…in the Sunday Globe HERE.

Boylston Street has some of the most pathetic bicycle rackage in Boston. “Well, at least there are some bicycle racks,” doesn’t cut it. A surprising number of people share a pathetically small number of racks that were obviously put in more as a symbolic than a practical measure. But almost worse than the city’s half-assed gestures toward alternative modes of transportation in its core, are cyclists’ insensitivity to the needs of other cyclists. It’s sad, but not too surprising, truth told, that there’s really no solidarity among cyclists in the city. I mean, City of Brotherly Love Boston most assuredly is not.

At the risk of seeming like more of a prickly prick than I generally do, I would like to demonstrate two methods of racking your bike on the Boylston Street racks: the first would be the WRONG way, the selfish, inconsiderate way, since it allows for only two bikes to be racked at once. Whereas the second is the way that allows for four bikes. And, trust me, maximizing space is important during the work-week.

These are not ideal racks, as I’ve said, but you work with what you’re given. Really, the main point here is to think about others occasionally. You know, when you do, I swear to God things run much more smoothly for everyone. It’s not just being nice to no purpose. Being nice actually makes things work better. For real.

So peace out, and freakin rack your bikes up right, Boston!

An op-ed in today’s Boston Globe.

Have you seen him yet?

My friend Tony spotted him over the weekend, on Mass Ave., if I’m not mistaken. And then, this evening as I was riding home, we crossed paths on Tremont Street.

He’s a skinny, scrappy old thing. Looks like he’s seen some tough times. But that’s life in the city, as my ma used to say, especially for a bear. But despite the patch of mange on his tattered old hide, and his worn old visage with its faded fur and sad, goofy smile, he’s ever so friendly, waving at everyone as he rides by. And waving in a nice way. He doesn’t freakin’ QUACK-QUACK at you, all aggressively, like you’re the butt of his joke. Just a neighborly little wave as he passes. Which is why people wave back.

He doesn’t stand for anything in particular. He’s not advertising anything that I can see. He’s just a bear on a bike. Which is enough, when you think about it.

We need to fix him up with a foxy, cycling she-bear, so they can get busy making baby bears. Because Boston most definitely needs more bears on bikes.

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.

I was riding my bike in Back Bay yesterday a little after noon. I was headed down Dartmouth, towards Copley Square when one of those Back Bay slacker-temp type jaywalking schlubs sucking on his jumbo iced coffee, plugged into his ‘Pod, stepped out in front of me without looking first. Boston needs a Rudy Giuliani. But more on that in a minute.

I swerved to avoid him, of course. Since he had not looked in the direction of traffic before crossing, and therefore was not aware I was already right on top of him, I swerved right, behind him. But at the last possible moment he saw me, and, startled, staggered backwards. I had to slam on the brakes, which sent my back wheel up, and me flying over the handlebars.

So there I am on my back in the middle of Dartmouth Street, arms and legs akimbo, my bicycle lying on top of me. I look up at this guy looking down at me. He’s like, “oops, my bad.”

I don’t know which was worse: his stepping cluelessly out in front of me, or his looking down at my mangled form after causing me to crash, and quoting “Clueless” to me.

So that set me off. First of all, people: “my bad” is not an apology. Unless you’re, like, three years old, and you’ve just pooped your pants. But not when you are a thirty-something office temp who has just nearly killed someone through your zombie jaywalking on your way back to your data entry job from Dunkin Donuts with your fifth coolata of the day. No.

