Wednesday’s Headlines: On the Trail Edition

I’m back from a few days biking along the Erie Canal on the Empire Trail, and I’ll have a lot to say about that soon enough (TL;DR: New York State is not ready for bike tourism yet), but for now, let’s just get to the news from yesterday:

• Cops arrested the driver who they say recklessly drove backwards on a Bay Ridge street and killed education reformer Norman Fruchter. (Streetsblog, NYDN)
• Pete Davidson got into a car crash in California, but he’ll do his community service in New York City, which doesn’t seem fair for the Golden Staters his recklessness endangered. (NY Times)
• Speaking of crashes, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was also in a crash, which the Associated Press called an “‘accident,” but the Times version of the story made it very clear that someone in the motorcade wasn’t operating the vehicle with due care — in other words, not an “accident” (then again, there is no such thing as an “accident,” as Jessie Singer reminds us).
• Are tourists so hard up for cheap hotel rooms that they’d rent a bed inside a bathroom-less parked van (illegally, by the way) for $96 a night on Airbnb? Given that there’s no bathroom, no wonder neighbors are scratching their heads (and holding their noses). (NYDN)
• More people are noticing the climate emergency clock above the 14th Street busway in Union Square (perhaps it wouldn’t move so fast if there were more busways). (amNY)
• Hell Gate got a second day out of the mayor’s weird “make love” to the homeless comment.
• From the assignment desk: That Manhattan group that bills itself as a safety organization but seems more like it simply wants to get rid of all kinds of micromobility is having another gripefest on the Upper East Side tonight, per Reddit. But ignore the E-Vehicle Safety Alliance at your own peril; last time it met, normally rational state Sen. Brad Hoylman bent himself into a pretzel in appeasement. I have just three words for the EVSA: Now do cars.
• And, finally, this is the kind of thing that happens scores of times every single day. But it’s still horrifying to see it on video (one that the mayor clearly doesn’t want you to see, as amNY reported and Dana Rubinstein tweeted):