Bikes on Sidewalks: Public Enemy No. 1?

“Get off the sidewalk,” the man yelled a couple of hours ago as he was crossing West End Avenue. “Please!”
I thought the “Please!” was a nice touch.
When I first landed as a weekly newspaper editor in Manhattan in December 2000, I began reading letters to the editor and columns about a subject that seemed to bring Manhattan residents to a boil. The hot topic: bikes on sidewalks.
I think back then I thought this was, well, if not exactly much ado about nothing, then at least much ado about not too much. Maybe that’s cause I lived in Jersey. Now I think differently about bikers who ride—and they do not ride so much as they drive and terrorize. They should get the death penalty.
I have not taken to yelling at them, as the me-plus-three-decades guy did this afternoon. But certainly my mindset has changed, thanks to way too many close calls. Some of the offenders are delivery people speedily servicing the neighborhood; the vast majority are of the amateur variety.
Living in this wacky town has taught me a few things. Like the ways in which the world is divided. There are people with pets and people who hate them. There are New Yorkers who know their neighbors and those who want to live a completely anonymous life. And there are walkers and then there are bikers. Sure, there’s some overlap, but on any given day in Riverside Park, the competition is on. And at any given moment, you are either walking or biking. You are picking a side.
The bikers have what seems like an advantage, namely the bike itself, which is often yielded as a weapon. Us walkers have our sense of moral outrage. We won that out of the fear of walking around.

Summer Now, Summer Then

The first day of summer. It’s hard to know what exactly to make of that.
There was a time, which lives vaguely in my distant memory, when summer really mattered. When there was something carefree about the time of year. Well, I’m a freelancer now—the nice word for unemployed—so I can wear shorts. And I am, right now. But the work piles up, whether it pays enough to pay for the mortgage or not, and there are worried about toilet repairs (no, really, that is what I woke up thinking about) or larger problems. I’m an adult. And I think of summer really as a season of childhood.
I don’t want to get too nostalgic about it, especially since I cannot really remember what I thought about those days. Probably even as a young person I was a bit taken aback by the idea of summer, the somewhat forced gaiety of it all. The duty of relaxing. But probably I preferred summer to going to school or handling the regular responsibilities of the fall and the spring.
One summer I remember. The one after high school. The one where I was really dating for the first time. I remember having worked previous summers, but that summer I got a bit of money, scholarship money really, and my mom gave me permission to goof off in July and most of August, until I went to college at the end of the month. That was a hell of a summer. I remember these sense of having fun—and only having fun—that summer. I’m not sure what I did, but there was the notion very much alive that I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I don’t think I’ve felt that way since the summer of 1986. And I don’t think I ever will.

Matt Dillon Evidently Loves New York

There are celebrity sightings and then there are better celebrity sightings.
My partner and I had a couple last Saturday afternoon, during a couple of long and humid walks around town.
The really impressive thing about celebs in town on a night like last Saturday: the fact that they are even here. I mean, it was so hot and gross that it looked like an ideal time to get out of Dodge and get some relaxation somewhere cooler. And anyplace would have been cooler the other day, before the heat blessedly broke.
Our tally on Saturday: Matt Dillon and Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick.
Dillon was the winner. We saw him up in the northern reaches of Central Park. The non-yuppie part of the park. He was surrounded by about five or six drummers. He had evidently just been playing with them. Dillon was getting congrats all around for his performance.
This whole sighting was adorable on so many levels that it’s hard to keep track. Here’s a celebrity diving into New York life, not only behaving normally but actually going out of his way to participate in a wacky urban moment. The last time I remember seeing Dillon—this dude is basically everywhere—he was eating pizza alone in a downtown eatery while reading The New York Times. It was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
Speaking of sexy, there were Bacon and Sedgwick. They famously lost dough in the Madoff mess, so maybe they cannot afford to get away. On Saturday night there they were, walking down Amsterdam Avenue, looking impossibly glamorous. Seemed to be heading home. Bacon acted like the little kids who were playing at his feet were not annoying. Now that’s acting. Sedgwick looked stunning in a colorful blue dress. Sure, she seems like someone who could use a sandwich or two, but this is modern-day America and we like our stars skeletal.
The thing I like about these three: they are so New York. I’m not sure what I mean by that but—no, wait. I am sure what I mean by that, at least in the case of Dillon. He’s part of the scene instead of apart from it. Unafraid to dive in. Seeing something like that is like watching a star really shine.

A Year

Laid off a year ago.
It was the day after Memorial Day. Now it’s the day after the Memorial Day again.
Not an easy year. Now I’m writing a lot, more than I did working as an editor with some seriously bitchy women. Freelancing these days for just about everyone, or at least that’s the way it feels sometimes. I’m lucky to have some jobs. I’m not so lucky to make so much less money than I did a year ago.
Still not sure how everything will wind up. Like millions of my fellow Americans, I find myself scared when I think about the future, short-term or long-term. I’m willing to change career paths altogether, but wary about picking another line of work. My partner and I were talking this morning about what I should do. Teaching? Something else? When is it too late in life to switch gears in a dramatic way? And when is it more dangerous to stick with what you thought you wanted to do? These are the questions that roll around in my brain.
I don’t want to pick a career path that, like my current field of journalism, is full of people fleeing. And so far I’ve felt that if I’m going to fail anyway, then it might as well be in the field I care about.
Sounds pessimistic, I know.
Some days are that dark. Some are not. I know I am not alone, which comforts me. But it makes it more competitive out there too. My political priorities have changed. I'm a jobs dude now, and even less interested than I used to be in the question of Middle East peace. There are a lot of important issues now about which I give not a damn.
One plus of the past year: I know who my friends are. And I’m exceedingly grateful to them.