Friday’s Headlines: John Mulaney, You Are Officially On Notice Edition

When did Netflix start airing community board meetings? And when did people start dressing up so nice for them?

You’d be excused for muttering such questions to yourself if you were watching “Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney” on Wednesday night on Netflix (OK, I’m not hip, so I watched it archived the next day) because the comic legend and his guests looked like a bunch of anti-bike cranks at a meeting of Manhattan Community Board 8.

The show was headlined, “Is Uber Good?” but the main panel discussion didn’t really address the issue — for instance, comic Amy Sedaris revealed that she takes Ubers from the city to Maplewood, New Jersey (?!), while actress Sigourney Weaver showed that yellow is always in fashion: “I’m all New York taxi all the way.”

It was only when actress Natasha Lyonne took her seat on Mulaney’s long couch that the bikelash hit the fan. Sure, you may be a fan of “Poker Face,” but Lyonne, who at age 46 may be among our youngest cranks, revealed herself to be among the worst people … ever.

Glossing over Mulaney’s Uber question, she hijacked the conversation: “I think we need to shut down the bike lanes.” And she kept on saying it. Again and again, whining that “New York is just too crowded” for bike lanes (um, remind us again, Ms. Lyonne, how you and your friend Whoopi Goldberg get from set to set?).

Lyonne’s rampage encouraged the inaptly named sidekick Richard Kind to join in: “Get rid of the electric bicycles!” he yelled. “They’re killers!” (Fact check: They are not.)

Fortunately, Mulaney had stationed Los Angeles urbanist Alissa Walker at the way far distant end of the couch as kind of a moral conscience. Unfortunately, he barely let her talk. Finally, she jumped in, saying, “I disagree with everything you’ve said,” but the entire panel of celebricrites shut her down when she said that “buses should have their own lane and bikes should have their own very wide lane.”

Mulaney, who spent a considerable time living (and snorting) in New York City should have treated Walker — and public transit — better. At one point, he mocked Walker for saying that she had taken the bus to his L.A. studio.

“That’s a dystopian nightmare,” said a man who certainly knows that subways are always faster than driving in an urban center like L.A. or N.Y.

Now, I’m not a humorless pedant — I love Mulaney’s show! (I mean, that Mrs. T bit was amazing!) But can’t celebrities just shut up when they literally know nothing about a topic (in this case, urban transportation)? Can’t people who don’t cook for themselves stop complaining about the form of transportation used by the people who bring them their restaurant meals, still piping hot? Can’t rich people realize they have no right talking about the streets when their only contact with it is the two steps they take to their limousines?

We reached out to Mulaney, but didn’t hear back. But the comic knows he’s on notice. And we’ll have more coverage from Doug Gordon on this topic after the long weekend, so if you’re reading this, John, you should email me.

In other news:

• OK, speaking of bike lanes, this isn’t why we advocate for them. (NYDN)
• Another Sean Duffy congestion pricing deadline came … and went. (NY Post)
• Speaking of Duffy, he’s been a complete disaster on bike lanes, but maybe his cabinet colleague Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be better? After all, the horrifying decline in children’s biking and walking merits a line on page 46 of the “Make America Healthy Again” report, published in full by the Times. The line? “In 1969, 48 percent of K-8 students usually walked or bicycled to school, declining to 12.7 percent in 2009.” So let’s make childhood great again.
• Oh, and speaking of the Trump administration, The City ran down how much pain the new GOP “Big Beautiful” budget is going to cause in New York.
• Subway crime is down again. (Gothamist)
• This apartment tower sounds nice … unless Mickey and Spiderman are your roomies. (NY Times)
• Lithium-ion batteries remain a fire problem when not properly charged or when damaged. (NYDN)
• Maybe Meera Joshi knows what she’s doing; after all, people are dying to get into her new place of work. (NY Times)
• Amtrakpocalypse begins tonight. (NY Post, NYDN)
• We haven’t agreed much with Bill Bratton over the years, but he’s 100 percent right on the Stop Super Speeders bill (though it took him a month to retweet Nicole Gelinas’s story).