You might not have been aware of this: “my bad” actually reached a critical mass yesterday afternoon, but this noxious example of rampant anthimeria has been gaining speed for years. Although there’s some confusion about its origin and etymology, the likeliest culprit is, unlikely as it seems, Manute Bol, the impossibly tall Sudanese NBA player whose native tongue is Dinka. He reportedly used to say it whenever he flubbed a pass. It apparently spread through the college basketball subculture (such as it is), emerging in the print press in ‘89 (first in the St. Louis Dispatch, and then, days later, in USA Today). From there, in the mid-nineties, it made its way into TV (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and movies (Clueless, where it is, coincidentally, used by a character who has just caused a cyclist to crash). By the noughties, it had become the punchline in late night comedians’ monologues, which is where most of corporate America gets what pseudo-original thoughts it has. I’m quite sure that when Mr. Bush is finally indicted for war crimes his mea culpa will come in the form of “my bad, hehehe.”

The expression has layers of nuance, of course. The wiki-site, urbandictionary.com, which lets visitors identify, define, and vote on the most accurate definition of slang terms, offers this consensus definition of “my bad”:

A way of admitting a mistake, and apologizing for that mistake, without actually apologizing:

“I did something bad, and I recognize that I did something bad, but there is nothing that can be done for it now, and there is technically no reason to apologize for that error, so let’s just assume that I won’t do it again, get over it, and move on with our lives.”

Ruder than apologizing, but with the same meaning: a flippant apology.

The number two definition, which also garnered several “amens!”:

(n.) A combination of an apology and a dismissal. Basically, saying “oh yeah, I did that, but I don’t care”.

Persons of an older generation can find this quite annoying to hear when expecting an actual apology.

That definitely sums up how I felt about it, although I do not consider myself a “person of an older generation.” And the pathetic thing is that the schlub who said it was probably my age, too.

So there I am on my back in the middle of Dartmouth Street with this pudding standing there sucking on his iced coffee staring down at me. “Dude, my bad.” I just tore into him. I told him in the future he might want to look the other way–the way traffic is coming–before crossing the street. I mean, I don’t get it. Somebody could’ve been seriously injured here.

He sneers at me, mumbles, “dick,” and schlubs off across the street, leaving me battered, bruised, broken, and in disbelief.

Not really. I was lucky there’s a little hill there, and I was going uphill at the time. If I’d been on the other side, heading downhill, I probably would’ve broken my neck. So I was bruised all up and down my left side, and a little sore afterwards, but not too much worse for wear. And I wasn’t really in disbelief, either, I just like alliteration. The whole thing was all too believable, unfortunately. You’d actually expect it in Boston.

Which is why we need Rudy Giuliani. And not just for the jaywalking, either. Drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians all need to seriously shape up. Streets should be color-coded. Cyclists should have dedicated lanes, as should buses and cars. Traffic signals in areas with heavy pedestrian traffic should be modified, with shorter waits for pedestrians, who should be allowed to cross intersections diagonally (which means red lights in all directions for auto and bike traffic when pedestrians have the “go”). Cars, bikes and pedestrians who violate traffic rules should be aggressively pursued, and excessively fined. This will wound Bostonians’ rampant sense of individual exceptionalism and entitlement, but in the end it will make our streets much more livable.

(Speaking of livable streets, there’s a Street Social this afternoon in Cambridge starting at 5:30 sponsored by Livable Streets–click HERE for details.)

There’s room for debate, but I think part of the problem is the suburbanization of the city. And I mean attitudewise. Because a city is not just a place, it’s a distinct state of mind. A set of attitudes and values often at odds with those of the suburbs.

One thing every city has is a double-life. You either get that–and celebrate it in your own life in the city–or you should really just move out to the ‘burbs where you don’t need manners or social skills to get around, just an SUV and a credit card.

For those who would like to set up shop in the city, you should understand the unique spirit of cities. The secret life of cities, if you will. We all know that cities are inconvenient to get around, that they’re full of menacing crowds, multiple barriers on our way from point A to point B. But to those with eyes to see it, these barriers are passages to the secret city.

Not a hidden city, mind you. This second life of the city is an open-secret. And it opens up when you do. And when you grasp that everything and everyone is significant. And that you must strive always to be where you are. Be here, now.

