Hey, NYC? Just ... go away, OK?

[unixronin]

I'm tired of NYC trying to be the tail that wags the dog.  If it's not one thing, it's another.  You've got the Mayor going around the country making illegal straw-man gun purchases in an effort to blackmail gun dealers into accepting intrusive monitoring of their business that he has no legal authority to do.  You've got NYPD stealing legally-owned Harleys from their owners because of alleged irregularities in the way the VIN numbers are stamped, to the extent that Harley-Davidson sent out letters for all of their registered owners to carry certifying that yes, they really do own the motorcycle they're riding.

And then there's the carpool thing.  NYC will ticket you for riding a motorcycle in a HOV/carpool lane.  Federal law says you're legally permitted to do so.  (It's Title 23 United States Code, Section 166.)  NYC will ticket you anyway.  Last month's American Motorcyclist, which I just now got around to finishing, has a story about a woman who got ticketed by NYC for riding in a HOV lane and fought the ticket.  It took her three years, but finally she beat it, and a NYC administrative board acknowledged that she was exercising a legal right under Federal law and dismissed the ticket.

Most cities would, at this point, concede defeat and accept the inevitable.  But not NYC.  NYC is now trying to overturn the Federal law and get the Federal government to declare motorcycles a danger in HOV lanes nationwide.  Because NYPD wants to be able to keep writing HOV-lane tickets to motorcyclists... apparently, because they can.

You go to hell, NYC.  And NYPD specifically.  You want to be asshats in your own city, hey, that's your problem.  But you don't get to export your asshattery and make all the rest of us in the US live with it too.  We're very glad to have places that Are Not NYC.  And you can't have them.

Disclaimer:

If you live in NYC, and you like NYC, that's fine, I don't have a problem with that.  It's your city, you're allowed to like it.  But I don't have to live in your city, and you can't force me by exporting it to me.

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I think the real answer is to decentralize, and have more and smaller cities that are more self-sufficient and actually pleasant to live in, and where people can live closer to where they work. But the USA has too much invested in its mega-cities to change that aspect of America quickly, and in any case the trend of human civilization seems to be to congregate in fewer, larger, more dysfunctional cities.

Yup. Straight out of Jane Jacobs.

Actually, the US did a fairly good job of decentralizing during the industrial era. Sure, you had your "A-list" cities like NYC and Chicago, but there were plenty of "B-list" and "C-list" cities that were also fine places to live. The problem today is, you don't work in the same place for 40 years any more, so if you live in a B- or C-list city where professional employment opportunities are limited, what do you do for your *next* job? If I wanted to be close to the Smokies and Deal's Gap, I could move to Knoxville, TN. I might even be able to get a good, even a great, job there. But what do I do for my *next* job when that job goes away in five years? At this point the employment opportunities in the post-industrial economy have concentrated themselves in a short list of maybe half-a-dozen or seven or eight "A-list", high-cost-of-living cities on both coasts.

Similarly for housing. Why buy a house that's a mile from your current job if it's going to be forty miles from your next one? (One reason why I think homeownership in fifty years will be only for the upper-middle-class and better--it'll be a big marker showing that you don't have to "move where the work is".)