Dealing with bikers is war

Barriers on Brooklyn side of the former bike side of the Manhattan Bridge (sides have switched for construction, I think). Perhaps a bit sensationalist, but I see them everyday and they make me laugh, they’re so intense! It’s like border patrol or the swirvy roads in the Golan Heights.

The crazy thing is that I myself, back in August or whatever it was, went around them a couple of times to keep on biking on that side! Bikers are cwazy (+annoying like that). It wasn’t anti-rule following either — I think I was coming from the Manhattan side and it was totally not clear what was going on at first — I thought these were just to slow bikers down (also reasonable).

It’s a tricky pickle in America though: bikers have had it so tough for so long that it’s hard to get soft as the city makes things more comfortable and convenient. It’s like my mindset, when passing these those first few times, was just like — 2 roadblocks? Well, biking is super hard on a daily level –why the hell not? Just more shit the city is doing with some arbitrary consequences for bikers. So of course it’s hard to transition from that to immediately seeing yourself as a citizen who is now protected (and in return should follow rules and regulations, etc). It’s incredibly hard for me, but hopefully the next generation of NYC bikers will be like sheep in terms of biking rules. Everyone ‘s against people being sheep like, but when people are sheep like it means that they can _afford_ to be sheep like.

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Back to the roadblock analogy though. Just a few images to follow my thought through, although quite frankly, they’re not making my case as eloquently as they should. A few more hours of image search would really pay off right now.

Golan Heights (couldn’t find better image, weirdly enough)

Well, these aren’t the best images to support the case, but apparently googling for “borders block road” is really not paying off. But hopefully you get the idea.

Honestly, I should just be blogging about silly things of biking in NYC, as I am fully recommitted to the biking life and yet as skeptical as ever if not more so of the biking Kool-aid. I’m good like that.