Tuesday’s Headlines: S#!t We Put Up With Every F@&%ing Day Edition
Our day started, like so many days start, with a bizarre, minute-long Reddit post of a cyclist being chased by a road-raging psychotic Jersey driver:
What possibly could have driven the Garden Stater so mad (I mean, besides the usual: he’s in a car, he’s angry, he’s from New Jersey)? Here’s how the cyclist summarized the action on the video, which apparently took place on the Upper East Side: “Dude almost smashed into me taking a right turn so [I] yelled and gave him a little hand tap on this car (obviously no damage lol). Bro proceeds to drive down the bike for an entire avenue … inches away from my back wheel.”
The video also shows the driver getting out of his car, confronting the cyclist and trying to steal his bike.
In other words, just more of the “s#!t we put up with every f@&%ing day,” as the headline on this story reads. But we wanted to know more. Surely, the cyclist must have done something particularly egregious in order to earn such murderous wrath from this proud scion of New Jersey, right?
Well, we dispatched Summer Specialist Emily Smith to see if she could get the video of what sparked the confrontation. And, thankfully, she was successful. The video below starts just as the cyclist and the driver enter the frame from the left side before the driver does indeed start to turn into the cyclist before halting and the cyclist does indeed tap on the hood (but if you blink, you’ll miss it):
What do we know about the driver? The usual, of course: Even though he has a Jersey plate, he’s in the city a lot — frequently enough to rack up seven camera violations (speeding, running red lights, driving in bus lanes) in one year and a quarter, according to city stats.
He’s still out there, road raging all over town, so please be careful out there. These drivers are nuts!
In other news:
- Speaking of crazy, insane, sociopaths in 3,000-pound machines, the NY Post’s Nicole Gelinas isn’t writing about them, but she is still shilling for e-bike registration, albeit without receipts. Her latest column claims that criminal summonses were necessary for cyclists because they don’t respond to mere traffic tickets — an assertion made by Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch yet never backed up by any evidence whatsoever no matter how many times and how many ways we asked.
- The Atlantic Yards project — a grotesque public-private boondoggle since 2006 — is the gift (to journalists) that just keeps on giving. Too bad the Times didn’t dig very much into the state’s latest oligarchic bailout proposal. Gothamist’s coverage by David Brand was much better.
- The DOT has unveiled its plan for a pedestrian and cycling improvements on the Lower East Side that are sort of Low Traffic Neighborhood-ish. (amNY)
- And the agency also put up commemorative street signs for the World Champion Knicks that the Post thinks will be stolen. (NYDN)
- Hit the water hit the water. (Williamsburg365)
- Speaking of water, no one else is talking about the city’s failure to open the Red Hook Pool on schedule, so we’ll keep raising the issue. (Streetsblog)
- And, finally, coming soon to a grade-level train line near you, what with this week’s approaching heat wave:
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