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.