religious wars; bike lanes removed and repainted

[Zen]

Snobby's take from earlier this week-
http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2009...ou-cities.html

[shootingstar]

Perhaps it may only truly a few vocal folks within the Hasidic community that are truly against the bike lanes in their neighbourhood. The quote excerpt is a Jewish person who appears to be a "bridge" as a cycling advocate and in conjunction with the Hasidic community. Note the the last sentence of the excerpt below.

Appreciate the hard work people who are "bridges". They might appear wishy-washy to both parties/sides of the conflict. But folks like him, are very necessary and do hard work behind-the-scenes on divisive matters. It takes awhile for the simmering to go down.

http://ghostbikesfilm.tumblr.com/pos...-to-copenhagen

Baruch Herzfeld, an Orthodox Jew who runs a South Williamsburg bike clubhouse, has emerged as the unofficial spokesperson for cyclists. During a phone conversation a few minutes ago, Herzfeld told us:

How can Mayor Bloomberg go to Copenhagen and pose as a green mayor after this? He’s a hypocrite, and I believe his office directed the DOT to remove this bike lane as a political favor for the rabbis, who want to keep South Williamsburg a ghetto enclave. There was no discussion with the community, like with the Kent Ave bike lane. And this bike lane was just a visual reminder for drivers to keep their eyes open for cyclists. But the rabbis don’t want a visual reminder that there are other people in the neighborhood besides the Hasidim.
One woman asked me if she should go topless [during an upcoming protest] and I told her no, because we’re not trying to create more confrontation with the Hasids, who actually hate the rabbis much, much, much more than I do. The Hasids in the community are not the problem; they give me the thumbs up when I bike by, and even Hasidic women have told me they really approve what I’m doing. They hate the rabbis for trying to control their lives, intimidate them and scare them.

http://gothamist.com/2009/12/09/bike..._themselve.php I'm a bit confused, so were the night-time bike illegal bike lane painters, Jewish? Or posing as Jews?

http://www.forward.com/articles/112918/ Work of the Jewish "bridge" cycling advocate.

I await folks who live in/near NYC to give us more clarification.

[Zen]

For clarification-

There were bike lanes there.
For some reason the Hasidic Jewish community wanted them removed and the City of New York removed them.
The Hipsters were re-painting the lanes that were there before the brouhaha.
They weren't just going around painting bike lanes willy-nilly.

[Onix]

Laughable.

Getting rid of bikelanes doesn't get rid of cyclists. It just makes riding on the street less safe.



Man, those cyclists must have been working really hard to FORCE people to look at them...