SeeTimBlog Explainer: Why People Hate Bikers in NYC [UPDATED]

Everyone hates everyone in New York at one time or another, often for good reason. Because in this sea of selfish humanity, let’s face it, there’s plenty to hate: hipsters with their idiotic carnie wardrobes and artisanal organic eyeglass frames; tourists with their snail’s pace and their girth; jerkwads who insist on pushing onto a subway train as soon as the doors open without first letting folks off; cabbies who don't want to go to Brooklyn; hosts/hostesses at nice restaurants who treat you like the trash you are; hot, well-dressed dynamos with their great clothes, luscious hair, chiseled features, smoldering sex appeal, fat wallets, and shiny shoes; rats; hipster rats with their fedoras and Animal Collective T-shirts. They are all the worst. But do you know who’s even worse than the worst? Bikers.

By day I'm an undercover photographer

Everyone hates bikers. HATES them. I know because I am one. I bike every day from Greenpoint, Brooklyn to my office a few blocks north of the Empire State Building. As a biker, you can feel the seething, sizzling hatred coming at you from all sides—from pedestrians, minivan drivers, school children, nannies, French bulldogs, pigeons, hipster pigeons, and, especially, cabbies. More than once I’ve seen a taxi intentionally swerve to scare a cyclist. Once I was honked at and loudly scolded by an old bat in an Escalade for not staying in the bike lane on Avenue A—even though the bike lane was currently blocked due to construction, so I had no choice in the matter. Another time I barely missed getting doored by a guy in a parked car—and I know he saw me because I made eye contact with him in his sideview mirror before he opened his door (and saw him laughing when I pulled off to the side and turned around). It’s not totally rational, this hatred of bikers. But it’s there and it’s kind of breathtaking.

But here’s the thing: this hatred of bikers isn't totally irrational, either. A lot of the time, I hate bicyclists, too. They are constantly and brazenly doing idiotic, life-threatening, and completely unnecessary things—like, say, going the wrong way when getting off the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge instead of just being reasonable and waiting for the light (see the photos). See, that part of the bridge was redesigned about a year ago to encourage bikes to slow down and wait for the signal before entering traffic or crossing over to the north side of Delancey Street—too many of us, including myself, were deciding they couldn’t wait and that they were just going to elegantly slip into traffic so they wouldn’t have to stop. Most of the time this was fine—you could judge that a gap between cars was emerging and go for it. But I’m sure sometimes it was gnarly, and people got hurt. Hence the redesign, with a much narrower point of entry onto the street and a steep decline to encourage slower speeds. The city also put up not just one but two “WRONG WAY” signs so that folks would know that, though there was another narrow passageway one could take to avoid having to wait for the light, one should not take that path because it is reserved for folks coming from the other direction and that if one did do that, one was being kind of an asshole. 

Yet bikers continually just ignore the signs and do whatever the fuck they want because fuck it. (Should the city have put up a third sign? One saying "STOP being an asshole"?) Now, I’m not typically a scold, and some rules for bikers are dumb—I don’t tend to come to a full stop at every stoplight on any old one-way street, for example. But some rules aren’t. And while, sure, we can all be dumb assholes at times--like when we get pissed on the bridge when we are overtaken on the uphill climb by an elementary schooler so we make it our one goal in life to overtake that little f*cker if it kills us--eat my dust, pipsqueak! Who among us hasn't done that? But still, on balance, one's behavior on a city bicycle must reflect one's sanity and good judgment if one is not to be wished dead by one's fellow cityzens.

