Don’t Hate the CitiBiker, Hate the City

Just yesterday, I was enjoying the fourth phase of my relationship with CitiBike, New York’s bicycle sharing program. I’ve since pressed on through phase five this afternoon, and I write this late in the evening in the final sixth phase.

If you live in (or recently visited) New York, you are aware of CitiBikes. They are ubiquitous. They are seemingly the preferred transportation of idiots. It's as if you gave anyone in a hurry a bike and told him or her to act like a Seamless Web delivery boy whose job was on the line. At first, it appears that CitiBikers are merely pedestrians that comprise a dangerous mix of adrift tourists and self-anointed
New Yorkers who presume pedestrian rights extend to themselves on a heavy, metal bike. But it’s also this city’s gift to the unemployed, which is one of things I've realized through my emotional journey with this simple idea.

Phase 1: Skepticism. $100 in New York buys you nothing, right? It certainly cannot buy a yearlong service that’s worth a damn (annual membership to CitiBike = $100). I refuse to use it. Besides, I don’t want to contribute any more to the cholesterol of this city’s transit system or risk my life with imminent death since I don’t look cool in a helmet.

Phase 2: Justification. In unemployment mathematics, if I can substitute 20 round-trips on the subway with quick bike rides, it’s paid for, and anything beyond is straight cheddar. If I’m being honest with myself, which I don’t like doing, I’d factor in cab fares and I’d break even in five bikes.

Phase 3: Excitement. OK, I’m in. I love the idea of using, abusing and ditching the bike like a rebound relationship. I'll get in better shape. I’ll use the bike to buy healthier products at Whole Foods instead of the similarly priced crap at D’Agostino’s. I’ll bike to interviews and meetings in midtown. So long scorching crowded subway. Arrivederci you crazy cabbies.

Phase 4: Freedom. After two attempts to find an available bike in midtown, I’m cruising along the West Side Highway with the wind in my hair, the sun on my skin and a smile on my face. I ignore the unreasonable amount of derogatory comments directed to me as a generalized CitiBiker from those on road bikes. I contemplate a civil bikes movement. When I close my eyes I feel like I’m not in New York anymore, but rather as if I was hugging the Columbia River in Portland, Ore—ah! Got to keep those eyes open!

Phase 5: Distress. I again find myself in midtown at 5 PM and desperate to get back to below 23rd street where things are a little more reasonable. It’s the last day with no humidity in the foreseeable future and the weather is perfection. After someone reminds me this is like the year-round weather in Southern California, my downfall begins. No bikes at 57th street. No bikes at 51st. No bikes at 49th or 53rd and Broadway, just two broken ones. It’s 5:30 PM and I’m battling the employed crowd commuting home. I have so far walked enough to have made it home by foot. I camp out at my last attempted docking station and make sinister eye contact with a heavyset woman in a polka dot dress and a crop-topped hipster with the tinted lens of his glasses flipped up (so much for me bringing that back). It’s a showdown for the next returned bicycle that is somehow more awkward than hailing a cab from the same corner as someone else. Luckier CitiBikers and infallible road-bikers zoom by. A wounded blue bike limps towards us ushered by an older gentlemen looking more distraught than the three of us. “Flat tire!” he says as he shoves it in-place and presses the repair button on the dock adding to the two other fallen heroes. They are piling up like discarded umbrellas at the end of a rainy day. The hipster bails and another replaces him. I can’t take it. I jump into the Duane Reed and grind my teeth
while arguing with an employee to open the locked razor pantry. I expect a miracle when I return to the docks. No such luck, and although the fat woman is gone, there are several other lingering weirdos pretending to look at their phones. I’m broken. It’s almost 6 PM and I need to be home if for no other reason than to no longer be in midtown. I speed-walk to the E, cursing CitiBike, cursing myself for being so foolish. I descend from 20 percent humidity to 100. The looks I got from the competing CitiBikers were nothing compared to those of the 6,000 faces already jam-packed on the train when I stuff myself inside.

Phase 6: Acceptance. How long should something enjoyable and convenient last in a city of nine million people? Until around the time you hear about it. New York has a way of chewing up good ideas. It may let you enjoy it once, just enough to get a taste, then it spits it out into one giant hassle. Living in this city is like perpetually getting off an airplane; it starts out civil, but it eventually goes lord of the flies. Luckily, it’s amazing enough to keep the ideas coming.

So the next time you become angry with a CitiBiker, remember CitiBikers are people, too, and he or she probably had to go to hell and back just to sit on that blue bomber. You will eventually learn to tolerate them like you do bums, honking, centennial storms, Times Square, sirens, tourists, NPR pledge drives, the Puerto Rican parade, scaffolding, and Hoboken residents. It’s part of the city now, accept it and move on.

No More No Worries

I went to a small conference the other morning at the St. Regis hotel. It’s the kind of place that radiates

such privilege that you feel guilty using the sidewalk under the marquee’s heat lamps in the winter and not paying for the experience. Its sheer opulence forms a natural barrier to anyone who doesn’t belong. I belonged because I shelled out $50 for a coffee and pastry and a dim hope to network and land a job. And maybe I’d be employed right now if it weren’t for that damn bellhop.

I wore an expensive suit and my nicest watch, having spent hours trying to figure out how to dress without looking unemployed. I even went so far as to arrive in a taxi. I felt prepared walking up the carpeted steps and staring down the next thirty minutes of torturous small talk with tenured professionals of my industry. I felt that I belonged when the bellhop held the door for me, to which I said, “thank you,” and breezed by him as if I knew where I was going. But his reply paralyzed me. “No worries.”

