlon, I took my first ride in decades. Wind in my hair, smile on my face, I decided instantly that I would bike everywhere like all those beautiful hipster kids on fixies. Within minutes, however, I watched an S.U.V. hit another cyclist, and then I got my own front wheel stuck in a streetcar track, sending me to the pavement.
Anybody who is "freaked out" by cycling--in San Francisco no less--should probably not be writing about it. Being freaked out by cycling in San Francisco is like being freaked out by sushi in Japan, or by thongs in Rio de Janeiro.
[Keep reading at Bike Snob NYC]
Can we ever get a break?
Apparently not.
Just three weeks after Delia Ephron unleashed the stupid with her New York Times op-ed about how we shouldn't have bike share because the color blue doesn't look good in rom-coms, that same august periodical has published another opinion piece that is, on the surface, a work of bicycle advocacy.
However, probe deeper, and it is something far more insidious even than that Ephron crap.
Here it is:
SAN FRANCISCO — EVERYBODY who knows me knows that I love cycling and that I’m also completely freaked out by it. I got into the sport for middle-aged reasons: fat; creaky knees; the delusional vanity of tight shorts. Registering for a triathlon, I took my first ride in decades. Wind in my hair, smile on my face, I decided instantly that I would bike everywhere like all those beautiful hipster kids on fixies. Within minutes, however, I watched an S.U.V. hit another cyclist, and then I got my own front wheel stuck in a streetcar track, sending me to the pavement.
Anybody who is "freaked out" by cycling--in San Francisco no less--should probably not be writing about it. Being freaked out by cycling in San Francisco is like being freaked out by sushi in Japan, or by thongs in Rio de Janeiro.
[Keep reading at Bike Snob NYC]
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