Rich Mintz  

Just finished reading Second Honeymoon, which is Joanna Trollope’s newest novel (or I think her newest). I’d never read anything by her, and given how popular she is with the book-club set I kind of assumed it would be tripe, but it was a superb extended comedy (in the Aristotelian sense) of adult family life, told with respect and good humor and grace. In fact, I read it basically in one continuous session (and it was a long book) and am hungry for more. So more fool me for having let my preconceptions keep me away from such a good writer up to now.

As you’ve noticed if you follow me on Twitter, after seeing one on the street and arranging to test-ride one around the block, I ordered a FlyKly electric bike, and it arrived last week.

What it is, in essence, is an electric scooter, with a top speed under 25mph and a claimed range of 40 miles, that you can recharge in the house off normal electrical current. (The battery is removable.) It weighs only about 100 pounds (less than half what a gas-powered scooter weighs). While that’s too heavy to carry it up the stairs, it’s light enough that you can easily maneuver it through hallways and in and out of elevators to keep it in, say, an apartment building’s bike room, and (since there’s nothing to drip or leak) there’s no reason not to park it in the living room.

The FlyKly does have functional pedals, like a bicycle, and in fact under federal law it’s classified as a consumer product (like a bicycle), rather than a motor vehicle. In fact, the relevant statute states that electric bikes must be treated by states as consumer products rather than motor vehicles. New York State, however, has ignored this, and all electric bicycles are illegal here and subject to confiscation as unregistered motor vehicles. (You may have noticed the 20,000 electric bicycles on the streets of NYC, piloted by deliverymen and hobbyists; yes, under NYS law they are all illegal to operate, and subject to a $500 fine and impoundment.) However, NYS DMV will not register them. So you may legally buy and own them, but not actually use them.

This is, of course, legal nonsense, and it will be straightened out eventually. (It seems to me that what is needed is the proper kind of plaintiff to sue NYS in federal court — someone who has the time and flexibility to put up with the timetable of litigation, the sense to make the right arguments, and the maturity to present well in front of a judge. If I get a $500 citation that isn’t dismissed, I’ll see whether I have the stomach for it.)

In the meantime, what seems to happen in NYC is that if you are riding responsibly, the police ignore you. When you are at speed, you look like just another Vespa (which are legal if registered), and when you aren’t moving, nobody cares anyway. I had one encounter with a parks cop (who treated me as though I were a Vespa rider, and simply said pleasantly that I had to walk the bike in a crowded pedestrian area), but I don’t think I’ve been noticed otherwise. Last night I (cautiously) rode through the pedestrian shortcut alongside police headquarters (connecting from Madison and St. James through to Frankfort and Gold, under the Brooklyn Bridge), past three NYPD guardhouses, and nobody cared.

I was careful, though, to walk the bike whenever I was passing through an area I might expect to be hassled for riding through on a normal bicycle. And without exception I’ve stopped at every red light, and stayed in traffic in congested areas rather than trying to find a way around. This means that for trips of more than a block or two, traveling by FlyKly is actually marginally slower than riding a normal bicycle in the typical amount of city traffic.

But who cares? In nice weather it’s so much fun to get out and just ride. I’ve been all up and down the lower half of the island, and tomorrow have a couple of errands on the Upper West Side, so I’ll have a chance for a longer ride.

The handling is fine; the 25mph governor is not a problem in the city. (I rarely find myself wanting to go any faster than that.) The bike seems well designed and I keep finding things I like about it. There’s a bag loop, so you can carry one bag of groceries, along with whatever is on your back. (There’s an optional cargo box, but to install it you have to remove the rear rail, and I use that rail to lift the bike when I’m flipping the kickstand, so I’m reluctant.)

The only problem was that I tripped the electric fuse on one of my first rides, and had to let the battery cool down before I could reset it and it would “stick.” (It actually wasn’t a clean test, because during the cooldown I had the bike plugged in, so I’m not absolutely sure that overheating was the issue.)