The Aussi aphorism, once charming, once invoking a carefree mentality to focus on the finer points of life and forgetting the noise, has spoiled, and its proof is reaching the luxury service sector. No problem was banned as a replacement for you’re welcome in the restaurant industry because guests don’t want to hear that their request is an imposition; it is the obligation of the server to serve. No worries takes this phenomenon one step further whereby the server preemptively extinguishes the concern of a guest for having to thank the server for a service or completion of a request. The assumption alone is audacious and doesn’t belong in venues that charge $5.50 for a Pepsi in a vending machine.

The bellhop’s reply triggered something in me where I had to stop myself from saying, “I’m not worried. Do I look worried? I am NOT worried and you are NOT the goddam Crocodile Hunter!” I wondered if he’d say no worries to the gentlemen on the panel or if he had said no worries to any of my competitors already getting their yuck on with the next hiring manager. I started thinking the effort I put into how I dressed was obvious and a telltale sign of desperation, and that the few recognizable faces I was about to encounter would see right through me. I didn’t talk to anyone.

I’m constantly worried, but not about you.

Man Repellent

While on the dole it is of the utmost importance that you stretch every dollar as far as it will go. Nowhere is that more important than on the occasion that you find yourself socially eating or drinking out. Luckily for me, the absurdly overpriced watering holes of Hoboken, NJ consistently run drink specials that adequately allow me to delude myself into thinking that I'm getting what comes close to a good deal.

Yesterday was a dreary, rainy Thursday in the tri-state, and the usual protocol of sending dozens of emails into the black abyss was getting me especially down. I needed to be amongst people, I needed to take my wife out, and most of all I needed a drink. The closest restaurant to our apartment was running a half-priced martini deal, so after an early dinner, I suggested that we head out for a drink or two.

When we arrived at the restaurant, the place was jamming. There were no seats at the bar, so the hostess offered to seat us in the quiet back dining room. I objected, seeing a small table in the corner of the lively bar room, and asked if we could sit there. Big mistake.

As we were delivered the menu listing the dozen or so 'martinis' they offer, a cackle that would put Fran Drescher to shame rose over the crowd. We were seated right behind a woman with the most abhorrently annoying voice I've ever heard. As I argued to my half-listening wife that a drink that mixes creme de cacao, creme de menthe, chocolate Godiva, and crushed Oreo shouldn't interest anyone over the age of 7, let alone be called a martini, I heard a slightly higher pitched voice squawking back at the first. There were two of them, and they were sitting so close to us, it sounded like they were in my brain. Awesome.

These two 30-somethings were bellied up to the bar, and, from the sound of it, they had been enjoying half-priced martinis for some time. It looked like they managed to swallow the couple next to them into their conversation, seemingly not because they wanted to make friends, but they needed to justify screaming at the top of their lungs to a person sitting two bar stools over. The screaming wasn't constant, but when one of them started talking, the next one would start, then the first one louder, then the second one louder until everyone in the large restaurant cowered in fear and clutched their rattling pint glasses to their chests. What did they need to talk so loud about, you ask? Bull shit. That's what. Wall to wall horse crap.

At this point our mini date night had transformed into a prolonged visit to the baboon enclosure at the zoo (if the zoo served (still expensive) half priced martinis). I tried to carry on a conversation, but I found myself constantly needing to comment on these two women. The most note worthy moment came when one of them turned to their hostages and said, nay shrieked, "this gay rights stuff in Russia is crazy! I mean if you love someone and respect them, WHO CARES!!" She then got very serious and leaned in to the politely nodding couple and said, "I am sorry, I didn't mean to get so political." So political? She could not have been more proud of her statement that to my ears sounds like the bare minimum of human decency. You mean you object to people being killed for being gay in Russia!? WOW! Let me get the Nobel Peace Prize people on the phone! They're not going to believe this!

Now for the borderline chauvinistic portion of the program... I'd like to start by saying that I firmly believe that a woman's worth should never be directly tied to her ability to get/keep a man. BUT, that

topic was all these two women wanted to discuss (save, of course, for their brief foray into controversial political matters). They grilled their captive female 'friend' about how she got her man, they shrieked with dread when they both realized that they'd be single for their upcoming college reunion, and they shared one of the saddest hugs ever, fighting back tears as they both agreed that 'we only need each other.'

It seemed to me, that they were looking to find that special someone at half-priced martini night. These two women weren't completely unattractive, and I wanted to tell them (so I am telling you, dear blog reader), that I think they are going about it ever so wrong. No guy is going to approach a boozed up banshee with glassy near-tear eyes. I wouldn't be moved to blog about this if I didn't see this type of woman on an increasingly regular basis. NYC bars are full of these packs of women who seem so confused. On the one had, they gussy themselves up with makeup, low-cut tops and high cut skirts. On the other hand, they are determined to be as drunk and boisterous as the biggest guy in the bar.

We left our table after 3 rounds and the two women were still going strong at the bar. As we stood up, a new couple occupied the table next to ours. I don't exaggerate when I say that they were both plugging their ears and making faces like someone punted a newborn in front of them within 10 seconds of sitting down. "Buckle up," I said to the newcomers as we left the restaurant.

I don't hate these women. Far from it. Not only did they provide us with free entertainment on par with the best Real Housewives train wreck, they also illuminated something about myself. I am advocating for these women to compromise something about themselves in order to achieve their goals of landing their  dream man. Would I do the same to land my dream job? I sure as shit don't want to, and neither do they. An attitude that will likely leave those women single, and me unemployed. I'll just make sure to sit in the back of the restaurant next time.