Well, so much for Earth Day. Since yesterday morning, the blogosphere and Twitter have been in a tizzy over the disposal of hundreds of bikes by the NYPD due to President Barack Obama’s visit to New York City yesterday. The story, accompanied by a photo, was initially sent in to the blog This Is Fyf:
Citing security concerns that bikes might be secret pipe bombs, NYPD officers clipped the locks of hundreds of bikes along Houston Street this morning in preparation for President Obama’s speech at Cooper Union. The bikes were unceremoniously put in the back of the truck. There was no prior notification of the bikes needing to be cleared along the route by NYPD and onlookers were not given information as to what would become of the bikes.
Though apparently absent from major media, the story was picked up by Gothamist and eventually Streetsblog.org. The seizure of the bikes, not only inconvenient for the unfortunate riders and doubly inauspicious for our poor planet on Earth Day of all days, is also poor PR for Bike Month NYC next month.