I investigated motorcycle licensing in NYS, because it seems prudent to have evidence of training in the event that a police officer claims I am “riding unsafely.” It’s actually pretty easy — you pass a written test and get a permit, and then if you take a 3-day riding course, you waive out of the driver’s test. So expect to hear about that in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, zoom zoom! Bike porn below.

I was last in San Diego in June (for the Americans for the Arts meeting) and you’ll recall that I really enjoyed it. I’m back again, and again thinking “why don’t I just move here?”

There is, of course, the fact that as a native Angeleno I’m supposed to think of San Diego as either mildly amusing or beneath notice, and that as an adoptive New Yorker I’m supposed to see a place like this as frivolous and its relaxed, happy people as dangerously un-vigilant re: whatever slop life’s bucket is about to dump on them.

All of that is true. And yet, more than most other places I’ve visited in the past few years, I look around San Diego and I think, “This would be a nice change.”

I think, “I could have a little house, or a nice big loft apartment in a perfect location, for 40% less than I’m paying now.” I think, “Here nobody gives a shit what you’re wearing, ever,” and I think “Is it 64 degrees and sunny every single day of the year here?” (yeah, pretty much, except when it’s 70), and I think “Oh, so that’s what a tortilla is supposed to taste like.”

San Diego isn’t London, or New York, or even Los Angeles. But nobody here cares. They’re fine with it. Why wouldn’t they be (see “64 degrees,” above)? And anyway, it’s big enough (hello! 3 million people). And did I mention nobody ever cares what you’re wearing? And the buses all have bike racks on the front?

Admittedly, sometimes it’s nice to look nice, and I’m annoyed by the inland West (which is where 75% of the tourists around here are obviously from), and bla bla bla. But. 64 degrees and sunny! A house! Tortillas!

…that it’s starting to look good.

It’s now falling into my eyes (I can see some of it right now!) — I wouldn’t exactly say I’m Adrian Grenier or anything, but hey, I look loose and free.

I’ve been letting my hair grow out for, I dunno, 3 months? just to see what would happen. For most of my adult life I’ve been trying to keep it “under control,” but the fact is I have a big head (I know I do, it’s right there in front of my face, there’s no use pretending otherwise), and big head + really short hair usually = “ridiculous.”

I had a complex about having “big hair” for years because when I was a teenager I always wished I had that thick, heavy, straight dark hair that all the cool kids had. (In high school and then again in college, “Q-Tip Head” was a nickname that was occasionally heard in the hallways.) But what I didn’t reckon on is that that thick, heavy dark hair I envied usually starts falling out by your late 20s and what’s left is usually totally grey by 35. My hair, on the other hand, looks and acts more or less the same now as it did when I was 20 — there’s a bit less pigment in it and some of the follicles are going coarse, but it’s still thick and ample.

There were times when I let it grow out but styled it like a Nazi — I don’t mean that I styled it to look like the hair of a Nazi, I just mean that I applied the determination and precision of a Nazi to the task of taming it. There was the crunchy “mousse” period of the early 90s, followed by the slick “gel” period of the mid-90s. And I have a dozen more recent tubes and cans of pomade and spritz and thickener gathering dust in the bathroom at home.

In LA in 1989 I wanted that pouffy side part the cool kids had; in Atlanta in 1999 I wanted the “midtown flip” (think Tintin). In 2009, if I were younger, I would have wanted that funny mound in the middle that was trendy for about 5 minutes. But none of that stuff really works on me. My hair wants to be free!

I’m still a bit uncomfortable about having “big hair” in a professional context, but then again I am a gigantic bulky person with a loud voice and, er, a clearly evident personality, and when I walk into a room people have more to focus on than my hair.

So I think I’ll keep growing it out for a while more and see what happens. (I do need a cleanup, I know this, and was hoping there would be a salon open here in San Diego on Sunday, but no such luck.)