When I enter a subway car I always think, “what if something happens here? What if my last moment on earth is here, in this subway car, with these people?” Because the last moment is The Moment. When the present is finally undeniably present and accounted for. When I walk onto a subway car, it’s like: I am here, now. Funky as it is. Everything that happens her and now is significant. There is no throw-away moment, no throw-away encounter with a fellow traveler, even that one there, groping his way along in the dark from one coolata to the next. My encounter with one of them yesterday could have been the death of me, after all. Careless, disconnected, coolata-fueled. It’s a deadly combination.

This secret life is made up of all the little interactions we have with one another, however careless and seemingly casual. They all play a role in our fate. They’re all significant, without exception. That sounds ominous and scary, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s about connectivity, after all. We are a part of each other’s stories. At the time of their telling. It’s a conversation to which we have to bring a respect of the other, and a genuine curiosity about the nature of this extraordinary organism of which, however different we may be from one another, we are each a vital part.

Not to sound too evolved, but I rarely see hints of awareness of this whole here, though I’m always on the look-out. Seems today we Bostonians are more likely to think of ourselves as impermeable, autonomous units, never mingling our auras gracefully, generously, like fellow travelers, but banging and bashing into each other like bumper cars, on our way to nowhere. We’re “in” our ‘Pods, with our urban armor to protect us. This may be a function of fear: the fear of potential violence so often associated with race, or the fear of affrontery so often seen in highly class-conscious cultures.

When your city is little more than a glorified bumper car course, you’re going to get banged up occasionally. I understand that. If that’s how it is, that’s how it is. But when you bash into me, please, please, whatever you do, just don’t say “oops, my bad,” or I will be forced to bash back.

It wasn’t just the margaritas talking, I really did shoot my wad on all that bitching and moaning about the fare hike. I just want to roll over and go to sleep now, and when I wake up, it will be 85¢ again. All this will have been a bad dream.

But, alas, I cannot sleep. There’s no rest for the Superfriends. Oops. Well, I’m sure many had begun to suspect something like this, anyway. Without compromising my Superhero identity, I have to tell you all… I am the one with the biggest…pompadour. But don’t ask me to divulge anything more, because if I tell you I have to feed you to Gleek.

While I wallow in stage two (blind denial) some have moved on to stage four in the Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle: bargaining. Shugars has divulged she is almost ready to roll with a website devoted to a boycott of the T. When she gets it up and running, I will pass on the url to all of you, my gentle readers. But please, don’t tell Shugars about stage five (depression). She will find out soon enough, I guess.

I was at a movie Sunday. I’ll admit it, I went to see Mission: Masturbation III. Yee-IKES. Tom Cruise IS the new Michael Jackson. But I just was not in the mood for Akeela and the Bee, and RV was all sold out.

The most relevant thing I saw–as far as this blog’s concerned–was the commercial for bed-wetting they played before the movie. It conveyed the message I would like to pass on to you tonight: “I’m not going to let it rule my life.” Not bed-wetting, per se, but, you know, the T fare hike. I’m not a bed wetter. I’m NOT.

I also saw a dead cat on the Mass Ave the other morning biking to South Bay Shopping Center. The Goya products at the new Stuper Slop-n-Shop there are twice, if not three times what they are at the Shaw’s next to the JFK/UMass T station, by the way. Both are about equidistant from my place, in opposite directions of each other, of course. But it’s easier to ride my bike to South Bay. I needed espresso coffee, and in an emergency I always head straight for the Goya aisle, because it’s, like, a buck-seventy for 8 ounces–it tastes like jet fuel, but works like it, too. I’d rather have my Illy, but I have to go Whole Foods to get it.

And lest you think I’m one of these snooty bitches with some fancy-ass Rancilio Silvia espresso machine, here is an actual picture of mine:

Keepin’ it real.

