Last week there was a firestorm over cycling in the city on the pages of The Globe. It was ignited by a letter to the editor from a certain Marika Plater, which is worth quoting in its entirety:

THIS IS to the man in the blue Volkswagen who screamed at me, with an obscenity, to get on the sidewalk when I was riding my bicycle on Memorial Drive last week. Actually, this is to all of the Boston drivers who have honked at me while I’m biking and following the traffic laws; who have given me the finger, cut me off, splashed puddle water all over me, and squeezed me to the curb.

I want to tell Boston drivers that they do not own the road. Bicycles belong on Boston streets as much as cars do. Especially because the number of bikers will rise as skyrocketing gas prices and heightened environmental concern cause people to seek new forms of transportation, drivers need to learn how to be respectful of bicyclists and to share the road.

So here’s an abbreviated list of Massachusetts bicyclist rules of the road:

Bicycles are allowed on all roads, unless there’s a sign that says they are prohibited.

Riding bicycles on sidewalks is discouraged in general and is illegal in Somerville and parts of Cambridge.

Bicyclists must obey traffic laws.

Bicyclists should use hand signals when turning.

Bicyclists should stay at the edge of the right hand lane when there is not a bike lane, unless making a left turn, in which case they can use the left lane.

Boston drivers: Bicycles have the legal right to share the road with cars . Please watch out for bicyclists and remember that we are not protected by pounds of steel as you are . Please be considerate rather than cruel when you encounter us on the road, and please look out your window before opening your car door. Biking in Boston does not have to be as stressful as it is .

Her rant elicited the obligatory counter-rant from a certain David McCaffrey of Waltham:

MARIKA PLATER must have a death wish (”Bicyclists belong on the roads, too,” letter, Aug. 17). No one in their right mind would ride a bicycle on Memorial Drive. Hundreds of bicyclists use the sidewalk along the Charles River daily. Is Plater so obtuse that she would risk her life because there is no road sign prohibiting bicycles?

She gives a list of bicycle rules. It’s more of a wish list. Not only do bicyclists disobey the rules, their aggressive actions are a real threat to pedestrians. While driving on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge recently, I observed a bicyclist swerving in and out of traffic at high speed. When he came to the red light, he blew right through, narrowly missing an elderly woman. I observed four more bicyclists blow through the same red light.

Why do so many bicyclists disregard the rules of the road? Probably because they are unaccountable. They need no license plate, registration, inspection, or insurance. They don’t even pay an excise tax , which helps pay for the roads they use.

The next time Marika Plater wants to vent, she should look to her fellow bicyclists.

Ouch.

People. First of all, calm down. There are no innocents in the war of all against all going on on Boston’s mean streets, so let’s not pretend we’re not all at fault here.

Secondly, one of the reasons cyclists behave the way they do is that as stressful as driving is in Boston, cycling is a hundred times more stressful. It takes a lot less to get yourself seriously injured or killed on a bike than it does in a car. because many Boston streets are not made with cyclists in mind, you have to develop some aggressive strategies to get from point A to point B. Until cycling is considered a serious transportation alternative, you will have guerrilla cyclists on the streets.

Which doesn’t entirely excuse bad behavior on the part of cyclists. And I have seen cyclists behaving very badly indeed–usually, but not always, those loathsome bike couriers, biking’s version of cabbies and truck drivers. They think because they do it for a living it gives them the right to dress and behave badly. It doesn’t.

I myself have rarely encountered any real trouble with motorists, to tell the truth. You do have to keep a look-out for motorists and pedestrians, but that’s just cycling in the city. I have not been honked at, given the finger, cut off, splashed or squeezed to the curb. Really. And I ride along Mass Ave for a good portion of my commute.

I do avoid traffic, and choose my routes carefully, though. I’m not biking to prove a point, I’m biking to get from point A to point B. And I give myself enough time to deal with unanticipated delays. So the main reason I have not encountered too much trouble on the road is that I anticipate it, and take measures to minimize the probability of it.

So it’s no tribute to Boston’s drivers, God knows. They have a real problem signaling turns. They routinely blow through red lights. And many have anger management issues. Instead of putting all the blame on cyclists, motorists like McCaffrey here should get out of their cars, hop on a bike, and ride through the streets every once in a while–not Memorial Drive, of course (he’s right that Plater’s a dork to do this).

What he would find is that all those things that annoy him about other drivers when he’s in a car, are multiplied and amplified to the nth degree on a bike. And they’re no longer merely annoyances that he can blare his horn at. They can be downright life-threatening when you’re riding a bike.

Not asking for sympathy, here, just telling it like it is.

And personally, I don’t object to a certification course for cyclists. In fact, there are courses on urban cycling offered by MassBike. The idea of an excise tax for cyclists, whose lightweight vehicles have hardly any impact on roads, and who in many parts of the city don’t have lanes of their own, is a little outlandish, however.

Cycling should be encouraged, and every measure taken to ensure it’s safe in the city. That means cyclists should learn the rules and the necessary skills, and that the city should work to build a cycling infrastructure that would minimize dangers of mixing with motor traffic. And motorists should get out of their cars on occasion and ride in the city, as well. They might learn a thing or two, and maybe, just maybe, they’d find a better way to get from point A to point B in the process.

