Personal Experience--Astor Place** High Noon 7/30/25

While crossing LaFayette St just past the moving sculpture N of the Public Theater- A man with grey hair-tee shirt-jeans just ahead of me. A man on a e-bike was running at the usual race time uptown. As the delivery agent approached he rang the bike bell. Immediately the man ahead of me turned-croached-and growled with a visceral antipathy that was as much menace as frustration. Right from the gut. 25 years of being victims in our own skin and streets. "This all started with Bloomberg." The bike had passed behind us. "You got that right." One gray head to another. While I'm at it-It was Bloomberg who responded to the irrational armtwisting of Charles Komanoff to withhold enforcement by the NYPD on rogue cyclists. Money Mike wanted to attract the digital industry. Mission accomplished. Great swaths of the westside were bought and developed by the teck oligarhs. Gorgo enforcement-the backbone of a responsible bike culture-to accommodate the preference of tech employees to cycle. Yes it did begin with the zealotry of TA and the complicity of Bloomberg As Jeenaette Sadik Khan said at the Rudin Center "It's good for real estate. How much of the west side might Bloomberg enterprises have owned? Bloomberg said he wanted to increase the density of the city to 12 illion residents. Want NYC to be a "luxury destination." Does that include the savaging of the quality of public safety and quality of life? When your self worth is focussed of making money and feeling important by giving it-stratically away-some thing are simply collateral damage.