Another dipshit who can't read

And it’s not just the constant breaking of clearly expressed—and, again, reasonable—rules that makes bikers so loathsome to their fellow New Yorkers. It’s also the plain-Jane, workaday reckless douchiness of the way folks ride. I take First Avenue up to Twenty-Ninth Street, and, sadly, the bike lane is on the left—this is the east side, which means that the vast majority of folks are turning left, making for a constant clusterfuck at every intersection. Yet so many of my fellow cyclists bike as if they’re in a race to the damn Apple Store. It’s not a fucking race, nerds. Bikers must constantly slow down, swerve out of the way to avoid parked cars in the bike lane or left-turners crowding it, and, yes, sometimes stop at lights so that they don’t go splat. You are not on the West Side bike path and you are not going to win a prize if you get to work five minutes earlier, probably. You are in freaking New York traffic. I’m all for going a decent speed, and there are definitely slowpokes who need to get the lead out sometimes (though I cut them some slack because sometimes they’re old and sometimes they’re probably just newbies at city bike commuting), but there’s absolutely no need for the kinds of speeds I see bikers going on this street every day—especially since I often end up reuniting with folks who whipped past me ten blocks ago at the light at Fourteenth or Twenty-Third, because that’s just how it goes. The hare and the tortoise, together again! (The hare and the tortoise will probably get to their jobs within minutes of each other.)

In conclusion, I’ll just say that one morning a few years ago I was stopping at a light that had just turned red at Houston Street and Avenue A, and a cyclist whipped past me on the right to speed across the (massive) intersection. He managed to clear it without dying and then, on the opposite side of the street, ran smack into the back of a delivery truck like a cartoon character. He fell off his bike and got the stink eye from the delivery guy as he was getting out of the vehicle. Once the biker got up and I saw that he was okay, I was able to admit to myself that that was the most satisfying thing I’d seen since Akasha got eliminated in the first season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. 

I’m not proud to say that. But it’s true.

Be nice out there. Practice your "not being an asshole" skills. And as RuPaul herself says, don't f*ck it up. Because guess what: bikeshare stations are imminent, so the number of idiots on bikes is only going to increase...

UPDATE
This little blog essay was apropos! Looks like the city is moving to crack down on bikers being assholes by stationing guards on high-traffic bridges and bike paths with signs saying "Just F**king Stop and Wait a Second, Would You?". Look here and here.

Tune in Tokyo Surges Back Into Amazon's Top 100 Like a Leviathan (That Was Deeply Discounted for Some Sort of Special Promotion or Something)

Folks, the world thought it was done with my book Tune in Tokyo, but the world was wrong, because, see, the world is now controlled by Amazon, and Amazon is not done with Tune in Tokyo, the world, or controlling the world. 

The point is, TiT was featured in some local deals Kindle promotion yesterday and was discounted to 99 cents. And, as always happens in nature when things are deeply discounted, TiT shot up the Amazon Kindle chart, where it had been languishing at like number a million. (Actually, it's been fluctuating between #30,000 and #70,000 for the past few months.) Last night it reached #69, which I think you'll agree is the most perfect position for it. Sadly, I forgot to take a screen grab of it, so I'm having to settle for this one, where I'm #72, in front of both Sheryl Sandberg's book and the Fifty Shades of Grey filth. Leaning in!

Jukebox: "Teenage" by Veronica Falls

Every springtime, one special song bursts from the fluffy white April skies, squiggles into your earholes, and burrows squarely inside your head to give you a much-needed lift after a long, dreary winter. It colors everything you do and makes even tedious actions like doing dishes, folding laundry, cleaning your cat Stella's crapper, or alphabetizing your boxes of incense seem like the happiest chores you've ever half completed because they present the opportunity to blast this song again and yelp along to it in ecstatic, blissful ignorance of how annoying this might be to your neighbors.

This song is usually brought to you by some collection of young mopey skinny British twenty-somethings with terrible/awesome haircuts and a penchant for sad 'n sparkling melodic hooks that just don't quit. (If they aren't British, they are Japanese or American, but they all probably wish they were British, if only for the socialized health care and the easy access to Cadbury Starbars.) The song captures the lush romance of youth, the jittery magic of first love, and/or the one point in time when everything's shining bright--that exquisite point in time just before it all turns to shit and hope dies. It's a wonderful point in time!

In my case, past songs of this particular distinction have included this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one. (That's one whole half of a side of a mix tape, so you're welcome.)

Well, I'm happy to report that I've just found the song that will be digging me out of the wreckage of winter, and it's a marvel. It's by a foursome of fraggles from Britain called Veronica Falls, and it's got everything: passionless vocals, heady harmonies, guitar jangle, and an ear worm of a melody that just won't quit. Aren't you jealous that you didn't find it first? It's okay! These songs were meant to be shared and adored, if not by mix tape, then by the Internet. So here you go, you're welcome (again).

