Attentive readers have undoubtedly noticed a new byline at Streetsblog, so it’s time to make it official: Please welcome Gersh Kuntzman as the new editor-in-chief of Streetsblog NYC and Streetsblog USA.
Gersh knows his way around a New York City newsroom, with stints at multiple community papers (most notably The Brooklyn Paper in the late 2000s) and the city tabloids (the Post in the 1990s and the Daily News in the early 2010s). He’ll be the first to tell you that the fastest way to get to an assignment is on a bike.
He fought then-Mayor Giuliani when he tried to put pedestrian barricades in Midtown in 1997. He lambasted pedestrian-hostile anti-terror bollards back in 2010. And if you know who to look for you can pick his face out of the crowd calling for safer Sunnyside bike lanes in this Streetfilm from earlier in 2018.
But Gersh’s sentiments about our car-based transportation system probably come through clearest in his art. He co-wrote and produced the 2005 Fringe Festival entry "SUV: The Musical!” — hailed by New York Magazine as an entertaining takedown of “supersized car culture." He even dressed as the Prospect Park West bike lane for Halloween one year to put a fright into his neighbors who irrationally feared the prospect of safer streets.
There’s a lot to hand off as Streetsblog makes the switch to new leadership, and as always, we have huge and complex stories to track. I’ll be staying on for a few more weeks this summer to help with the transition. When I do publish my last post (I’ll give ample warning beforehand), I'm confident I'll be leaving the site in good hands.
Gersh has already hit the ground running, and I’m excited to see where he, Brad, Angie, and David take Streetsblog in the years ahead.
