The insufferable entitledness of bikers

10 Nov

Bikes

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The National Transportation Safety Board has recommended that helmets be required for all bicyclists in the U.S., but some advocacy groups say putting the recommendation into law can have unintended consequences.
How ’bout we let them crack their heads open, and then maybe they’ll think about how biking — in a city like New York at least, not Copenhagen — is a deeply ANTI-URBAN, elitist, yuppy phenomenon that makes our cities’ centers more and more inaccessible to borough dwellers who can’t afford to live there, to street vendors, truckers, commercial traffic, theater-goers and everything that makes New York New York and not Copenhagen, all dressed up in the pedantic Uber-Green self-righteousness of a bunch of rich Vegan kids from Michigan.
Walt Whitman would be turning in his grave.
Blows me away that more people don’t see that.
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CITY of ships!

(O the black ships! O the fierce ships!

O the beautiful, sharp bow’d steam-ships and sail-ships!)

City of the world! (for all races are here;

All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)

City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!

City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede,
whirling in and out, with eddies and foam!

City of wharves and stores! city of tall façades of mar-
ble and iron!

Proud and passionate city! mettlesome, mad, extrava-
gant city!

Spring up, O city! not for peace alone, but be indeed
yourself, warlike!

Fear not! submit to no models but your own, O city!

Behold me! incarnate me, as I have incarnated you!

I have rejected nothing you offer’d me—whom you
adopted, I have adopted;

Good or bad, I never question you—I love all—I do
not condemn anything;

I chant and celebrate all that is yours—yet peace no
more;

In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is
mine;

War, red war, is my song through your streets, O city!

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Comment: nikobakos@gmail.com

One Response to “The insufferable entitledness of bikers”

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. C. doesn’t like my post on “The insufferable entitledness of bikers” — or lots of other things I’ve written | Jadde-ye-Kabir - November 12, 2019

    […] we go to New York.  I post this piece: “The insufferable entitledness of bikers“ […]

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