When I pulled out of my panel at the American Association of Museums conference in Minneapolis this weekend, it didn’t occur to me that I had a Following (note that capital F), but Twitter reminds me that I do. (Note to self: if you tweet from one place when the Internet says you’re scheduled to be in another place, Explain Yourself.)

I scheduled myself too tightly — Ottawa, DC, Minneapolis and San Diego all in a row — and felt myself starting to get sick by the middle of last week. It’s just a cold, but at my advanced age (cue the tiny violins) I can’t just go about my business. Plus there’s that whole “sneezing viruses all over the entire American museum professional community” thing.

So I sent my regrets to James Leventhal, the panel organizer, spent a lazy Saturday morning at home in New York drinking fluids, and am passing a sleepy Sunday afternoon here in San Diego, catching up on email in my hotel lobby.

To those I’m missing at AAM, my apologies — I’ll see you at another event soon. And fortunately my able and charming colleague Will Begeny is on another AAM panel today, so you can get a bit of that Blue State Digital magic.

It’s hit me three times this week already:

(1) In an office discussion about nonprofit organizations, it occurred to me that I have barely 3 1/2 years until I’m eligible for AARP membership.

(2) Today I saw a ridiculous old man walking down the street in orange sneakers, looking ragged and rough, and thought “You’re a ridiculous old man” — then realized he was probably a year or two younger than me, and I was wearing red sneakers.

(3) Finally, and most portentously, the Harvard Class of 1987 25th Anniversary Report arrived in the mail, a two-pound brick chronicling everyone’s perfect marriage, beautiful children, and dream career. I know it won’t really be like that — by now there are plenty of people who have seen ill fortunate — but it’s still hard to open. I think I’ll steel myself with a gin and tonic first.

Chuck Colson died this weekend. For those who are too young to know who he is (i.e., pretty much everyone younger than me): he was a political hack who worked for Richard Nixon, was convicted of obstruction of justice, and spent seven months in prison. (Think of him as a low-rent Karl Rove.)

In later life, he became an “evangelical Christian,” which in latter days, unfortunately, has become code for “nasty right-wing bigot.” Colson said things about gay people that I can say without hesitation would have disgusted Jesus, and said them often.

No one “deserves” to die, but I certainly won’t miss this bitter old man who used his social power to spit on people like me, on our families and on our honest, earnest lives. (The question of why a disgraced felon, who used his position to attack and defame others for political gain and was rightfully sentenced to prison for it, regained social power says more about America’s hypocrisy than it does about Colson, but that’s a subject for another post.)

The fact that Colson cloaked his words in the disguise of reason and the confidence of social power doesn’t make him less of a fomenter of hate. What it makes him is a thug.

And today I have to sit through nonsense online from the whole of the Christian right, hailing Colson as a hero. Excuse me, but this hypocritical old felon claimed the mantle of Jesus Christ while preaching the vilest hatred against people like me and my family.

Plenty hasn’t changed in the 35 or so years I’ve been alive and politically aware, but one thing that has changed is that hundreds, thousands, on a good day millions of people in America are willing to call hate speech what it is. Good for us, and keep it up, everyone.

When someone says gay people are worthless or immoral, or our lives are without meaning, or our families are illegitimate, speak up! Say, “um, hello, I am here and listening, and you can take that nonsense and [forcibly place it in an appropriate location, outside the public discourse].”

Or, if the someone is Chuck Colson, “shove it.” I owe no justification or explanation to someone who says my life is “morally problematic” and I am not a full person, entitled to the rights of a full person. That someone deserves to be shunned, as Jesus would have shunned him. Rest in peace, but leave the rest of us alone.

Just got caught in a sudden storm while riding my bike near Times Square at night, and was soaked through my clothes in about 60 seconds. The last time I got this wet was during the Great Yeovil Downpour of 1987. I was backpack-hosteling around England and had to get from Yeovil to (some adjacent town, probably Exeter), and I went to wait for a bus that never came, because (as I later realized) it was Sunday. I asked around, and learned that to reach my destination that day I would have to walk a number of miles to an intervening town and catch a different bus.

