City About Those “Car-Free Sundays”
posted by August 1 at 12:15 PM
onThis past Wednesday, Mayor Greg Nickels announced a series of “car-free Sundays” to take place in August/early September along certain stretches of certain Seattle streets.
As the Seattle Times reports:
To get people out of their cars and onto their feet, Seattle will close down major thoroughfares on Capitol Hill, in Rainier Valley and Alki for several weekend hours this summer….The streets will be closed to cars, motorcycles and scooters but open to pedestrians, bicycles, skateboarders and Segways.
Today the plan was attacked by right-wing blow-up doll Michelle Malkin:
Welcome to Seattle’s enviro-nitwit checklist: Bullying residents into buying Gorebulbs and terrorizing pants off children as part of the mayor’s green brainwashing? Check. Anti-plastic bag policing and tax hikes? Check. And now…closing off streets to cars and pushing residents to jump rope and draw chalk art? Check. Yep, who needs drilling? Seattleites will just jump up and down on the streets until they find new energy sources—or draw them with chalk and imagine they’re real!
In other stupid news I’ll report anyway, one stretch of road that will be closed on the Car-Free Sunday scheduled for August 24 is “the western loop of Volunteer Park,” aka Boner Row, where unhappily married men from Kent sit in their Civics and rub their crotches while making horny-sad puppy-dog eyes at the non-closeted queers strolling/rollerblading/cruising by. It’ll be nice to see these guys out and about.
David, your boner row comment is funny 'cause it's true.
uh, yeah...the hip, modern, proudly out geighs of Seattle NEVER cruise for sex in their cars...
(my eyes have rolled so far back in my head, that I can SEE my thoughts!!)
If our enviro-nitwitness will keep twits like Malkin from moving here, sign me up for a solar panel, and get me a bicycle.
I was on the fence about the Car-Free Sundays plan (mainly because it just sounds like more of Mayor McCheese's superficial lip service toward the environment), but now that I know it's inspired a Malkin rant, I'm 150% in favor of it.
Fuck jump rope. I'm bringing my hula hoop. Anyone out there got a pogo ball?
Phony outrage at its worst. He lists 3 neighborhoods he'll never frequent, and a dozen activities he's not interested in - but somehow, based on principle, he's furious the city might encourage such a thing.
They've been closing Golden Gate park to cars here on the weekends forever, and it's been a huge success at drawing families, walkers, and tourists (the tourist would probably be there regardless, but whatever).
why aren't bikes being closed off at the events as well?
look, the reason there's so much blowback around a pretty limited street closure is because it's obvious that nickels and other goofy pols around here want to ban cars.
"it's obvious that nickels and other goofy pols around here want to ban cars."
Obvious to who? How very stupid would you have to be to believe something like that?
Who is Michelle Malkin? Is she supposed to be an expert about something? What, exactly? I can't figure out why her opinions are supposed to matter more to me than, say, the opinion of a random stranger on the bus.
Michelle Malkin is a twit too stupid to read the below-the-fold page 1 article in today's Wall Street Journal on people commuting by bike in LA.
But I say that with as much respect as she has for the Constitution.
This is actually a great idea. I love it. I'm proud to live in a city with an enviro-nitwit checklist. It keeps the uptight jesus fucking fundies outta my way.
RE: "Boner Row" - that really happens? REALLY? Man, I'm such a sheltered straight boy.
I say close down every fucking street in the city so we can draw chalk lines around our boners at every intersection.
Michelle Malkin is a great example why liberals should be pro-gun... if revolution, disaster or whatever comes, I don't want her asshole followers to be the only folks with weapons.
@9 I agree, who the hell is this woman? And why should I care what she has to say.
The whole problem with this "blogging revolution" is that it builds up prolific blowhards into some kind of cultural champions when there's little functional difference between them and the guy yelling at invisible peanut monsters on the corner.
Reading that link though, it's pretty clear that blog is just one huge echo chamber of indignant selfish whiners griping about how the mans got them down with environmentalism. God forbid that when your habits start destroying the world anybody would dare suggest you change them.
Fuck her, fuck her fans, and fuck you for lending her any credibility by mentioning it. Schmader, I love you, but can't we start treating these type of people like we did jerry falwell and just ignore them. Take down that link, don't give her one more hit, just stop it. Please.
Michelle Malkin is worse than useless, but don't you think calling her a right-wing blow-up doll is a bit much?
I absolutely refuse to click the link to her blog and contribute to her site traffic ratings, but did she note that NYC, Paris, El Paso, Portland, Quito, Melbourne, San Francisco and many other cities have already done similar things? That this type of event was invented like 30 years ago in Bogota, Columbia? Seattle is actually kinda behind the curve on this.
Car-free Sundays = just that many more hipsters on fixies swinging their bike locks at geighs and claiming the streets for their own.
let's have our next slog happy on boner row, which i've always called buttfuck lane. is that homophobic?
#11, it keeps poor people out as well. Yaaaaaaa, liberal, open-minded Seattle, the richest, whitest city in the country.
You want to encourage people not to drive, give us more public transportation!
@12 - first I heard of it, either. Not surprising, I suppose.
The Michele Malkins of the world are backward, brainless, troglodytes. To them, all change is bad, especially change that takes thought and will improve the world we live in. That being said, she's spot on about Nickels! Oh yea, and taxes are what give us the good quality of life we love here. It's the fee for decent civilisation and liveable cities. If it was up to the right wing it would be nothing but guns for them and prisons for everyone else.
"Boner Row". Snap! You nailed it, David. If I weren't happily married (to another GUY!!) I would be down on one knee in front of you. At that point, we'd have a couple of options.
If you have a big dose of nerve, some good looks, a coy smile - every street in this city is a boner row.
Most of the good cruisers have not worked The Hill in years, let alone The Park.
Oh, David, you are good with words, but trapped in the 1980's. Seattle has moved on, try Home Depot.... or White Center ... AND... of course, any big grocery store starting with a half dozen neighborhood QFCs ....
Seattle = Cocksuckers Dream
Here in Vancouver, we've been doing Car-Free Festivals for several years. It was so successful that last year we had two Car-Free Sundays on Commercial Drive, and this year we had one but in four different neighbourhoods.
The buses get routed around and I imagine that for the odd person who absolutely demands to drive wherever (s)he wants, it could seem like an inconvenience. But it's a blast. Thousands of people turn out; there's live music and outdoor food and a general festival atmosphere. There's even some chalk art and rope skipping, but that's hardly the focus. And the restaurants do a booming business with all those people in the streets.
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