Mark Malkoff, a comedian who beat a New York City bus while pedaling a Big Wheel may also have pulled off a feat accidental advocacy.
In the NY Daily News, he said he felt like “part Evel Knievel, part Lance Armstrong and part Steve-O from the Jackass movies”–none of whom are known as advocates for cycling infrastructure.
(Armstrong, you could argue, has a bikeway named after him in Austin, if that counts as advocacy. Knievel is known these days for being carbon-neutral a.k.a deceased. Steve-O is a living cautionary tale for bike safety.)
But the point Malkoff makes indirectly is that New York City’s above-ground transportation options, listed in order of speed (slowest to fastest), are:
- Walking
- The Bus
- Everything Else
P.J. O’Rourke, in his much-reviled piece in the Wall Street Journal, suggested that the purpose of encouraging cycling in New York is to make adults look and feel childlike, because "[p]olitical activists of a certain ideological stripe want citizens to have a child-like dependence on government."
He’d probably feel vindicated if he were to see this video. And he’d be missing the point.
I watched the video and (when I stopped laughing) thought, How can you argue against bike lanes in New York City?
Someone of a different persuasion could probably watch this and think, Get a car, stupid.
And that’s what we’re up against.
If you missed it, this was my response to O’Rourke’s piece in the WSJ >>