Um, What? Dept.: French Anti–Gay Marriage Protests

So here's something you didn't realize was a thing: French homophobia. Like "Russian pizza" or "Hawaiian goulash," French homophobia is something we just all assumed to be self-evidently nonexistent. Because the French, after all, are not only the most irritating people on the planet besides Americans, they are also the gayest. After one glass of Beaujolais, any French man you meet on the street or in the park or at the baguette emporium will be begging to have a rock-hard dick in his mouth. This is just scientific fact, proven by me, in the early nineties, in Paris. So this? This is kind of shocking. Sure, a majority of the French public is in favor of equal rights for gay couples, but, let's face it, that's weak support from what we all assumed was the only population on earth to have every single one of its citizens at least go through a gay phase, in their twenties, enthusiastically. What's going on?

There have been beatings. There have been mean words shouted in faces and written on placards. There have been offensive Facebook posts. And get this: some protesters against gay marriage are starting to call their movement "the French Spring." I mean. Don't they know that that sounds like the name of a kickin' gay bar on the Champs-Élysées? Don't they know that any phrase containing the word "French" and/or "Spring" sounds like a kickin' gay bar on the Champs-Élysées? These protesters are probably taking breaks from their marches and going into the woods with their buddies to, how do you say, make the sodomy. What do they tell themselves afterward, on their way back to the march? "It's not gay if it's in a three-way"? But yes it is, if all of you are men! And don't the people in the photo below realize that just because they are holding signs affirming their belief in 1 papa and 1 maman doesn't mean that they don't look totally queer for each other?



The world makes less and less sense as the years go on, amiright? What's next? A fragrance by Lady Gaga called "Intolerance"? A new single by Elton John with backup vocals by the Westboro Baptist Church choir? Michelle Shocked turning into a weird anti-gay religious nut?

Michelle Shocked Has Sent Out Her Goons to Undermine Me and My Dumb Blog Post

So, guys, when Michelle Shocked had her recent (and apparently unfinished?) meltdown, I was bummed because I had such fond memories of her dancing in a video full of hot studs back in the old days. Anyway, so in order to blog about this thing I needed to have that video, right? But after an exhaustive search of YouTube I'd turned up nothing. In fact, the only trace of the video was a low-quality version on Michelle's MySpace page. (her what? I KNOW.) So I did what any red-blooded blogger who needs access to a video that is being withheld from him would do: I downloaded it from this mysterious MySpace site and then uploaded it to YouTube myself, because freedom. It got quite a few views and comments! And they were shockingly fair-minded for YouTube comments, which are usually uniformly Thunderdome-esque in their eschewing of basic human decency. I then posted my blog story and figured that would be the last of it.

But then hired goons knocked on my Gmail door, ignored my protestations that I was in the nude and to hold on a second, and then just let themselves right in.



Sure enough, I clicked on the link and my precious video was gone gone gone. The kicker is that it was yanked BY MICHELLE SHOCKED HERSELF. Or maybe a rep of hers, but she seems to be doing her own repping these days, so I'm gonna just go with "Michelle Shocked is trying to censor my ability to use her creative content for my own ends BURN HER."

In conclusion, let's all just get one last quick peek at what we're missing by not being able to enjoy an HD version of this video, much less the shitty blurry mess I nicked from her MyFace.



P.S.: A plea to Michelle: we gays (at least we gay dudes) will all forgive you for your hot mess of a belief system only if you make this video available to us in crisp, clean HD for free on your website until the End of Days, when all the Internet's Lolcats and Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church will ascend into heaven to sit at the right hand of a pile of Chicken McNuggets and all the nation's gun nuts accidentally shoot themselves in the face.

