To the editor,
After witnessing yet another neighborhood car collision — this one at the corner of Sterling Place and Fifth Avenue — I opened up my recent issue of your newspaper, and came upon the latest in a series of letters I have read in these pages complaining about the new bike lanes on Prospect Park West (“Bozo bikers,” Letters, June 11).
The author of the most recent letter makes the argument that we should keep current lanes open to cars because drivers need this “hard-earned space” in order to get to work and home again “in time for dinner.” Have opponents of bike lanes — are you listening Borough President Markowitz? — ever considered the possibility that some of these people they see on bicycles might be using bikes to get back and forth to work on?
The letter-writer claims her butt has never felt better since trading in her uncomfortable bicycle seat for that of a car seat at age 17 — the age, apparently, at which “any dimwit knows that all peddling stops.” I would hazard a guess that if she had stayed on the bike, her butt would most certainly look a lot better, and maybe having spent less time behind the wheel of a two-ton machine, she would have had a better understanding of why some people would voluntarily (gasp!) choose to ride a bike over driving a car. Have we even mentioned the environmental benefits of bike riding over driving?
The real problem in Brooklyn is not bike lanes, but far too many cars. In my neighborhood of Park Slope I witness the most astonishing and dangerous driving imaginable: cars speeding down narrow streets full of children. Cars recklessly turning into intersections full of pedestrians. Cars racing through red lights. These are daily occurrences. And the result? Car accidents, fist-fights between drivers and a general sense of chaos and anarchy on the over-crowded streets.
Mayor Bloomberg may, or may not, be “smarter than us”, but what he does have is an ability to think beyond the way things have always been. Imagine a city and a neighborhood where there is heightened sense of civility because cars no longer dominate, where you and your loved ones can walk safely, and maybe even a quieter neighborhood free of the obnoxious honking cars and screaming drivers that too many Brooklynites have accepted as being the status quo.
Bike lanes are not the problem, but part of the solution to our over-crowded streets.
Robert Rohr
Park Slope
For honest lines
To the editor,
Real reform can only come to Albany with honest competitive elections (“Our official field guide to defeating incumbents,” June 11).
Our current state Assembly and Senate district lines look like a jigsaw puzzle. Every 10 years after the census, district lines have to be redrawn. The past three reapportionments were based upon the 1980, 1990 and 2000 censuses. This resulted in more and more Republican state Assembly members disappearing.
Past Republican state Senate Majority Leaders, the late Warren Anderson and Ralph Marino, along with Joe Bruno, cut deals with past Democratic Assembly Speakers Stanley Steingut, Stanley Fink, Mel Miller, Saul Weprin and Sheldon Silver. These political back-room arrangements were a quid pro quo deal preserving the status quo. Each gave the other unlimited freedom to protect and expand their respective majorities in each legislative house they controlled.
As a result, since 1982 Republicans have collectively lost five Queens, one Bronx, three Brooklyn, one Manhattan state and one Staten Island Assembly seats. They are down to one last Staten Island seat.
This is a textbook case in the ultimate success of gerrymandering, as Democrats totally eliminated any GOP opportunities within the city, outside of Staten Island. Democrats come out of city with a 60-to-1 edge, making it virtually impossible for the GOP to ever regain control, or even have a serious role to play in the state Assembly.
Silver now has 106 votes, six more than necessary to override any vetoes of bills by Gov. Paterson. Everyone knows that Speaker Silver rules the Assembly with a iron hand. He controls whose bills come out of committee to a full vote, lulus for chairing committees, funding for member item pork barrel projects, staffing, mailings and district office budgets. Likewise, Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith does the same in his chamber.
Change will only come to Albany with an honest reapportionment and election of a new speaker, State Senate majority leader and governor.
Larry Penner
Great Neck, LI
Budget axe swinging
To the editor,
New York City is about to lose 20 fire companies due to budget cuts (“Close firehouses? Not in Bay Ridge!” online, May 4).
This decision will increase the response time of our firefighters and make our neighborhoods less safe. Since we do not yet know which fire companies are being targeted, firehouses in your community may be at risk. This means that your community may be less safe after a budget is approved. These cuts are unacceptable.
In the first quarter of this year alone, our firefighters responded to over 12,000 emergencies. Emergencies don’t care about budget cuts.
The City will approve a new budget before June 30. I urge you to sign on to the online petition calling on the Mayor to reverse proposed cuts to the NYFD at www.advocate.nyc.gov/petition-fire-houses.
With your help, we can preserve public safety across the city while we have the chance.
Bill DeBlasio
The writer is the Public Advocate.
More vendor insanity
To the editor,
The city is The Grinch, jumping at the chance to destroy whatever the people love.
Case in point, the Health Department’s ridiculous demands that the amateur, part-time vendors at the wholesome Greenpoint Food Market need to get some special food handling licenses and a commercial kitchen, or else face a bureaucratic shutdown (“Vendors on the rocks?” June 11).
Basically, the city caught wind that spunky, young self-starters were making awesome empanadas, cupcakes and pickles. But instead of letting them just do their thing, cook out of their homes and sell for some pocket money, the Health Department wants to steal away their (and their customers’) fun.
It’s just like when the city tried to mess up the Red Hook vendors a few years ago. It saw immigrants becoming self-made entrepreneurs by hawking their home country’s incredible food, so it had to swoop down and make the cooks buy expensive food trucks for a “safer” product. How the hell does a truck make food safer and healthier?
I will be attending the market’s June 26 Think Tank Potluck to help think of ways to keep the monthly festivities going and deal with the city’s ruthless demands. I encourage all with ideas (and plenty of libertarian sentiment) to come.
Roxanne Thrace
Greenpoint
Pool panic
To the editor,
Kudos to The Brooklyn Paper for calling out the city on its crock-of-crap excuse for closing the Douglass-Degraw pool (“Double D-saster,” June 11).
The positively incompetent, bureaucratic Parks Department claims the pool was useless, given that it is adjacent to a few industrial buildings and not homes. But I’m so glad Courier writer Gary Buiso blew the department’s spot by pointing out the pool is near three housing projects, a gym and close enough to be of service to residents of a slew of other neighborhoods.
As a working mother who lives in Wyckoff Gardens with two junior teenage boys, I have been partially dependant on the pool to provide a safe, recreational summer space for my kids. But now that it’s closed, I’ve got one less place in a sparse area to keep my kids out of trouble.
The city’s decision to shutter the pool is a terrible blow to its children, who need places to occupy their time and have fun.
The pool is worth so much more than the $200,000 the city claims it will save by closing it. If the city needs money, Bloomberg and his henchmen should hit up those greedy Wall Street banks and financial firms, instead of taking things away from its children.
Name withheld,
Gowanus
