Monday’s Headlines: South Williamsburg Edition

Fear not, bike lane fans — Streetsblog has learned that the Bedford Avenue bike lane did not come up in Zohran Mamdani’s conversations with Satmar Hasidic leaders, one of whom endorsed the mayoral frontrunner on Sunday.

Moshe Indig, the political director for the Satmar faction led by Kiryas Joel-based Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum — and an outspoken proponent of Mayor Adams’s decision earlier this year to rip up three blocks of the Bedford Avenue protected bike lane — told Streetsblog he didn’t raise concerns about any bike lanes in his conversations with Mamdani. He even said our call to him on Sunday was the first he’d heard anything about Mamdani and the bike lane.

And Council Member Lincoln Restler, a supporter of the bike lane who won tons of Satmar votes in the June primary, also told Streetsblog that there was no discussion about bike lanes at all.

Both Indig’s Ahronim sect and its larger Zalonim cousin already announced they would not endorse a candidate for mayor. But that didn’t stop Indig from appearing with Mamdani on Sunday — nor did it stop three of his fellow Ahronim leaders from condemning him and backing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo hours later.

You can read about the confusing string of political events in the Forward, but always turn to Streetsblog for news about bike lane politics. After all, we were your source for news about how Mayor Adams over the summer ripped up three blocks of the new-ish protected bike lane on Bedford Avenue at the behest of Satmar leaders, including Indig, whom he hoped would back him for re-election.

In late August, Adams’s adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin was indicted for taking bribes to influence a different bike lane project. In response, Mamdani pledged to complete bike lane and bus projects that Adams had stalled, scaled back or killed — including Bedford Avenue, saying that, “We need a politics where the decision is not determined by the last person who calls you.” (The Mamdani campaign did not respond to questions on Sunday about the front-runner’s conversation with Indig and other Satmar leaders.)

Rafe Herzfeld, an Orthodox Jewish teenage who sued along with Transportation Alternatives to stop Adams’s removal of the protected bike lane, said he hopes Mamdani won’t “sell out” cyclist safety for votes.

“Indig supported Adams until he saw that Mamdani was going to win and then jumped on the bandwagon,” Herzfeld said. “Brooklyn bicyclists expect that Mamdani won’t sell them out for votes he doesn’t need anyway, and fulfill his campaign promises to reinstall safe infrastructure on day one of his mayoralty.”

— With Gersh Kuntzman

In other news:

• A new lawsuit accuses former Brooklyn Democratic boss Frank Seddio, the Satmars’ lawyer in the Bedford Avenue bike lane fight, of defrauding clients and “submitting knowingly false sworn statements” in court. (NY Post)
• Keith Powers’s bill to let al fresco cafes take up more sidewalk space leaves the roadbed untouched. (amNY)
• Council Member Jim Gennaro of Queens wants to kill the Citizens Air Complaint Program. (NY Post)
• The proposed IBX will run near the L train at Linden Boulevard. (amNY)
• “Saturday Night Live” took some uninformed and inaccurate cheap shots at bike lanes and congestion pricing in this week’s cold open, but the joke about Hudson Yards was edgy (via YouTube). A “Weekend Update” joke later in the show about homeless people and the city’s plans to convert an East River parking lot into a public space was crude (and didn’t even mention Streetsblog’s coverage!). (via YouTube)
• Early voting wrapped up on Sunday as the candidates for mayor made their final pitches to voters. (City & State)
• NYPD “flooded” Washington Square Park with cops to crack down on drug users there. (NY Post)
• Uptown Council Member Carmen De La Rosa ended her bid to become Council speaker and endorsed her Brooklyn colleague Crystal Hudson. (City & State)
• The MTA’s latest anti-subway surfing strategy gave one passenger fond memories of Chuck E. Cheese. (NY Post)
• Our own Dave Colon showed “New York” documentarian Ric Burns his tattoo of the film’s logo and talked with the director about the past, present and future of the city. (NY Groove)
• NYPD is looking for the man who struck an 89-year-old woman in a Bronx parking lot, injuring her so badly that she later died. (Daily News)
• ICE agents are using a variety of methods to conceal their cars when making immigration arrests. (NPR)
• And finally, we loved these NYC-themed Halloween costumes: