I’m turning into one of those snooty cyclists. It doesn’t take long. The thing about cycling is it gives you a sort of bird’s-eye view. I might even call it “the cosmic view.” Your field of vision is longer, I guess you’d say, because you’re traveling faster than if you were walking. the pedestrian’s field of vision is reduced to next to nothing–they’re mostly shuffling along, oblivious, looking at their feet. Drivers have the opposite problem–they’re looking so far ahead that they don’t see their immediate surroundings, either.

If you cycle in the city day after day, you notice some things–I mean, you see them time and again. The first thing that blows me away on a daily basis–about motorist and pedestrians (and cyclists, too, I’m sure, although I don’t encounter as many of them)–is that they either don’t look at all when crossing the street, or they first look the wrong way, and then, once they are out in the middle of the street they glance, sort of casual-like, over their shoulder in the direction of traffic. And the fact that jaywalking is endemic to Boston doesn’t help matters.

I’m not sure what, if anything, you can learn about a region, or a city, or neighborhood, from the way people cross the street. In Italian cities, where sidewalks are narrow, but woman are not, there is no question who makes way for whom. When I lived in Budapest I noticed that folks would seek out eye contact when crossing from opposite sides of the street (always using the crosswalks, mind you, and usually waiting for the light). If you made eye contact with them they would come directly at you, in a game of crosswalk chicken. It took me probably two years to learn to cross the street without incident in Budapest. The secret was to NOT make eye contact–even passively–but to barrel across the street head-first in a bee line without regard to any obstacles that might be in your way. And you would not encounter any.

It’s a little different in Boston. People aren’t really spoiling for a fight, like in Budapest. But there’s definitely a “make way for ducklings” mentality here. But it’s motivated by what seems to be an earnest belief held by all in their own unique and special superiority over everyone else. It’s no secret the entitlement thing is off the hook in our beloved city. And it has the effect of always forcing others to accommodate you. Everybody does it to everybody else, so it would seem to cancel out–I mean, every unique and special person is equally inconvenienced by every other unique and special person, so this “make way for me!” mentality doesn’t seem to make a real difference, except in accumulated frustrations. And Bostonians are legendary for their tantrums, too. But then that’s part and parcel of acting like four year olds, I guess.

And I must say I’m really always impressed by the blind faith pedestrians have that motorists will actually see them before they see the motorists. It doesn’t seem like jaywalking in this town is a calculated risk–it really does seem like a pure act of faith.

Of course, cyclists get no respect whatsoever from either side, which is why they so often turn into monsters–and badly-dressed monsters to boot. I’m not gonna get into the whole bike messenger meme–there’s some kind of goth connection, with the dyed hair and piercings, that I don’t understand, and don’t know if I care to. There was a piece about bike messengers in the Glob a couple of weeks ago–there always is in the Spring. It’s an old stand-by. Like there will be a feature about homeless people in the dead of winter. Local color.

I think pedestrians see a cyclist and think, “well, if he hits me it’ll be at least as bad for him as it is for me.” So they give you this kind of ho-hum look, when they do look, like, “yeah? And?”

Motorists in this town are among the worst in the nation, as for both skill and temperament. Driving is such a passive activity–it really is two steps back, evolutionarily speaking–that you find basically the same behavior amongst certain drivers that you’ll find in your typical armchair quarterback. They howl and scream and grumble just like when they’re watching a game on TV. And just like when they’re watching a game on TV they always know better than everyone else–they could always have done better than anyone else. This is the kind of personality the overwhelming passivity of modern life has produced. People who essentially do nothing all day and feel they are absolutely omnipotent. But whatever.

This is another reason cyclists get this sort of holier-than-thou martyr complex thing going. Because they are actually actively doing something–sounds totally anachronistic, doesn’t it? So they’re actually doing something, and yet they’re totally at the mercy of the vehicular zombies they’re forced to share the road with, who hardly have to move a muscle in order to mow them down. Just doesn’t seem right. Doesn’t seem fair.

Or maybe I’m being too harsh on motorists. They’re actually pretty skilled at multitasking. People who are so relentlessly passive get bored easily. So when they’re watching the boob tube or driving around in their big-ass SUVs they’re also stuffing their faces nonstop full of crap or yakking mindlessly into their cell phones. People who do nothing but eat, drive around, and watch TV all day keeping their loved ones abreast of the very latest eating-, driving-around-, and TV-watching-action via satellite.

So cyclists think to themselves, “here I am, actually doing something, and burning calories, not petrol, and I get no respect!” Understandably they start acting out, swerving artfully through traffic, running lights, scaring pedestrians. But they’ll never be a match for a soccer mom in a monster Escalade.

Sad.

Speaking of sad. I rode my awful little loaner bike to the South Bay Shopping Center yesterday morning. There’s a sort of back entrance to the shopping center, and as I rounded the bend, I saw that this huge party had a permanent encampment in these big bushes there. One was standing out in the middle of the street with a railroad tie he’d managed to rustle up. They were building some sort of shanty in the bushes. Later, on my way back, I saw smoke issuing from the interior.

There is such a huge disconnect between what we see in the media, and reality. The news is a highly stylized exercise, an utterly idealized daily recitation of an increasingly narrow set of norms that increasingly have no relation to actual norms, nor does the news report actual happenings so much as expectations. Look at these freaks on TV who read the news. Look at these pod people who appear on their shows. Is this who we are, or what we want to be?

They’re talking about “Nature Deficit Disorder” on The Today Show right now. Something people just used to do–catching fire-flies in a jar–you need a life coach to instruct you in now. That’s one side of the coin. The other is a dozen grown men, immigrants from God knows where, living in the bushes down the street. I mean, talk about disconnect. We’ve got Reality Deficit Disorder.