Friday Photo of Sadness

Tragedy sometimes strikes in this world, as those of us who've ever accidentally read a Thomas Friedman column in the New York Times know all too well. (Yes, nonsensical, reductive, and mixed metaphors are a tragedy.) Well, an even greater tragedy than The World Is Flat happened to this moi last night. I was taking the day off from riding my bike into midtown for work, so just rode it to the train. Went on to have a pretty tragedy-free day and was looking forward to Jimmy's homemade shrimp and cheese grits, which was on the docket for the evening meal. Our friend Rachel Roth was coming over, and we were going to have a li'l dinner party. So I got off the L train at Bedford Avenue and sauntered on over to where my bike was locked up and audibly gasped. No estaba alli! All that was left of Randy was the front tire and my lock.

Clearly I had failed to thread the lock through the bike properly, and some enterprising little bitch happened to notice and use that to his advantage by BECOMING A THIEF. Fine. But guess what, asshole: that rear wheel is a little warped, so ENJOY YOUR SLIGHTLY UNPLEASANT RIDE HOME once you secure a front tire. Dick.

Also too: I will find you. And when I do, I'm sending Jimmy and Rachel over to rearrange every room in your apartment. YOU WON'T KNOW WHERE ANYTHING IS.

















[microphone drop]

Let's All Remember Better Days, When Michelle Shocked Danced Like a Lesbian While Surrounded by Hot Dudes in Speedos

Remember Michelle Shocked? From the late-80s? She had some nice songs! I loved her Captain Swing album, and that "Anchorage" song. Anyway, she's apparently lost her damn mind and now hates what her church apparently calls "fags."

Let's just say it: it's really weird when Rachel Maddow's folkie doppelganger starts wriggling around in gay hate. If you'd given me a list of ladies in the music industry who were modestly popular twenty years ago and forced me to choose which of them secretly hated all the nice boys who helped them with their makeup and wardrobe backstage, Michelle Shocked is pretty much the last one I would pick, if she was on that list.

This seems like an exceedingly dumb move on her part. Her fan base is mainly gay people and people that are cool with gay people. And she used to be a lesbian, right? And even when she wasn't a lesbian anymore she still looked like one. And even when she didn't look like a lesbian, she still looked like the nice gay boy next door. My point is, why, Michelle, why?

I personally think the rumblings about mental illness having something to do with this ring true. Because this was seriously random. I mean, yes, she's a born-again Christian, but does that necessarily mean that she's lost all sense of proportion and proper decorum? Lesbians never lose a sense of decorum! (They may not be able to dress for it, but they don't lose a sense of it!) When she joined the West Angeles Church of God, was it a foregone conclusion that she would soon cut the same hilariously bonkers path that Victoria Jackson started going down a few years ago before we were all living in a socialist-communist-Muslim-terrorist utopia hellscape?

So anyway, enjoy the video above, an artifact of when things were simpler and we didn't have to be talking about whether dudes marrying other dudes was going to usher in the end of days because we were too busy watching MTV all day long until that Michelle Shocked video came back on and we could see some sinewy dudes posing in Speedos and thereby breathe again.

Ha Ha, Republican Senator Rob Portman's Son Is Gay So He Can't Be Anti-Gay Anymore

Okay, I know Rob Portman deserves a certain modest amount of golf clapping for proclaiming his support of gay marriage as a result of his son coming out to him two years ago. Sure, here's a pat on the back, Rob Portman. Congratulations on being a sentient human whose firm faith-based convictions crumble utterly when an abstract idea like "dudes holding hands and loving up on each other" becomes an actual thing in the world you live in that you can't wish away and must confront like an adult.

Here's the thing, though: Rob Portman's son came out in 2011, but it was in June of 2012 that he asserted his belief that it shouldn't be illegal to fire someone for being gay. So... wtf? Did his son's gay magic not work on him at first? I guess it took a while for all the rainbow flags and glitter bombs to arrive in the mail and warp his moral compass. I'm sure his resilient anti-gay position (ha, anti-gay position) had nothing to do with the fact that he was on Mitt Romney's shortlist of vice presidential candidates before Mittens went with 12-year-old Ayn Rand fanfic scribbler Paul Ryan instead, for sex appeal reasons, I guess. (Because who didn't have a crush on Eddie Munster as a child, amiright?)

