very simple

So, the city is looking to encourage more cycle-based commuting. I think this would be great, but in particular:

Because the lack of safe and adequate bicycle parking has become one of the primary concerns of cyclists, the city has said it will also pursue legislation requiring owners of large commercial office buildings to allow a place for bicycles to be parked indoors. Recent zoning changes in Long Island City, Downtown Brooklyn and the West Side of Manhattan have incorporated that requirement.

After I got home from Milan, where cycling is ubiquitous (along with vespas), I actually tried to find out whether I could commute to the office.  Unfortunately, it took me about two weeks to find out that, if I wanted to bring my bike into the building, I could only do so through the freight elevator, which closes as 5pm. 

Now, anyone who knows anything about being a lawyer in NYC knows that leaving before 5 would be considered taking a half-day of vacation.  So I could essentially ride my bike to the office once, and never be able to leave. 

And parking on the sidewalk/street is not an option – besides the fact that there are no convenient bike racks, the idea that my bicycle would still actually be there after working a 10-12 hour day is kind of funny.  Funny in that "if you don’t laugh, you’re going to cry" sort of way. 

in going through my sitemeter referral logs, I noticed that there were quite a few people looking for things on this site who didn’t appear to be finding them, thanks to the move from iblog to wordpress.  While I’ve changed all of my internal links, I can’t change old references on other people’s websites, so here’s a short list of the most common things people appear to have been looking for and not finding.

If you’re looking for info on hardwood floors, tiny kitchens, or anything else apartment related, check out the home improvement or real estate categories, where I blogged my whole apartment buying and renovating experience.

If you’re looking for stuff on Italy, check out the milan category – I lived there for six months.  There are probably also a few posts on Rome, where I spent some time, in the more general travel category.  Also, pictures from Rome can be found here.

Pictures are sometimes inside blog posts, but are more often contained in my photo albums, listed on the photo album page, or here.  If you’re looking for pictures of the Dakota, check out the album titled NYC snow day 2006.

And don’t forget that if you’re looking for something in the blog, there’s a search box at the top of the page.

You know, I used to be somewhat sympathetic to the plight of pedicab owners in the city (and I still think that they should be encouraged given the city’s pollution and congestion issues), but the idea that vehicles, simply because they’re human-powered, shouldn’t be subject to regulation? Um, no.

But then again, I could just be projecting because I almost got run over yesterday by one of these guys pulling a left turn onto sixth avenue while very much not watching for the pedestrians (read: me) who had the right of way.

So I went down to Union Square to have dinner tonight (Yama, yay!), and as I was leaving and walking over to sixth avenue to catch the bus back home, there were about eight gazillion police cruisers driving in formation across Union Square North.  Half the time, these things are random practice runs, so I didn’t think too much of it (the last time I saw this many cars in a row was after the steam pipe explosion).  But no, it’s not practice, and it’s not our crumbling infrastructure. 

NEW YORK (AP) – Authorities were taking extra counterterrorism precautions Friday in response to what they said was an unsubstantiated radiological threat to the city.

Officials said they had not changed the city’s terror alert status in response to online chatter mentioning a truck packed with radioactive material. But police deployed extra radiological sensors on street, water and air patrols, and were stopping vehicles at checkpoints in lower Manhattan and around the city.

Niiiiice.  And just the other day, after the subway mess, my boss and I were discussing that we were resigned to the fact that we were goners if something ever happened that required a large-scale citywide rapid evacuation.  He was wondering what would happen if the bridges were taken out, since that would obviously slow evacuation from our island, but I noted that in such a scenario, we’d all have to leave, but not necessarily particularly fast.  I could certainly live for some time on the food in my apartment.  What I was worried about was something…well, something more like this most recent scenario. 

Good thing it’s "unsubstantiated", huh?

But I still wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

Sometimes it’s amazing to me that this city doesn’t just collapse in on itself. Packed like a sardine on the M7 bus this morning, due to the fact that about 8,000 extra people were trying to get on the bus at my stop alone thanks to the flooded subways, I remarked to someone that this city is like a giant house of cards – anything goes wrong and it’s like the entire place comes to a grinding halt. Of course, then I said that I still wouldn’t live anywhere else, and they all smiled and laughed and generally agreed with me.

So, my morning.

Woke up at 5:30am for no apparent reason (I realize now that it was probably due to the thunderstorm outside). Dozed until about 6:30, when I got up to go to the gym to meet my personal trainer, with whom I had a 7am appointment. Trekked 5 blocks through a torrential downpour to Reebok, worked out for an hour (even the over-air conditioned gym was a bit humid), and then went home. Noticed on the way home that there were about 100 people at my normal bus stop at 8am, which seemed a bit unusual.

Got ready for work, and then went to catch the bus at a little after 9. Again, there was an unusually large number of people at the stop, and someone explained that the subways weren’t running, or were only running on a very limited basis, so they were directing everyone to take the bus instead. Six buses went by, too crowded to even attempt to get on. Bus number 7 had a sign indicating that it was only going to 42nd street, so I thought this was my best bet. Squeezed myself on, although the guy behind me almost got his arm amputated by the closing bus doors. Make a few stops, people squeeze on an off the bus, and then…

Then we get to Columbus Circle, where every subway train that was running at all had decided to terminate (the elevation is lower the further downtown you go, so there was probably more flooding below 59th street). There are hundreds of people standing there, to the point where everyone at the front of the bus, and the driver, start laughing at the improbability of any one of the people actually getting on the bus. In the meantime, there are a few trapped poor souls who actually need to get off the bus at this point. So, the doors open to let them off, and before they even have a chance, the bus is rushed by crazed people, including one woman who forces her way on, pushing the rest of us into immovable objects like metal bars, and then tries to say that she’s trying to help the people getting off the bus by moving further back! Never mind that she was essentially the cork that stopped the entire flow of people moving.

