I was riding my bicycle down Central Park West today when another man about my age rode up alongside me and asked me, in a gentle Irish lilt, to dismount. I was feeling pretty blue and not at all in a dismounting mood, but he was wearing a police officer's uniform, and although his shorts looked pretty silly he had quite a lot of weaponry dangling from his crotch so I obeyed. He immediately announced that he was confiscating my bike, and after that I frankly have no idea what he said. All in his gentle lilt, as if we were discussing the weather, I heard the phrase "environmental law", I heard "it's not me, it's Bloomberg", I heard "if it were up to me I'd let you go", something about a deposition, or a supposition - some sort of position - and lots of other guilty blather I didn't quite follow. I said nothing; he's a cop and he's going to do what he's going to do. After several minutes of listening to him scribble in his notebook and babble about writing a letter to City Hall, I asked him why he was confiscating my bike. I knew already of course - for riding on the sidewalk - and there was little refuting it since my bike was lying right there on the sidewalk as he wrote up the ticket, but I didn't feel this warranted confiscation of my primary means of transportation. I was already so low for other reasons that since he had the gun on him I would have preferred he just shoot me in the chest, but instead we took a leisurely ride in tandem together through the Upper West Side, to the precinct on 82nd Street to impound my bike.
In the five minutes we were riding together I think we broke every law in the book: at his signal we ran red lights, crossed the street in front of moving cars, rode against traffic up a one-way street (something I never do and didn't feel comfortable doing then). Since the officer had already openly admitted the whole situation was a crock, and moreso because I didn't trust myself to speak, I chose not to bring any of this up when we arrived at the police station.
I know a number of people who carry in their wallet plastic cards called "get out of jail free" cards. These are credit-card sized play-badges, each with its own offical visual design and title ("Detective", "Chief"), that one casually displays for the officer along with one's license when stopped, to get out of whatever he's stopping you for. You get these cards by befriending or helping a cop in some manner - saving their life, serving them a good steak - or being related to one, and depending on who you are and who they are, the card can get you out of increasingly serious crimes. I own no such cards, but I know a few people who do, one of whom has so many high-ranking cards that he doesn't realize some drugs are illegal. I don't even think these cards are a clandestine arrangement; from their highly professional visual design they seem to be official, sanctioned policy. You fan out the cards along with your license, the cop asks "who do you know", and depending on what name you say they lessen your inconvenience, let you go, or if you really travel in the right circles they start worrying about their own pension. Like most things, the law is about who you know and how much money you have.
It is not recommended, as the officer is impounding your bike, to begin grumbling this sort of social commentary in little sarcastic coughs. I'm quite sure some people do this, because the urge rose so palpably in me. This instinct isn't rational; the inherent desire to rebel against hypocritical authority is just so strong - in all animals, not just humans - that the little smartass Jewish kid in all of us sometimes can't help squeaking out some bit of cheek. This is unwise of course; I try to keep my trap shut and play dumb, and today I felt an almost chemical suppression of my nervous system engage the moment I saw the uniform. It's essentially a game of solitaire - a cop does whatever he's decided to do and he's using me to do it. It's like dating. This man was told to confiscate a certain number of bikes this week, and I was riding mine on the sidewalk. That he was openly acknowledging the whim of it all as he wrote the ticket made the experience bizarrely zen for me - most of life is luck of the draw, and most of it has nothing to do with me.
Some of it had quite a lot to do with me - I had to wait an hour back at the precinct for him to thoroughly document the July-22 bicycle-on-the-sidewalk incident, in order to finally receive a pink piece of paper that I'm to show to a judge downtown on Monday, who will hopefully let me return uptown to the precinct to fetch my bike without paying $90. The officer said that the last guy was sent away without the fine, and that it wouldn't be a problem if I just told the judge I wasn't thinking for a moment and that I'd learned my lesson, and in particular to tell the judge that I use my bike to get to work. Were I a woman, a friend tells me that crying hysterically might also help. So the point of all this is only to deprive me of my bike for a few days and make me run around town and develop a healthy resentment for New York City. I have learned my lesson; I'll stop terrorizing the pedestrians on the Upper West Side, and I won't vote for Bloomberg (again). It's terrible to think they might do this to someone who actually needs his bike to make a living Monday morning - I use mine constantly to get around town, but it's essentially a luxury, like everything else in my life.
In this light, I then walked to an outdoor lunch place, ate my three-bean chili burrito with guacamole under a cloudy sky, and watched three or four people coast by on the sidewalk on their bicycles. I wondered if the cop had picked me out for my sour mood. Nobody likes a whiner. Well, the burrito was delicious.
