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.
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]
