Good News For Bike LoversThe New York Bike Share Project will lend free bikes to commuters for the next five days; and the city’s trying to make a bike-sharing project work forever.
developing
The Bike Man ComethThe Street Wizard of Copenhagen is coming to New York. That’s a big deal, and great news for bicyclists and pedestrians: Danish planner Jan Gehl made his name by formulating little fixes — a plaza here, a planter there — that vastly improved pedestrian life in his home city and others from Milan to Dublin. New Transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, along with Planning commissioner Amanda Burden, took a field trip to meet him last month, and she told us last night that she’s hiring him for Big Apple projects. Sadik-Khan won’t say yet what he’ll be working on in New York, but his firm, Gehl Architects, studies street use and designs ways to encourage it — so we suspect Department of Transportation leaders want him to make local landmarks more pleasant for walking, biking, or waiting for the light to change. Maybe he’ll unchoke the Times Square bow tie, for instance, or propose ways to cross Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza in less than 30 minutes. Presumably he’s open to suggestion. —Alec Appelbaum
Earlier: What Does Socialite/Planner Amanda Burden Do on Vacation?
the morning line
Bell, Boss, and Bikes
• The Sean Bell case continues providing bizarre auxiliary scandals. Now the boss of a grand-jury star witness (a janitor claiming to have seen someone shoot at cops that night) is arrested — for commanding the janitor to keep quiet. [NYP]
• Mayor Bloomberg is dishing out some of his patented TLC as thousands in Brooklyn and Queens begin defaulting on their high-interest mortgages: It’s “the marketplace at work,” he explains. “You can blame the people that borrowed the money.” Stop griping! [NYDN]
• The Yankee dynasty may be left without an heir apparent: Steinbrenner’s daughter, Jenny, is divorcing George’s announced successor Steve Swindal. (Of course, there are three more Steinbrenner kids in VP positions). [amNY]
• Scorned bicyclists are filing a federal lawsuit against the NYPD, whose new rules let cops stop and ticket any group of 50 or more cyclists that doesn’t have a parade permit. (How about a parade permit for those pointless cop-car swarms down Fifth Avenue?) [Streetsblog]
• If your bike is your livelihood, however, you’re on easy street, kind of. The city just signed a law that requires businesses to provide helmets and ensure safety (new brakes, etc.) to bike messengers and delivery workers. [NYT]
developing
Brooklyn Bike Path Pedals Closer to Reality
The Brooklyn Greenway Initiative has almost $19 million in federal, city, and privately raised funds to design and develop a landscaped, pedestrian- and biker-friendly promenade along the currently gritty, grubby, and privately owned Brooklyn waterfronts from Greenpoint to Sunset Park. And at a “fun-raiser” in a Columbia Heights tapas bar last night, the organizers announced that they’re ready to come up with their first formal development proposals; they hope to have selected a designer by June for the segment alongside the Navy Yard, the first part to be designed.
neighborhood watch
Track Bikes To Tear Through LESBedford-Stuyvesant: Does Head Over Heels Café actually exist, or does it just have terrible business practices? [Clinton Hill Blog]
Chelsea: Mullen’s Pub is gone, done in by rent increases. [Blog Chelsea]
Greenpoint: Give the neighborhood some T-shirt love, and show everyone how much you love the terminal market. [Newyorkshitty]
Lower East Side: Monster Track 2007 starts at 3 p.m. at Sarah D. Roosevelt Park; cheer on a slew of bikers without brakes. [Razor Apple]
Park Slope: Police warn Tea Loungers of nefarious terrorists who plot using the hangout’s free wi-fi. [Brooklyn Paper]
Richmond Hill: Residents are livid over plans to build low-income housing on land only recently revealed to be contaminated. [Queens Chronicle]
Williamsburg: New moms rave about the midwife program at Woodhull Medical Center. They even liked the food! [Block Magazine via Brooklyn Record]
intel
City to Build Bike Racks, Evict Clydesdales
Yesterday we received a forwarded — actually, a several-times forwarded — press release from the New York City Department of Transportation. Next year, the city will expand the sidewalk into the street at the southeast corner of North 7th Street at Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, removing several parking spots but creating space for more bicycle racks. The forwarders were enthusiastic: “A truly progressive move by DOT,” said one; perhaps the first time the city has removed vehicular parking spots to make room for bike parking, suggested another. But what does that corner look like at rush hour now? Photog and Williamsburger Everett Bogue checked it out on his way to work this morning, and we can’t help but wonder: Once the new bike racks go in, how will they get the Bud to Williamsburg?
