How much of a non-event was this year's Summer Streets in terms of media critique? In this Fox News piece, via Crooks and Liars, the story isn't traffic tie-ups or wacky spandex-clad elitists or howling business owners, but the fact that more everyday New Yorkers are taking to the streets on two wheels. Summer Streets, it seems, has become a mainstream event in just its second year. Reported the Downtown Express at the beginning of August:
"I thought last year it was going to cause havoc in the community," said John Fratta, chairperson of Community Board 1's Seaport/Civic Center Committee. "For the most part I was pretty pleased. It was a nice event." He said he supports the event this year.
The Fox segment does refer to the questionable Hunter College study on unsafe cyclist behavior (without acknowledging more revealing data on the causes of bike-car collisions), and there's a completely unsupported ticker squib that attributes complaints over spending on bike infrastructure to unnamed "critics." But these feel like token attempts to "balance" an otherwise positive story.
Who knows, maybe in a year or two even Steve Cuozzo will have to re-read his old columns to remember what he hated so much about car-free Times Square.
