Riptide’s Five Rules of Urban Bike Survival

Carrrrrreful This Sunday, the county Parks and Rec Department and the Florida Bicycle Assoctation will host a “Road 1 Bike-Ed Class” at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center in Crandon Park. Class curriculum includes fixing flats, choosing a bike, and riding safety. The flyer boasts that “Students will gain confidence…

Palm Pilots

palm this tree For decades, Biscayne Boulevard was a regal stretch of road, a tropical gateway to paradise. Visitors were greeted with smooth asphalt, clean family-friendly motels and towering palm trees. Today, of course, it’s mostly commuters that flow into Miami via Biscayne, and they are assaulted daily by never…

Teeth

My life is informed by film, and when I am having a particularly terrible terrible awful experience, I often suspend the trauma by framing it through someone else’s celluloid suffering, conjuring an imaginary foil the way Jimi Mistry invented Kyle MacLachlan as Cary Grant in A Touch of Pink. On…

Hot Coffee

Um, fill it to the top please! Your car is not a phone booth. Your car is not your office. As much as you would like to think you can multitask, the reality is you can’t. That is why the “gods” (Jobs & Gates) created computers… to fill the gap…

The Interstate Turns 50

From the in case you didn’t notice files, readers and drivers, rejoice! This year is the 50th anniversary of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. A special site called “Florida’s Interstates – A Half Century of Progress” wants to “Welcome [you] to the party! There’s a nationwide celebration going on in…

Highway Holes From Hell

Critical Miami recently called “BULLSHIT” on this article (registration required) by Larry Lebowitz about pothole maintenance on I-95. In a post called What’s up with the holes in I-95?, Critical Miami argues that they are man-made, not accidents in need of fixing. [The article] talks all about the difference between…

The Meters Are Coming

Muzzled beneath black tarp-like shrouds, traffic lights stand at the ready at 22 on-ramps along the I-95 corridor, from NW 62nd Street north to Ives Dairy Road. Miami’s ”Metered Stop Ramps” were scheduled to go online in 2005; now mid- to late-2007 is the time when motorists aiming to ascend…

Where I’m Coming From

If I keep this up, in a year I will have spent one whole month of my life on I-95. I commute about 120 miles a day to Miami New Times from my home in southern Palm Beach County. I know: It’s a misery many of you share. That’s the…