In yesterday’s post, I mentioned Morrissey’s meat smoker, and I’m pleased to report I may have actually found it:
I suppose I should be annoyed that this bike rack in now inaccessible unless you’re willing to risk third-degree burns, but mostly it just makes me happy to see people taking the streetscape into their own hands and making it work for them–though maybe that’s just my stomach talking.
Also further to yesterday’s post, I totally forgot that David “I Don’t Own A Car” Byrne totally owned a car the whole time–and parked it illegally to boot:
When David Byrne once visited me at KCRW during a nightly show I briefly did, he ran in all agitated, saying he parked his car outside in a no-parking area. School was in and parking was always scarce. I told him I’d move his car. He told me “no, you won’t know how to drive this car!”. I asked him what kind of car it was. He told me it was a Citroën. I told him that I once owned a DS 19 with the “citromatic” hydraulic clutch. He handed me the keys and I parked it.
Though in fairness to Byrne we all know that according to the Laws of Smugness if your car is quirky or vintage enough it totally doesn’t count, and his “citromatic” Francomobile was no doubt the automotive equivalent of a fixie. See, your tight-as-a-drum Honda CR-V that gets excellent gas mileage and doesn’t leak a drop of fluid is a blight on the cityscape and is destroying the planet, whereas a classic VW Beetle that smells like a gas pump, sounds like a bout of flatulence, and looks like it wet itself when it leaves a parking spot is totally endearing and a delight to children and adults alike. (I rode a few blocks alongside a classic VW Beetle the other day, and I forgot how much being near one feels like getting locked in a garden shed with a running lawnmower.)
And while I’m revisiting yesterday’s post, I also decided to check into what Robert Mackey (the guy whose vacation I ruined) is doing these days–which led me to his Twitter, whereupon an ancient retweet of his in turn reminded me of this story from 2014:
In yet another legal seesaw, the Maine nurse who treated Ebola patients in West Africa and has fought her state’s quarantine rules can leave her home and go to public places as she awaits her hearing, a judge ruled today in Augusta.
…
Hickox, 33, went on a bike ride Thursday after vowing Wednesday night she wasn’t willing to “stand here and have my civil rights violated.”
This struck me as absurd then:
And let’s just say the last year and a half hasn’t changed my attitude towards forced quarantines–though I admit I was wrong about how we collectively freak out in this country, because our last national panic resulted in a bike boom, go figure.
Finally, in another surprising twist, who would have thought even a few short years ago that our (possible) next mayor would hop on a bike in order to ride to a municipal function:
Ironically, Adams was riding to a street-naming ceremony in honor of late iconic journalist Pete Hamill, whose brother Denis is a noted bike-hater:
If you hit the lottery and see 10 feet of free space in the parking lane, you can no longer use the curb to guide your parallel parking. No, the curb is reserved as a barrier reef for the Hipster Highway for Richie Rich on his $1,500 Lance Armstrong Doperacer.
Eight years later and the guy who may very well be the mayor-elect (who, no matter what you think of him, in no way fits the above stereotype) rides in a protected bike lane in order to pay tribute to this guy’s brother.
As they once would have said in the local Brooklyn patois, “What a woild.”