You may have picked up this week’s Weekly Dig, and seen the crotch-shot that came in apparent answer to a cover of a couple weeks back featuring a bikini-clad female buttocks. There was a letter to the editor after that one bemoaning the dearth of covers featuring “dude ass, or some close-up dick bulge.” And it was a legitimate complaint, and The Dig recognized it, issuing “an open call for man-bulge art.” What you see on this week’s cover is apparently what made the cut:

No offense to photographer Jeff Galusha, who has spent a lot of time, apparently, perfecting his art, but, as my good friend Joey Smithers (of The Joey Smithers Effect–and don’t pretend like you don’t know who he is, either) said, over beers last night, “that’s not a bulge, it’s a camel toe.” (By the way, he would like to thank The Dig for having the courage to say what has become glaringly obvious: the penis is the new pussy.)

There followed a lively discussion amongst all those present about whether the cover adequately addressed the original grievance, if at all, and what exactly should be considered a “bulge” in the first place. Personally, I think a distinction must be made between bulge, droop, and sag. I don’t think I have to illustrate the difference for you to see pretty plainly that The Dig cover is more a droop at best, possibly a sag, but really not a proper bulge. Nice try, guys, but no cigar.

Truth is, in the end, this Dig cover satisfies no one. It is overly ironic, and one thing I can say about irony with absolute confidence is that it doesn’t mix well with sex. Irony ends where sex begins. There is no such thing as an ironic sex organ. That’s why we cover them up. Irony can mask or reveal real intentions. So can underwear. But they are not the same.

We are in an interesting cultural moment. I mean, think back 35 years ago (ouch!) when the Stones came out with Sticky Fingers:

Pretty scandalous at the time. But by fifteen years later we had Marky Mark prancing around in his tidy-whities, grabbing his bulge (and it was a proper bulge) in prime-time TV ads for Calvin Klein.

So, what’s happened here? How did we get to where a droop or a sag could pass as a bulge on the cover of an alternative free weekly like The Dig? Here’s the problem in a nutshell: if they put a proper bulge on their cover, they’d be too mainstream, and it would be too confusingly earnest. The problem here is how to make the man-bulge, which has become downright iconic, teasingly ironic?

The funny thing about the original request for “dick-bulges” on the Dig’s letter page is that it was a reaction to what might seem to some an unironic cover featuring, as I mentioned, a female buttocks. But what makes that sort of cover fit The Dig is that it actually slyly parodies trash, but only for those who “get it.” If you’re not in on the joke, they’re just female buttocks, I guess.

Body parts are hard to parody, is the thing. Unless portrayed grotesquely or recognizably grotesque in themselves, a bum is a bum is a bum. Breasts are breasts. Semiotically speaking. You may have a preference as to shape, size, whatever, but it’s hard to make any kind of ironic statement with them.

Man-tools are easier than breasts or buttocks, though, because each has varying states, and because the tumescent state has been so relentlessly idealized and iconized (though in slightly sublimated form) in our culture. Nowadays instruments of domination and monuments to power are assumed to take the form of the phallus.

The bulge, in short, is the status quo. The phallic nature of our monuments was outed long ago. This is in fact why obelisks have fallen from fashion, and part of what was so profound about Mia Lin’s gash-in-the-earth design for the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial (although due to that talent for sublimating many who have tried to replicate “The Wall” in small-town monuments to the war have lost the significance of the monument being below street level, and have focused instead, as the popular nickname for the monument suggests, on the wall itself).

Fittingly, you will note that unlike the early seventies Sticky Fingers bulge, the post Mia Lin, mid-nineties, Marky-Mark version is antiseptic and amorphous:

Like the old Jane Russell bras, those CK boxer-briefs don’t reveal so much as acknowledge what cannot be denied. They offer a way to standardize an idealized bulge, promising to give your bulge that same neutral, pleasing form. In the guise of hyper-sexuality (a pumped-up, thugged-up Marky-Mark), Calvin Klein was actually offering our liberal-permissive culture a new-school version of Victorian sexual restraint. Perfect for the decade of Ken Starr.

So anyway, not only would a real bulge not do for a Dig cover, but a noticibly limp droop or a sag wouldn’t go far enough, either. It would clearly take small, sad, droopy bits in loose-crotched, pink man-panties to get the right message across.

It’s not like I’m jonesin’ for eye-candy. My point here is not that The Dig should be anything it’s not. I think it’s interesting how truly girded in on all sides artistic culture gets at times, is all. Not that artistic culture is always as interesting as what constrains the artists themselves.

As for eye-candy, I went to the MFA the other day with an out-of-town friend, and we ventured into some galleries I hadn’t explored. And there, right before my startled but delighted eyes, was a gang of priapic dwarves!

And who can resist priapic dwarves? Seriously. You gotta love the ancient Greeks and Romans. I’ll take a gang of angry, horse-hung dwarves over Marky-Mark any day!

In fact, why not put one of those little guys on your cover, Dig? I mean, Christ, you could still put them in pink man-panties if you wanted.