DOT to Widen Sidewalk & Install Bike Racks in Williamsburg, Brooklyn [PDF]
the morning line
Hevesi Looking for New Car, Job
• Reelected or not, Alan Hevesi may be on his way out, and soon: The Times reports that governor-elect Eliot Spitzer will most likely be asking the State Senate to remove the wife-chauffeuring comptroller. Spitzer then gets to hand-pick and name his ex-ally’s successor. [NYT]
• At least Hevesi reimbursed the state for the misused 88 grand. It’s less clear how we get back the $1.3 million NYPD spent fighting bicycles that’s right, bicycles. That’s how much money the recent crackdown on the annual Critical Mass bike ride cost, according to an economist who tracks cops’ expenditures. [Streetsblog]
• Lest you think the police are only battling hippies on bikes, the NYPD issued a somewhat bizarre, 2002-style scare statement telling business owners to be “on the lookout” for female jihadists who can “hide explosives by faking pregnancy or sweet-talk their way past security officers.” Finally, a glorious merging of xenophobia and misogyny. Better check if their breasts are real, too! [NYDN]
• In a lurid Post front-pager, a Brooklyn man caught a cemetery caretaker urinating into a vase on his grandmother’s grave and got into a scuffle with him. The Post then proceeds to piss puns all over story, including “‘Relief’ Grief” and “Mourner Pee-ved.” [NYP]
• The rival Daily News, meanwhile, does an impressive job smearing Rupert Murdoch and by extension the Post with Nicole Brown Simpson’s blood; at least four indignant items are devoted to the Fox TV special and HarperCollins book wherein O.J. flippantly what-ifs the murders. [NYDN]
neighborhood watch
Carroll Gardeners Fight the Good FightCarroll Gardens: Volunteers MoveOn into vacant Carroll Gardens apartment, using it to call voters round the country. [Brooklyn Papers]
Kensington: City drags its feet in building playground, kids sad. [NYDN]
Lower East Side: Cronkite Pizzeria and Wine Bar helps hipsters indulge their inner child and their repressed adult by serving up cotton candy and affordable wine. [Gothamist]
Park Slope: Sharing is caring, and drivers and bikers will soon be splitting Fifth Avenue. [Streets Blog]
Prospect Heights: From ghetto to glorious: New bodega management patches hole in wall and actually stocks what its customers want, which is beer and cigarettes. [Daily Heights]
West Village: Ye Waverly Inn reopens, with better lighting and a new mural but sadly, when these photos were taken, no Graydon. [Eater]
Williamsburg: Breast-feeding has come to the ‘Burg, and the nabe’s okay with it. But not quite as okay as lactating moms would like. [Brooklyn Record]
the morning line
Forget It, Jake
• Chinatown business owners are beefing with Hollywood crews that have flooded the neighborhood, with 25 film permits issued over the last twelve months. City Hall says it’s the neighborhood’s fault for being so damn photogenic. [amNY]
• In one of the strangest street attacks in recent memory, a pedestrian was stabbed by a passing bicyclist last night on West End and 63rd. The assault appears completely random. Perhaps citywide bike lanes are a good idea after all. [NYDN]
• Local news predicts an unrelieved Manhattan Bridge traffic nightmare for the next year while the lower level is closed for a spruce-up. Daily Intel’s AccuChopper 20,000 predicts the same nightmare for the twenty years following the Atlantic Yards groundbreaking. [WNBC]
• Mets tie series, prompt the following tortured sports-pun headline of the day: NOW BATS MORE LIKE IT. [NYP, natch]
• Finally, some club called Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers went out of business — with a name like that, what could be
the problem? — hopefully stemming the steady flow of elegiac human-interest features. [VV, NYT]
intel
Byrne Bikes for BeepManhattan Borough President Scott Stringer organized a big-deal transportation conference for nine o’clock this morning at Columbia University. The point was to talk about government policy — how do we all get around in a continually growing city? — and the folks at Transportation Alternatives had a great way to gin up attention for some transportation alternatives. A group of biking celebs — David Byrne, Matthew Modine, Moby — would join Stringer’s keynote speaker, Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, for a ride up the West Side Highway to the event.
the morning line
Upstate Car Wreck Kills Couple, Breaks Hearts
• A 10-month-old girl is newly orphaned, and in critical condition, after an SUV crossed the median in Orange County and rammed her parents’ rental. That the father was the founder of Fandango.com and the mother a rising-star neuroscientist may raise the item’s profile, but the fact that they were high-school sweethearts makes it completely devastating. [NYDN]
• Affordable housing may be coming to the Lower East Side, Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo, and elsewhere: Bloomberg wants to make his tax break for developers dependent on the low-cost caveat. Ah, how times change: We remember when half of Dumbo’s inhabitants lived there for free. [NYT]
• In psycho-killer news, Mark Chapman was denied parole for the fourth time, one day after his victim John Lennon’s 66th birthday; and Andrew Goldstein, a schizophrenic who pushed a woman under the N train in 1999, pleaded guilty, saying he knew what he was doing. We guess that’s progress? [amNY, NYT]
• In what continues to be Stephen Colbert’s week of total media domination, Colbert County in Alabama opens “The Stephen Colbert Museum and Gift Shop.” Don’t read the linked article too carefully, because the author completely sells out a potentially funny bit from a future show. [Montgomery Adviser via Radar]
• New bike routes are coming to the city. Except that this is New York, not some hippy-dippy Portland, so our bike lanes are actually “shared lanes” and are basically streets with some stenciling on them. We’re sure it’s just a coincidence that these new-style stencils look like chalk outlines of flattened bikers. Right? [StreetsBlog]
