On TV Tonight…

2:54 PM EDT on May 20, 2009

For those who are not tuning in to the American Idol season finale tonight (Kris is going to win, watch), here are two shows worth looking out for:

PBS's Blueprint America series will be airing "Road to the Future" tonight at 8pm in New York City. Check your local PBS station for times. Part of a PBS series on the country’s aging and changing infrastructure, the documentary examines the choices we can make as the country invests in its infrastructure, and how they can affect the way we live. Focusing in on three cities, New York, Denver and Portland, it features interviews with a whole host of interesting subjects including NYC DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Portland Mayor Sam Adams, BikePortland blog maestro Jonathan Maus and Columbia University's Owen Gutfreund, author of "20th Century Sprawl." It should be a good one. Check their web site for a preview.
I've also been told that the 11 pm10 pm local news on Fox channel 5 is going to run a report tonight on a Brooklyn resident named Miguel Padro who was arrested the other day for bicycling on the sidewalk on his way to work at the Prospect Park Tennis Center. I haven't spoken with Padro yet to get the story for myself, but word has it the NYPD held him in jail for 24 hours without a phone call despite the fact that he had no oustanding summonses or any problems with his record. Padro's wife and employer were really shaken up by the arrest and worried that he'd been kidnapped or killed. It sounds like a completely insane story but given the NYPD's increasingly random, senseless crackdowns on bicyclists it is entirely believable. I'm looking forward to seeing the Fox News piece and talking to Padro for myself before getting too worked up about this.

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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