The United States is one of the most sophisticated and technologically advanced societies the world has ever known. But there are still certain areas in which we鈥檙e perfectly fine with unmitigated crazy talk, and one such topic is bikes. Desperate newspaper columnists know this, which is why they regularly troll cyclists with rabid anti-bike columns to drum up clicks.
Need some small change? Go rummaging around under the sofa cushions. Need a few more page views? Write a screed about how those damn bikers should be licensed and insured and just watch the indignant comments roll in.
Here in New York City, we鈥檝e got this guy named Steve Cuozzo who writes for the Post. Ostensibly he鈥檚 a restaurant reviewer, but in a post-Bourdainian age of unprecedented access to highly astute and insightful culinary content鈥攅verything from foodie blogs to David Chang on Netflix鈥攏obody wants to read some baby boomer in a fedora rant about how . So, periodically, he gets desperate, tears the couch apart for nickels and dimes, and rants about bikes. : 鈥淪trangled by Bikes,鈥 鈥淏ike Lanes, Bike Lies,鈥 and, of course, the highly erudite 鈥淚f You Ride a Bike, You Suck!鈥
Alas, despite Cuozzo鈥檚 best efforts, cycling in New York City continues to flourish and the bike network continues to expand. To his credit, he could have continued along the same tack by writing a column called 鈥淚f You Ride a Bike I Hope You Get Run Over by a Steamroller and Die,鈥 or even 鈥淐yclists Should All Choke to Death on the Stench of Their Own Chamois.鈥 But even the Cuozz understands that courting his crotchety peers is like investing in VHS technology, so instead, he recently sought a millennial audience by invoking everyone鈥檚 favorite villain: The entitled white bro.
In his latest work, 鈥,鈥 Cuozzo goes full 鈥淗ow Do You Do, Fellow Kids?鈥 by attempting to make the case that protected bike lanes are both sexist and racist:
Cycling isn鈥檛 just a guy thing鈥攊t鈥檚 a white guy thing. Despite lack of data, anyone can see that in a city that鈥檚 55 percent nonwhite, black, Latin and Asian faces on wheels are relatively scarce. (The exception is hard-working food delivery people, for whom access to bike lanes makes their backbreaking jobs somewhat less risky while ensuring that more affluent citizens won鈥檛 have to wait too long to get their General Tso鈥檚 chicken.)
The idea that 鈥渂lack, Latin, and Asian faces on wheels are relatively scarce鈥 is laughably absurd, but the tip of the fedora to delivery workers is an especially amusing bit of pandering, considering he traditionally .
Continuing on the entitled-cyclist theme, Cuozzo also tacks on ageism and ableism because, well, why not?
It鈥檚 also an able-bodied young white guys鈥 thing. Many cyclists look more suited to running the New York Marathon than to merely getting from Point A to Point B. Meanwhile, subway riders with every imaginable disability brave jammed platforms, stairs and trains. Legless men hop from car to car.
Though at no point does he explain how, exactly, legless men hop.
Of course, even the zaniest ideas have their basis in what might seem to be (at least to the lazy-brained) common sense. Flat-earthers claim the planet is a great big pancake, and, hey, if you鈥檙e just standing on the corner scratching your ass while staring slack-jawed into the middle distance, then, yeah, this certainly does appear to be the case. Similarly, if, like Steve Cuozzo, you happen to live in a part of New York City that is around 80 percent white and adjacent to a park where lots of people go to ride expensive road bikes, you might mistakenly assume that everyone on a bike is a 鈥淒ale Earnhardt of the handlebars.鈥 (He really didn鈥檛 need to add the 鈥渙f the handlebars鈥 qualifier, as the NASCAR driver is .)
Making sweeping pronouncements about the demographics of New York City cyclists from your rarefied perch on the Upper East Side is like concluding that caviar is America鈥檚 most popular condiment because they鈥檙e always serving it at your country club. But the rest of us who make our way around the city by bike know Cuozzo鈥檚 sweeping generalization about race and bikes doesn鈥檛 ring true鈥攏or is it supported by actual data, which shows that in New York City cycle in similar proportions.
The gender gap in cycling is another issue. I鈥檇 sooner take a pill from a stranger than I would numbers from Steve Cuozzo, but he is right that more men cycle than women. This is true in New York City and the United States as a whole. It鈥檚 not true, however, in places with lots of bike infrastructure, like the Netherlands, where the rate of cycling is pretty much even between genders. Cuozzo also fails to mention that in New York City as the cycling network has become more robust:
Female Ridership Facts: The gap between the number of men and women riding bikes has narrowed since 2001, with a 19% gap reduction between 2001鈥2008 on Manhattan鈥檚 on-street bike lanes. While gender imbalance on two wheels is a national issue, Department of City Planning data show that the number of women riding bikes is increasing faster than male riders.
In fact, by dismissing bike infrastructure as 鈥渃oddling,鈥 Cuozzo is undermining the very thing that鈥檚 de-bro-ing New York City cycling. Then again, it鈥檚 not surprising he鈥檚 so comfortable making this argument: As a white man born in 1950, Steve Cuozzo is among the most coddled human beings ever to have walked the face of the earth. He鈥檚 never had to consider anybody else, so why start now? All of this is why his most recent column reads less like an indictment of cycling and more like the rantings of someone screaming for attention while striding briskly toward irrelevancy.
So here鈥檚 a tip of the cycling cap to you, Steve Cuozzo, as you disappear off the edge of the celestial pancake.