Like I said, this was an emergency, and then I see this dead cat. It looked like it was just lying there on the side of the road, but I knew it was dead. It was not until I cycled back that I saw it’s little face, twisted in a silent scream worthy of Munch. That little face has flashed in my head time and again since I saw it. Was it an omen? Some kind of punishment? That and the bed wetting have made it impossible to attend my usual weekend slumber parties. I have no place to show off my underoos.

Gawd, I hate the T.

The truth is I’m a cheap bastard in the first place. I quit buying cigarettes and started bumming them when a pack of Viceroys got to about what a trip on the T costs now. I’ll quit the T, too, and start bumming rides, if the fare gets too out of hand. If you’re not good with money, you’ve got to be good at making friends with money. Those are the only two ways to get by in the world today.

Remember, it was not so long ago that we were getting the same service for 85¢. When I first came to Boston, it was 85¢ and it stayed that way for nearly a decade. And it was an impressive system at 85¢ a pop.

But nothing would make it worth a buck-seventy. Nothing would make it worth $750 a year for a monthly subway pass. Nothing. Not flowers and chocolates. Not champagne and sushi. Not daily foot-rubs, tongue baths and blowjobs from a personal harem of plus-size T conductors in thongs and the GM himself. Nothing. N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

I’ve heard a lot of people’s ideas about what would make it worth it to them: improved infrastructure, updated equipment, more trains, faster service. But that’s way too pie in the sky for me, especially since the proposed increase is not earmarked for improvements, but for merely maintaining “basic services”.

The problem with the T is that the higher the fares, the worse the service will get, because riders will be ever more outraged by the ever-lousier yet more expensive service, and T employees will continue to be rude and unreceptive while providing that lousy service for which they are so well-known and in which they apparently take great pride. Because the T currently exists to serve the T, and not those who ride it.

We know, as the Bureau of Transportation Statistics says, that “a major reason for [the T’s annual operating defecit] is the fact that Boston’s transit work force is among the highest paid in the country.” Consider that almost 55% of the operating budget of the T goes to payroll, and a third of that to fringe benefits. We have all heard about the generous pension offered by the T, for which employees are eligible after only 23 years. An antiquated and counterproductive system of seniority still governs the T. In ’05 The MBTA Advisory Board observed that rampant absenteeism is costing the T $4 million a year in overtime. Thus far, the T has done nothing about it. The T continues to reward bad behavior and lackluster job performance.

Add to this the BTS’s findings that in addition to payroll, bloated costs are due to the “MBTA’s outdated equipment and the fact that it generates much of its own power in inefficient, oil-burning power plants,” and it’s clear that the problem is systemic. The cost of fares will continue to rise while improvements will be minimal or redundant (like the informative flashy new electronic signs in Downtown Crossing that say simply, “No Smoking” and “for more information go to mbta.com”–Gee, thanks).

This is why it’s hard for me to justify paying more for fare, because it’s not going to fix what’s broken: the unions, bad contracts for grossly overpriced generally faulty equipment as the rule, and the legislature’s “forward-funding” plan, which just ain’t cutting it, either.

And one last little note. I just think it’s ironic, all that money that went into the fiscal black hole that is the Big Dig. These fare hikes are about priorities–of commuters, of the T, of this city.

I got some shit today from my dentist’s receptionist via a friend of mine who’d just had his teeth cleaned about my latest Metro column HERE. Apparently the complaint had to do with the fact that I live in Dorchester, so I have no earthly right to be slagging off the South End. I mean, about their rubbish problem.

But I’ll tell you something. In Dot we use trash cans. You hardly ever see the kinds of scenes you see in the South End–with the rubbish strewn all over the sidewalk and spilling inot the street–in Dot.

Part of the reason is that people have space to store trash cans here, whereas in the South End, there’s nowhere to put ‘em. I understand the problem, but the solution they’ve come up with there–basically, do nothing and pretend there’s nothing wrong–just isn’t working.

By the way, I’m still thinking about what would make the T fare hike worth it for me…