Monday’s Headlines: Weekend of Outrage Edition

A lot of lousy things happened over the weekend.

It started early on Saturday morning, when a heroic and beloved nurse was killed by a motorcyclist on deadly Third Avenue in Brooklyn (Streetsblog). The Daily News follow-up offered a heartbreaking take on the life of Clara Kang.

On Saturday night, a domestic terrorist intentionally drove his black SUV into a crowd of cyclists at one of the weekly Justice Rides by Streetriders NYC. Cops have not made an arrest yet. (NYDN, NY Post, Gothamist)

The lousy weekend continued into Sunday when horn-blaring muscle car drivers blocked Fifth Avenue in a show of support for President Trump. The Post also covered, providing details that we lacked when we published our story: it was scores of vehicles, they blocked traffic for a half-hour, there were very few masks and no arrests.

Then, on Sunday night, the Daily News reported that a 4-year-old boy was struck and critically injured by a minivan driver on Gerritsen Avenue. (The News blamed the van rather than its driver, but that’s common for New York’s Hometown Paper, but the Post got it right in the headline and the lede).

In other less-lousy news:

• Hear, hear: Writer Thomas Hynes called for the conversion of Broadway into a linear park from Columbus Circle to Union Square. (NYDN)
• Scores of mourners held a vigil for Sama Ali, the 7-year-old girl run down last week by an armored truck driver (NYDN). It’s simply amazing how many times we have to write these stories.
• That only took eight months: Cops are finally starting to wear masks (NY Times). Maybe because their favorite strongman has proven that even he’s not immune?
• We’ve been big supporters of speed cameras, but the Tribeca Citizen points out that at least one person on Chambers Street is getting annoyed by the camera’s strobe lights beaming into his or her living room.
• In a nice piece about his own bicycle renaissance, Times travel writer Sebastian Modek reminds us that no matter how far the city has come, “New York is not a bike friendly city.”
• The city’s two-year-old regulations guaranteed Uber and Lyft drivers a living wage without raising prices much. They could serve as a model for other cities. (NY Times)
• Larry Penner is still the MTA’s constant critic — this time assailing the decision to scrap a key Staten Island bus improvement (SI Advance). Penner is obviously needling raw nerves — top MTA spokeswoman Abbey Collins smacked him down in a rare rebuttal the other day (Mass Transit). She was rebutting (sort of!) this piece by Penner.
• She might have to get her pen warm again, because Penner also criticized the possibility of fare hikes late last week. (Mass Transit)
• It’s semi-official: Maya Wiley will run for mayor. The Post is eager to tie her to the anchor of her former boss, Bill de Blasio, even going so far as to quote former ACORN head Bertha Lewis (not one of the people the Post has previously treated as credible).