At this point, I realize, of course, that none of these people are bus people, they’re all subway people, so none of them bother to read the front of the bus. So I helpfully start announcing that the bus is only going to 42nd street, and if people want to go further south, they should wait for a different bus. At which point this woman starts freaking out that she’s on the wrong bus and pushed her way back off.

People actually applauded me. The driver was laughing, and we all had a nice collective bonding experience over the sheer ineptitude of our fellow new yorkers.

Just another day in the big city…

By the way, it took me an hour to get the one mile from home to work.

Reading this entry over at bstewart’s blog totally reminded me of a similar (yet more "pedestrian") event that happened to me the other day. I was walking home from work, on Columbus, very much on the sidewalk, when some twenty-something on a bike goes from a standing stop on the sidewalk to swerve immediately in front of me, almost hit me, and nearly fall off her bike in an attempt to stop.

I, being me, so helpfully point out that "that’s why it’s illegal to ride your bike on the sidewalk," wherein said twenty-something starts yelling at me and calling me a bitch.

You know, for apparently expecting to be able to walk on the sidewalk.

I should point out here that we were all of one block from central park, so if she was so incapable of riding her bike in Manhattan traffic, perhaps she herself should have, I don’t know, walked her bike over to those car-free environs?

I actually ended up in one of these taxis the other night (mine was the NBC version), and I really liked it – not the news feed/commercials so much (but you could turn the volume down or turn it off, unlike the old version), but you can actually follow your progress on a GPS map.  Since I love maps, this was pretty awesome.  Also, while the meter up front divides up your fare between the basics and the extras (rush hour surcharge, night surcharge, etc.), there’s a second box on the screen that actually gives the “real” total of your cab ride so far.  Very neat.  Particularly useful when you’re, say, drunk at 3am and no longer have the capacity to add $1 + $1 + tip to make sure you’ve got enough cash (which, as the article points out, you no longer need because they take credit cards).

I’d still prefer to pay cabs with cash though, as the credit card companies presumably take a bite out of whatever transactions they’re a part of.  But it’s nice to have the option not to spend 20 minutes wandering around the east village looking for an ATM that won’t charge me $3.

I’m a bad blogger. I know. It’s like going to the gym. Doing it on a regular schedule is fun, but if you miss a few days, or a week, you start coming up with excuses as to why you don’t have time to go, and then, before you even realize it, a month has gone by and now there’s so much stuff that’s passed you by, you don’t even know how to start anymore.

And yeah, I did rejoin the gym the other day. So in the spirit of turning over a new leaf, I parked myself in front of my computer to write…something.

Since my last entry…

The Lucinda Williams concert was great, if a bit short, and we had some incredibly annoying drunk people sitting behind us, which was a bit weird, as we were at Radio City and not, say, Webster Hall. Still worked like crazy the following week, went to a wedding in Montauk (3 hour train ride) on the 31st of March, and flew back to Italy on April 2.

Had to go back for some work – stayed in Italy for about a week and a half (including over Easter weekend), did some shopping on my day off, came home, and then went to another wedding, this time in Florida, on April 21. Since then I haven’t had to travel. For three whole weeks!

I’m finally starting to feel like I’m actually home again. I’ve started making plans that involve more than three days notice. It’s nice.

Still haven’t downloaded my last photos, but I’ll hopefully get around to it soon.

And with that…I’m back. I promise some “real” blogging in the near future. Really!

So, I’m in full “gearing up to go home” mode now, shipped out a bunch of boxes yesterday, and I fly home on Sunday. The office had a little bon voyage (or buon viaggio, to be a little more local) party for me tonight, which was very nice, a little too much prosecco maybe, but who am I to complain about that (I mean I had a little to much to drink, not that there was literally too much wine!). I’m obviously looking forward to going home, and to add to my list of things that I’m excited to see, add the Bethesda Fountain Terrace Arcade. I’ve walked or bicycled on top of the arcade a million times – I don’t think I even knew that there was something actually underneath because it had been in disrepair since 1984 when they removed the tiles for cleaning. Well, now, 23 years later, it’s been completely restored.

Oh. And in other, weirder news, I may be getting some crazy new neighbors!

A tipster informs us that Tom Cruise is in contract for an apartment at the Dakota….

So that’s…interesting. That should make it even easier to get to the subway in the morning, because the combination of John Lennon death junkies and architecture freaks don’t make the sidewalk crowded enough (although, to be fair, most of the architecture freaks stand on the other side of the street to be able to actually see the building). Even more incentive to skip the subway and walk to work!

I’m inordinately happy to be going home in two and a half weeks, what with the missing my family and apartment (and spending my birthday all alone yesterday) and finding out that one of my best friends is pregnant and having to travel to two separate weddings (on in montauk and one in florida) within a few weeks of arriving home, but there are certain days when I’m really happy not to be in New York.

Winter Storm Moves to East Coast.

Yeah. Did I mention that it’s been in the 50s all week here?

Oh, and to be fair about the birthday thing, we are having a fairly big office party tomorrow night. Not for my birthday in particular but…just because. So there will be drinking. and other festive things. Mostly drinking. My former office-mate is also moving to New York for six months on Sunday, so that may have been part of the impetus for this one.