Why do I like Citibike so much (when it works)? True, it helps me cut my long commute (a bit), and it’s a rare innovation in transportation in a country that, thanks to our love affair with cars, radically underinvests in transportation infrastructure. It’s got some geeky software and data tie ins too, which I like, and it also serves as commentary on modern “public services” that, due to the need to show financial sustainability, aren’t as public as they used to be – hence the concentration in Manhattan south of 59th street.
But there’s something bigger and much more personal going on.
As a native New Yorker, I’ve watched my city change a lot in the last 40 years. It used to be a grimy, dangerous place, where you never took the subway if you could avoid it, where most of Central Park was dirt and dust, not lush, fenced-in fields. When I was a kid I watched bodegas and locksmiths on the Upper West Side turn into ristorantes and, eventually, high end, bobo-fied chains. I saw Times Square morph from the underbelly of the city, where 3-card monte players would set up on cardboard boxes to fleece tourists and locals alike, to a place that you could almost drop into Disney Land.
And yet, through all the facelifts and gentrification, New York City is still New York City – even if it’s become a kinder, gentler, more upper class version of itself.
My new, daily, Citibike-powered, two-and-a-half mile ride through the heart of Manhattan is a chance to see all the things that haven’t changed about New York City. It’s a daily glimpse of the kaleidoscope that still is this city if you just scratch the surface. It’s a reminder that, despite all the changes, New York City is still a crush of people and cultures and races mixing together, mostly, without much trouble.
New York is my experience on each and every afternoon ride. It is Sikhs driving Lincoln Navigators, edging into the bike lane. It is smokers with white earbuds, scowling; Japanese tourists with H&M bags; tourists of all stripes looking up and not forward; businessmen in a rush, looking down at their BlackBerrys.
New York is, still, bleary-eyed med students in scrubs, blinking in the afternoon light; watch repairmen, falafel-makers, computer repair hideouts. It is Yankees fans in pinstripes, Rangers fans on an open bus, barreling towards Madison Square Garden, bike messengers with Beats headphones and giant canvas bags, drummers in Hawaiian surfer shirts spinning their sticks and dreaming of their next gig. New York is Bangladeshi kids in strollers talking to moms wearing shawls; it is tourists snapping pictures in front of minor landmarks and yellow mobs of taxis vying for a fare. It is throngs and throngs and throngs of jay-walkers in high heels and high hair, sweating on an early summer afternoon
I (still) Love New York.
Love love love this post. I live in CA now and this epitomizes what I miss so much about my hometown.