Beyond that irritating detail, though, why is it that Republicans have to experience something themselves before they can even think of considering changing a policy position? Do things not exist as important issues affecting real people until a Republican's blinders are ripped off his painfully white face and his index fingers pulled from his waxy earholes?

Rachel Maddow blog maestro Steve Benen has a wonderful post about this very question today. Money quote:

It seems the key to American social progress in the 21st century is simple: more conservatives having more life experiences. Indeed, I'd be glad to introduce Republican lawmakers to more Americans who are poor, in the hopes they'll stop trying to cut health care programs; students, in the hopes they'll stop opposing education investments; women, in the hopes they'll stop opposing women's health care; and African Americans, in the hopes that they'll stop supporting voter-suppression tactics.

Yep, it's one man, one woman, for the good of civilization, until of course there's a family issue that forces this unerring position to change, and wouldn't you know it, civilization doesn't crumble, for some reason.

Maybe I'm being too hard on Rob Portman. Staunch conservatives like him have been faced with this very thing and they've not surrendered like weenies--Phyllis Schlafly, for one; Newt Gingrich for another. So I guess we should just be happy to have one more Republican weenie joining us in the gay circus. Someone pass Rob a flaming hula hoop to jump through, or something.

Sarah Palin Gives Me a Reason to Blog Again

Wow, guys, I haven't posted in over two months. How busy/lazy can one person be? The answer is: hella busy/lazy. (Are people still saying "hella"? Cause I'm not planning to stop.)

Anyhoo, the longer one goes without blogging, the easier it is for one to continue not blogging, until one hasn’t blogged in over two months and both of your readers are on 24-hour suicide watch. So it’s a good thing that dingbat Republican screecher Sarah Palin is back in the news, because, as we all know, all bloggers are legally obligated to blog about Our Lady Palin whenever she, say, emerges from her Facebook cave with a new nonsensical sermon about freedom and moose chili and how much the baby Jesus loves freedom and moose chili (and white people who are constantly having babies and getting divorced). We are also legally obligated to blog about famous idiots in the news, especially famous idiots who've just inked book deals, so ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT, I’LL RESURRECT THE BLOG, JEEZ.

So, Sarah Palin, Alaska’s dumbest librarian, has just inked a new book deal—that is the big news of the day, because our world is sad. She’ll be typing out a manuscript on her iPhone (it will be mostly emoticons) called A Happy Holiday IS a Merry Christmas, which will arrive in stores next November, just in time for the War on Christmas, yay! Of course, because this is a Palin book (probably copyedited by Bristol), it will be written at a second-grade level, so even though it’s not technically a kid’s book, functionally it most certainly will be. (And the children of U.S. America rejoice/roll their eyes.)

“But Tim,” I can hear you interjecting rudely. “Sarah Palin is yesterday’s news, isn’t she? A tired old troll. Worn out and used up. Who cares that she’s writing a book?” The answer is, of course, the Internet. The Internet cares. Also, anyone who’s been worried about how Sarah’s gonna keep her pantry stocked with bottomless supplies of Taco Bell and curly fries now that she’s no longer sucking on that bloated Fox News teat. A lady gotta make ends meet!

The obvious response to this from the famously liberal NYC publishing establishment would be for some enterprising pinko acquisitions editor somewhere in midtown or whatever to offer a book deal to Michelle Obama’s bangs, and to be quick about it. We’ll need that book in stores by November, because otherwise we’ll lose our f-ing minds.

I Want Anything From This Shop As Long As It's This Merman

I was on my hang glider the other day, making the long trek down 5th Avenue from work to the Y (where I go to get myself clean, have a good meal, and do whatever I feel) and I touched down briefly in front of the darlingest shop near 26th Street next to the 7-Eleven. The store was clearly not ready to let December go, still gleefully decorated with random Christmas magic--it was all happy Santas, dancing elves, candy canes, apocryphal nativity scenes, tinsel, nutcrackers, plush Christmas animals, and sexy Mrs. Clause statues. What was the guiding principal of this shop? You'll have to ask someone else because I didn't get past the sexy mermen in the window.

