Please, Derek.

9:17 AM EDT on June 26, 2006

Tri-State Ford dealers have rolled out a new television ad called "My Turn" starring New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter
and filmmaker Spike Lee. If you've watched baseball on television during the last two weeks than it is almost impossible for you to have missed it. Here is how it goes:

A
red Ford Mustang is burning rubber and careening wildly down some remarkably traffic-free New York City streets. V8 engine revving, getting presumably less than the advertised 17-miles-per-gallon, the vehicle tears across the Brooklyn Bridge and along what appears to be Court Street in Downtown Brooklyn at the break of dawn. At a red
light on a residential-looking Brooklyn neighborhood street the car screeches to a stop (though, theoretically, the Mustang's anti-lock brakes make screeching impossible).

Derek Jeter:
You see the way I took that last corner?

Spike Lee: Please,
Derek. Now let me show you what a pro can do.

They get
out of the car and switch seats.

Jeter, buckling his safety belt: Man, you've got nothing.

Lee: Derek,
I've got the keys.

The car revs and goes screaming down a neighborhood street, again, mysteriously devoid of other motor vehicles.

Ford "Bold Moves."

We hate your neighborhood. And your planet.

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

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