While I was on vacation, trying to vacate, some quarter-witted vivisection survivor drove onto the sidewalk in Queens and hit five schoolkids:
Because (and say it with me now) he mistook the gas for the brake.
One of the kids has since died--and they're trying to spin it as a coincidence.
Around the same time, or the day before, or whatever it was, some doofus on a Specialized hit acting person Nicole Kidman on a Manhattan sidewalk while trying to take her picture:
(You know, when they said she was "creamed" it wasn't what I was hoping.)
Unless you're not a New Yorker, or you're totally naive and clueless (which I suppose is pretty much the same thing), you know what happened next. The starfucker on the bike was duly ticketed (cycling on the sidewalk is a misdemeanor in New York City), and last I heard poor Ms. Kidman (who suffered the indignity of having to touch the sidewalk with parts of her body that are above her ankles, but was otherwise unharmed) was considering pressing charges herself. The driver who ran down the kids, on the other hand, has not been charged with anything at all--because driving a car on the sidewalk in New York City is not a crime unless you mail a certified letter to the local police precinct two weeks beforehand and inform them that on such-and-such a date you intend to drive onto the sidewalk and run over a bunch of people. Otherwise, it's just an "oopsie," like jostling someone's Kindle on the F train.
This isn't to say nothing is being done about drivers running over pedestrians on the sidewalk, because the principal of the victims' school did, in a remarkable flourish of sheer tastelessness, warn kids not to wear headphones:
Which, general stupidity of the warning aside, none of the victims was doing at the time:
(Poor driver mistakes gas for brake also headphones no criminality suspected have a nice day.)
So there you go.
In all likelihood, our next mayor will be this ex-Sandinista Bill de Blasio guy, and one of his campaign pledges has been this whole "vision zero" traffic safety thing. Sounds lovely. I'll believe it when I see it. But what can I do now? I'm done with this goody-goody gratuitously-following-traffic-laws-on-my-bike-we-have-bike-share-now-everything's-great-so-I'm-going-to-be-a-model-cyclist approach. Screw that, I'm going back into common-sense survival mode. I'm also not one for guerrilla activism, partially because I'm a coward, but mostly because it happens way after my bedtime:
I try not to be south of 242nd Street after sundown.
Up until now, I've at least been able to take solace in my religious faith, which is worship of the Almighty Lobster On High, blessed be S/He:
But you know what? My god has been failing me. First of all, cyclists keep getting killed willy-nilly by people who shouldn't be driving. Secondly, road bikes are getting disc brakes. Thirdly, my helper monkey, Vito, died tragically in a freak parachuting accident while injecting a potent mixure of heroin and Molly directly into his scranus during freefall.
What the crap kinda "god" allows all that?
So I'm going "full apostate." I reject you, Lobster God. I boil you, eat you, and excrete you. I mock you, and I don't fear your wrath. May you be picked apart by a thousand hungry seagulls as you hang upside down from your crucifix of shame. Same goes for all you other religions and prophets too. You know who you are. You can keep your beards and your flowing robes and your stupid diets and your primitive beliefs. Because I'm going with Satan, the guy who gets things done:
He's my last hope. I can't think of anywhere else to turn. Anyway, for centuries people have been turning to Satan with fantastic results. For example:
Machiavelli
(Niccolò Machiavelli, inventor of the macchiato coffee.)
Frederick Douglass
(Frederick Douglass, inventor of Frederick Douglass Boulevard)
George Lucas
(George Lucas, inventor of not having a chin.)
These are just a few of the success stories who just happened to be avowed worshippers of Satan, and now you can count me in too. In fact, I just sold my soul yesterday afternoon at around 3:30-ish, and already I'm feeling stronger and more confident ,with just the faintest hint of unquenchable bloodlust I'm currently satisfying with wholesome and readily-available puppy blood. And the best part is I only draw more power when someone commits an ungodly Satanic act. Whenever two gay people get married or touch genitals I get stronger. Whenever a congressman reads aloud from the Book of Obamacare (it's the Satanic New Testament, don't you know) I get stronger. Your "epic" Sabbath wankfests are the wind beneath my leathery batwings. I am the glint in Justin Bieber's eye when his roadie starts packing the bong. I am the morbid stench in a fixie rider's jeans. I am the mold and scum and residual baby puke that accumulates in the tub of a bakfiets. I'm a marshmallow marinaded in human blood and roasted to perfection on a Varanasi burning ghat. Join me, join me, join me. Kill, kill, KILL!!!
Sorry, that's the old bloodlust acting up. I'm going to have to grab another puppy from the fridge.
Anyway, we'll see how it works out, but in the meantime whenever a driver pisses me off I simply speak a hateful incantation too powerful to reproduce here and pray to my Dark Lord™ for his or her painful, flesh-rotting demise.
Oh, speaking of New York City, apparently Satan has made Yehuda Moon come to life and banished him to the Williamsburg Bridge, where he must repair the bikes of young, inept gentrifiers for all eternity:
See what I'm saying?
Anyway, here's the story:
Wobbling over the Williamsburg Bridge on a misaligned bike wheel earlier today, I ran into Michael — a bike mechanic who set up his DIY shop in the middle of the bridge where the bike lane crosses the pedestrian path. I haven’t had the time or the funds to stop by a bike shop since getting hit by a car several weeks ago, so I thought, why not?
You know, back in the 1950s when I was growing up, if our wheels got fucked up and we couldn't afford to bring them to a bike shop we figured out how to do it ourselves. It really wasn't too hard, either, because we had the Internet and we had this guy Sheldon Brown who described how to do everything you could possibly ever need to do to a bike in painstaking detail. (Yes, in the 1950s. It's true. Look it up.) Nowadays though I guess you just ride around all wobbly like a schmuck until some bridge troll with a giant beard takes mercy on you, or else you launch a Kickstarter to design an iPhone app that trues your wheels with lasers.
I mean seriously, get a load of this meeting of the
I dare you to look at that and tell me God's not dead.
Hail Satan.
And in more evidence that Satan is alive and well and working overtime in New York City, we actually have a full-time Rapha store now:
("Evil!!!")
Not only that, but it's in (what used to be) the Meatpacking District, which was once the place to score yourself a transsexual hooker.
Or so I've heard.
Oh, who am I kidding, I've been frequenting transsexual hookers since the 1950s when I used to work in the meatpacking district.
Lastly, the big news from Interbike was that Greg LeMond has a new line of bicycles:
This Time with his name on it that is made of crabon and has two wheels is sure to chance the face of bicycle cycling forever. But of course the big question is: "Will there be a dedicated gravel bike?"
Well, what do you think?
The bikes themselves are, LeMond said, just the start. “I’m really excited to be back in the bike industry,” he said, adding that he has “a number of new projects next year,” including more road, cyclocross, and possibly gravel-road models.
Hail Satan.