So I walked and walked, and the road got hilly, and I saw no one, and it started to rain, and it rained and rained, and I put on my poncho, and I still got soaked, and my shoes squeaked and got stuck in mud, and I got wetter and wetter and madder and madder and listened to my Walkman with the one mixtape over and over, the one that was mostly U2 and James Taylor.

But I made it to Exeter. And that is the story of the Great Yeovil Downpour of 1987.

Taxi medallion owners in NYC are up in arms over a proposal adopted this week to allow the sale of a special class of livery cab medallions that will allow street hails. This sort of thing is probably uninteresting to anyone outside New York, but the gist of it is this:

The supply of NYC taxis (the cabs in the familiar yellow livery) is constrained by the city. To put one into service, you don’t just have to comply with a long list of very specific regulations regarding the equipment; you also have to purchase a medallion giving you the right to own one. New medallions are not being issued, which means there is a speculative market in them, and the going price is several hundred thousand dollars.

NYC taxis cruise the streets of Manhattan (below 96th Street) frequently and are easy to hail. In certain parts of Brooklyn, they’re easy to hail. In the rest of the city (where the vast majority of New Yorkers live), they are few and far between. (This is the market in action; cabbies go where the density of business is.) As a result, people outside Manhattan tend to use livery cabs.

Livery cabs are also regulated by the city, but much more loosely, and no medallion is required. They are enjoined from picking up street hails, although often they do.

The city has adopted a proposal that will sell medallions for livery cabs for $10,000 permitting street hails. Medallion livery cabs will be required to install meters, and will presumably be subject to a range of other normalizing measures to protect consumers in the same way that medallion taxis are.

Taxi medallion owners (who are, on the whole, not taxi drivers or taxi owners, but investment syndicates) are concerned in effect that their rents — the money they receive as a result of owning something, not of doing anything — are being put at risk. But I don’t understand why. The new class of medallion livery cabs won’t be permitted to pick up street hails in Manhattan or at the airports, which is where the yellow cabs all operate anyway. And it’s not as though the market can’t support more supply; have you tried to get a cab at 5pm in Manhattan?

Let the market work, I say. It’s undisputed that there are millions (literally millions) of New Yorkers who can’t hail a cab in their own neighborhoods and would do so if they could. Theoretical (not actual, but theoretical) financial loss to a few dozen speculators should outweigh actual daily inconvenience to millions of people?

I’ve written before about my Amazon addiction, and now I have two more: a moderate Woot addiction and a much more serious Fab addiction.

Woot is a closeout service that brings you five specific deals each day, some of which are really good. The ad copy suggests that the target audience is people about 20 years younger than me, but that hasn’t prevented me from buying things, like a NeatDesk scanner, which I’m using (along with Evernote) to finally start moving myself toward paperlessness.

Fab brings you selections of products from a dozen or so small independent retailers every day. It’s typically design-oriented, artsy, hipster stuff, sometimes closeouts, sometimes one-of-a-kind or few-of-a-kind objects. They do a pretty good job of making it a social experience, by encouraging you to recruit your friends and giving you significant cash-money discounts when you succeed.

I’ve bought the following from Fab in six months, for a grand total of almost $1200: travel mugs, coffee cups, iPhone handsets, Fancy Hands, luggage, T-shirts, a mozzarella cheese making kit (!), 2 wallets, kitchenware, a bicycle, 2 messenger bags, notebooks.

Add these to my Amazon spending (short description: thanks to Amazon Prime, I check Amazon first whenever I decide to buy anything, from toothpaste to kitchenware to aluminum foil to electronics), and I’m now buying almost everything online except for groceries. I’m spending a bit more, because I’m buying a bit more than I otherwise might be. But I’m happy, finding things I enjoy and can afford and having them brought to my door by a cheery man in a brown uniform.