Rocky Road
Cycling intimately acquaints you with every bump, slice, crease, divot, ledge, ripple and of course pothole in a street, because not noticing means you might get thrown off your steed into bone-breaking and life ending car traffic.
December 19, 2007
Hats and Top Coats: Unsung Casualties of Car Culture
What we wear or don't wear -- fashion, that is -- tells a lot about how we live, including how we get around.
December 17, 2007
Good Streets Include Streetcars
Last stop for Brooklyn's trolley dodgers at Fairway Market in Red Hook.
December 4, 2007
Eliminate the Parking Requirement
I've long bristled at the word "subsidies" that is applied so frequently to subways, buses and trains, and so infrequently to driving, even when the latter is "subsidized" much more lavishly than the former.
November 27, 2007
Shared Space on the Brooklyn Bridge
I'd bet that people walking outnumber people bicycling across the Brooklyn Bridge by at least 100 to one. I cycle across the wooden-slatted walkway that soars over the top of the bridge regularly now, and every time I do so I think about this. My rolling bicycle negates the space for scores of people every second, forcing them into a relatively skinny strip that is half as wide as the whole walkway.
November 7, 2007
Invisible Man
The brain experts tell us vision is an act of discrimination. In other words, we don't see everything; see what we look for, what we expect to see.
November 5, 2007
Tearing Up the Streets, and Pants
A bicyclist in Amsterdam: "Dignified, civilized, unhurried and even elegant..."
November 1, 2007
To Obey, Or Not to Obey
Not getting flattened by a 50,000 pound "big rig" is a good reason to stop at a red light if you're on a bicycle. But how about less skin-saving reasons? Are there in fact, good reasons to ignore traffic regulations when you can, because after all, they are really meant just for cars?
October 16, 2007
My First Bike Commute Over the East River
"Necessity is the mother of convenience" is what I found to be true this morning as I rode for the very first time from my home in Crown Heights all the way to Union Square in Manhattan.
October 2, 2007
Famed Danish Urbanist Jan Gehl in Town to Consult on PlaNYC
The Urbanist Musketeers: Alex Garvin, Jan Gehl and Fred Kent in Copenhagen, Denmark, Sept. 30, 2006.
August 2, 2007