This is, obviously, because the window display featured some serious figurine action up in it, and these figurines were... alluring. I don't know what God that merman celebrates during the holidays, but I'm pretty much ready to accept Him/Her as my personal lord and savior. Also, I know what I want for Christmas next year, or, alternatively, next Tuesday.

Announcing Tune in Tokyo, the Audiobook, and a Giveaway at Goodreads!

Hello illiterates! I bring you good news. (Have your wet nurse/probation officer/12-step buddy read it to you.) My book, the partially acclaimed Tune in Tokyo: The Gaijin Diaries, is now available as an audiobook. It is read by the handsome voice actor dreamboat MacLeod Andrews, whom I don't know but am now a big fan of.

To celebrate this edition I'm running a giveaway over at Goodreads. Enter and you can win a free copy that I'll send to you with my landlady's signature on it! You'll also get some leftover turkey and stuffing and half a slice of pumpkin pie that my cat threw up.

Don't deny yourself the joy of hearing my words read into your ears constantly, for like nine hours. It's Christmas!

Thanksgiving Summed Up in One Photo

The only way this picture could be more perfect would be if it was the cover of a Ted Nugent album.

Whoever Slapped This Poster Onto a Random Scaffolding Wall in NYC Is Basically the Next Nate Silver

This is one telling flyer. It's been up for a few weeks and in that time I've watched it blossom into supernova of multicolored chewed-up gummy gnarliness, aka, a gorgeous reflection of our great democracy at work. Obama clearly won this iteration of the popular vote up here at 35th and 6th, and I do believe this data comports with the actual vote tallies in this area. So the point is, whoever's idea this was is the next Nate Silver and should be given a bunch of poster board by the New York Times so he can expand his gum-data campaign into the country at large and continue to give folks the most precise reading of the electorate in the midterm elections of 2014.

In the future we will all vote with our gum.

And voter fraud will be accomplished with taffy.

New Nervous Breakdown Essay: And Gimpy On Strings

Kids, I've got a new post up over at The Nervous Breakdown, which you should click over and pretend to read immediately. Here's a teaser:

Children of the world, don’t believe your parents, your shrinks, or your imaginary friends: worst nightmares sometimes do come true. Sure, many humans can get through their entire lives without falling out of an airplane, having a leg eaten off by a shark, being kidnapped by a tiny car full of saber-toothed circus clowns, or being awoken at 2 a.m. by a group of drug-crazed hippies wielding ice picks and chanting “Kill the pig, acid is groovy.” But some don’t. We all have these fears and they are perfectly rational, so watch out. [continue reading]

My Cat Stella Is Pretty Bummed That Romney Lost

My regular reader might remember that a few weeks back I got the devastating news that my cat Stella was voting for Romney. I, of course, was fit to be tied, and I tried and tried to talk her out of it, appealing to her rational side using charts and graphs and endless videos of Rachel Maddow breaking things down. But Stella is as stubborn as my mother and she was not swayed. So Tuesday night she was thoroughly bummed out and has been doing nothing but sleeping and gorging on corn dogs and watching daytime TV and giving herself baths and just sitting in the corner for hour upon hour ever since. She's not even reading her Us Weeklys anymore.

Lest she be quietly entering Victoria Jackson or Donald Trump territory with a hilarious Twitter explosion imminent, I sat down with her this evening to get a sense of how she was doing and if I needed to worry about her waking me in the middle of the night shouting about socialist Muslims under the bed.

"Stella, how you doing? Feeling okay?"

"Meh."

"Pretty blue, huh?"

"Voter fraud."

"Oh, God, Stella, it really doesn't exist, are you kidding me?"

"New Black Panthers."

"Stella, there was one guy in a beret and sunglasses at a polling station opening doors for old ladies." 

"Appeasement."

"Stella, I don't think you know what that means."

"Skewed polls."

"Gah, the polls weren't skewed, Stella, and it doesn't matter anymore anyway because the election itself has confirmed that the polls were pretty much right."

"Chris Christie."

"His state was underwater! He said a few nice things about Obama! What was he supposed to do?"

"Benghazi."

"Ugh, that's it, I'm cutting off your Fox News."

"Reparations."

"And no more Drudge Report, Red State, or Breitbart."

"Binders full of sadness."