Bloomberg Wins Bad Dad of the Year Award

How do people ride a Citi Bike and live at the same time?

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

Biking is one of those activities that everyone assumes people can do, but this is the thing: Can they? All bikers are not equal. When I first learned how to ride a bike, I was so horrible at it that my parents banned me from riding in the open street. I suppose they wanted to help me survive to the age of majority. I obeyed their directives to the letter, as I am wont to do, but as a result I have not ridden a bike since I was ten years old.

So I had my doubts about Citi Bikes. It seems sort of crazy that biking stations dotted around the city could replace sensible modes of mass transit, like express buses. How do people ride a bike and live at the same time? In order to understand this hippy-dippy phenomenon weirdly sponsored by a corporation, I decided I had to put the system on trial. Is this the “additional transportation option” you promised us in your Citi Bike manifesto, the “fun, efficient, and convenient” system with a docking station “always nearby”? Or are you trying to kill all of your constituents on purpose?

To find out, my friend (who is big into biking) and I decided to rent bikes from the Christopher Street station. We couldn’t. That whole station was malfunctioning and you couldn’t get the bikes out of their rack without dislocating an arm. Then we went to Barrow Street; same story. My friend called a help line as I drank a Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee and stared at the rows and rows of bikes. They seemed higher off the ground than I remembered, like horses. Finally, after a long time on the phone and an entire beverage drunk, we were able to procure some bikes. I pulled mine out of its out of its slot and straddled the contraption. I started to pedal down the cobblestone street. I didn’t fall over; in fact it was fun! If not exactly convenient or efficient.

My friend and I had a plan to bike from the West Village to the Upper West Side. It was a very ambitious plan but my friend came up with it and he is a very ambitious man and I had just had that coffee I was telling you about. Besides, I did not want to seem like a woman that could not bike. As a considerate gesture to me, my friend decided to take the West Side Highway uptown, since I was extremely skeptical of my ability to actually ride in an open street. We got onto the bike path and my friend quickly outstripped me. This was okay. I was happily pedaling along, my hair whipping in the wind and the sour smell of the Chelsea Piers in my face, until a man in a black-and-butter-yellow spandex biking outfit with the word “Brooklyn” printed on the back started yelling at me that I was in the middle of the bike path. This is not what you are supposed to do when you are slow, apparently. They should tell you this in the Citi Bike manifesto is what I would say.

When we finally reached the Upper West Side my friend and I took a break and looked on the Citi Bike app to find a docking station. Guess what, there are no docking stations on the Upper West Side! This was terrible news and meant we had to ride down to 59th St. on the street! Riding on the street is so phenomenally scary I can’t believe it. Basically, you are on a bike and you are forced to compete with cars like you are the same as a car. It is insane.

I decided that I needed to ride on the sidewalk for a competitive advantage against the gigantic, hulking cars. But this was to the great consternation of all Upper West Side residents, many of whom kept variously informing me that I was going to be fined $200 for riding on the sidewalk. (How did they know the exact dollar amount? Are they geniuses?) Normally, the consternation of the elderly wounds me to the core, but I was so scared I did not even care about it. Eventually, we made it down to the West End Avenue and 59th St, and the entire time I screamed and broke the law. Unfortunately, there were only broken docks at West End Avenue, so we went over to 59th St and Amsterdam. I found a dock and slammed my bike into it. The end!

So what did I learn? Well, for one, biking is sort of fun but extremely frightening. Many New Yorkers are well-versed in penal code. And anytime anyone has the word Brooklyn on any part of their body, they are terrible.

But let’s get to the point — I feel like the municipal powers are falling down on the job. The government has just assumed that everyone can bike without much trouble, but how is that true? Citi Bike is a bit like leaving ten ponies tied to a post near Christopher Street and asking random New Yorkers to parade throughout the city on them like Lady Godiva as an “additional transportation option.” Would anyone have agreed to that? No they would not have.

Mayor Bloomberg, you are clearly not the stern, protective father of the city you say you are. You won’t let us have soda, and yet now you are making us have bikes. What a deadbeat dad!