For those who’re the kind of one who attends neighborhood board conferences on weekday evenings so that you may be the 473rd individual to remark publicly on the town’s newest bike lane proposal, you’re little question acquainted with Streetsblog, the digital publication that till just lately coated all issues “livable streets” however is now centered totally on why the congestion pricing pause means the top of civilization as we all know it:
[Kathy Hochul gave them a real gift by pausing congestion pricing because now they can make up any numbers they want.]
Streetsblog’s editor-in-chief is Gersh Kuntzman, a neighborhood journalist who has lengthy courted fame by mounting varied publicity stunts, with various levels of success. For instance, in 2016 he wrote a musical set within the Park Slope Meals Co-Op:
This mise en scène was extremely topical among the many Brooklyn elite because the Park Slope Meals Co-Op was usually within the information on the time as a result of its members had been coming to blows over whether or not or not they need to carry Israeli hummus or one thing, although I’m undecided that very same Brooklyn elite was receptive to Kuntzman’s broad humorousness and phallic references:
In one other stunt, he went and fired an AR-15 and wrote about the way it gave him PTSD:
Although this one arguably backfired on him when he turned a meme for 2nd Modification advocates, who mocked his structure and posted this picture alongside images of their younger kids having fun with the exact same weapon on the gun vary with no unwell results:
Alas, for a few years Gersh Kuntzman was a person and not using a nation, spurned by liberals and conservatives alike. However then in 2022, after lawyer Adam White was arrested for un-obstructing a coated license plate on a parked automobile, Kuntzman hit paydirt with his “Legal Mischief” schtick:
Typically clad in a do-it-yourself Mets helmet and looking out like one thing an AI would generate in the event you informed it to 3D-print you a Hillary Clinton supporter, he’d take away unlawful license plate covers, repair mutilated plates, and customarily reveal the all of the sneaky crap drivers pull to evade tolls and pink gentle cameras, after which he’d submit the movies to social media. Normally he’d focus his actions round police stations, courthouses, and municipal buildings, the place mockingly (but unsurprisingly) the scofflawism was most rife.
To biking advocates, urbanists, and the kinds of people that discover Israeli hummus problematic and get offended by “Dick Johnson” jokes, Kuntzman was a hero. In the meantime, the varieties of people that obscure their license plates and who not solely like dick jokes however hold testicles off the backs of their vehicles denounced him as a weasel and a software of the institution, and so they predicted he’d quickly get his when some driver caught him within the act. However what these individuals failed to know was that to ensure that this to occur a cop or an assistant DA or whoever else is parking in entrance of those buildings with illegally obstructed plates must beat the crap out of a middle-aged man in a Mets bicycle helmet on video, which they’d by no means do–and within the extraordinarily unlikely occasion that they did it anyway, Kuntzman would have the news of a lifetime and the assailant’s profession could be destroyed. For the scofflaw it was a Catch-22, however for Kuntzman it was a win-win.
Cannily, Kuntzman rode the wave, and in so doing he achieved the 2 issues the kinds of people that store on the meals co-op and put on Mets bicycle helmets need greater than something on the earth. The primary was to develop into the topic of a barely patronizing New Yorker profile:
And the second was to develop into the topic of a barely patronizing “Day by day Present” phase:
For a sure sort of New Yorker that is the very pinnacle of accomplishment, and there’s actually nothing left after that apart from an obituary within the New York Occasions.
I point out all this by means of background, as a result of this previous week a Kuntzman disciple in New York Metropolis was apprehended whereas tampering with the license plates of the autos of Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter’s Secret Service element (did you comply with that?):
Apparently in the event you’re gunning for a president the Secret Service offers you ample time to climb up onto a roof and get your self located, however in the event you mess with their automobiles they’re on you want cream cheese on a bagel:
Right here’s video of the thrilling encounter:
I haven’t seen stress like that since “Guarding Tess:”
Really, I’ve by no means seen “Guarding Tess.”
As for Kuntzman, he sympathized with the vigilante, although he famous he’s “by no means messed with the Secret Service:”
However right here’s the factor that anybody who’s tempted to do that kind of factor ought to remember: How would you recognize? Do you suppose Harry Heymann knew he was messing with the Secret Service? Or did he simply determine the automobile belonged to some putz from Jersey? The reality is that in a metropolis like New York you by no means know who’s behind the tinted glass. It could possibly be an undercover cop, or a celeb, or a soccer mother, or a mobster, or the bodyguard of some visiting dictator who orders beheadings alongside together with his breakfast. If you yell on the driver who nearly simply killed you, generally the one motive they don’t cease to complete the job is that they’re in a rush to go kill another person.
For Gersh Kuntzman, this can be a calculated threat and an occupational hazard; he’s cultivating a public persona, so it’s value it to him to do one thing silly in the identical approach it’s value it to Steve-O to snort wasabi or stick a Matchbox automobile up his ass. He additionally is aware of he’s in all probability not going to get his ass kicked in entrance of a police station whereas somebody is filming it, in the identical approach Steve-O is aware of he’ll in all probability survive when he throws himself off an overpass. They’re jackasses, however they’re additionally “professionals,” and so they’re changing their antics into cultural foreign money. I think Kuntzman additionally is aware of that fixing license plates is an efficient strategy to enhance your Twitter follower rely, however that with regards to precise reform he would possibly as nicely stick a Matchbox automobile up his ass for all the great it’s prone to do. (To their credit score, Streetsblog has in actual fact gotten outcomes, however that was on account of precise reporting, not content material creation.)
However what about all the opposite schmucks who go round confronting drivers in bike lanes and fixing license plates of their spare time? What have they got to achieve? In a metropolis like New York, when you begin taking note of how many individuals are driving with bullshit license plates, or parking within the bike lane, or hopping the turnstile, or littering, or partaking in all the opposite types of delinquent habits and/or system-gaming you see right here each day, you may’t unsee it, and in the event you stay hyper-focused on it, it should ultimately drive you loopy. I do know this from private expertise, which is why lately I’ve suggested towards confronting motorists and warned cyclists concerning the risks of Pathological Bike Lane Obstruction Fixation Dysfunction. Do you really want a license plate cowl to protect Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter whereas she eats at Bubby’s? Is that this protocol, or are these individuals simply lazy authorities slobs? I do not know. However I do suppose in the event you’re 45 years outdated and also you’re so addled by license plates that you just’re getting arrested BY THE FREAKING SECRET SERVICE and winding up on TMZ you then would possibly wish to zoom out just a little bit.
I’m not saying you need to utterly resign your self to to the unlawful habits of others, however I’m saying that if you wish to make an actual distinction on the earth the easiest factor you are able to do is be the happiest and sanest and un-arrested individual you may presumably be.
In the meantime, I just lately prompt that gravel bikes are pretentious whereas highway bikes are refreshingly lowbrow, but it surely seems I used to be unsuitable:
I ought to in all probability zoom out as an alternative of letting the world of bikes drive me loopy, however what can I say? It’s a calculated threat.
