In the 1930s eugenics got a deservedly bad name when the Nazis tried to fiddle with evolution to create a super race. Navigating the streets of New York is an example of a less statist approach, more egalitarian in concept, where in effect Darwin rules. Cycling in Manhattan has never been for the faint-hearted. Static obstacles like gaping potholes and the huge, sharp-edged steel sheets that all the cable companies use to cover these perennial holes in the road are bad enough. Indeed the holes are covered in much the same manner as their accounts – badly.
Throw into the New York traffic mix errant pedestrians, daredevil cyclists and visually challenged drivers who have difficulty noticing the sirens and flashing lights of fire trucks and it all adds up to a challenging Darwinian environment.
Still New York has made some effort towards a more cycle-friendly environment. After all, cycling is pollution-free, and as long as cyclists bring their own air supply with them, it’s good for the heart and lungs. So the department marked out cycle lanes around the city. You can spot them easily enough. Cop cars and other city vehicles are usually parked in them, while other drivers mark the paths’ location by dropping glass bottles out of their windows.
On the banks of the East River and the Hudson are dedicated cycle paths separated from the roads and sidewalks. You notice them because of the crowds of joggers and walkers on them, not to mention in-line skaters. I must single out in-line skaters because they are deemed to be bicycles for the purpose of the path, but unlike bikes, rollerbladers don’t actually travel in line. In fact, they seem to follow the same path WorldCom’s stock did – all over the place.
I hear if you draw a line on the ground and swing a chicken by its legs along the course of the line (check with mommy before you do this at home, children), its tiny brain is hypnotized into walking straight afterwards. It’s a similar phenomenon with New York pedestrians, since they invariably walk down the center line of a clearly marked cycle path and look puzzledly at the cyclists barreling towards them at 20 miles an hour. Naturally one makes mental allowances for dog owners, even those who walk their pets on an extendible leash that acts more like a remote control with weak batteries.
But I digress from my own arrow-straight line of speculation. Most of these people, plus in-line skaters and joggers, wear Walkmans, unless, of course, they are talking into mobile phones. There is something pathologically yuppyish about people who want to jog or skate in a city but prefer to insulate themselves from social interaction while doing said activity. In their own little narcissistic cocoon, they ignore traffic on the road and bikes on the cycle path. Ask not for whom that truck horn blows – it blows for them! Since they recoil not, nor do they turn at the sound of warning devices, and since they are mostly of peak child-bearing age, incrementally they will be weeded out of the great ongoing human genome refreshment project that is Manhattan traffic.
One wonders if these people with mobiles and Walkmans are the very investors who rushed like lemmings into dot-com IPOs. They are now taking what’s left of their fool’s gold from the dot-coms and rushing to bury it at the other end of the rainbow – in this case Manhattan real estate.
Even before September 11, people were leaving the city. In the meantime, thousands of housing projects begun during the boom years are coming on stream and rents are coming down steadily. But apartment prices are blooming like black tulips on manure.
This bears more than a superficial resemblance to a bubble. People are putting money in, not for the inherent worth of the assets, but because they anticipate others doing the same. These same people also play loud music on their car stereos and carry on a conversation on their mobiles while simultaneously driving at high speed on highways. Who says evolution has finished?
If those without much in the way of survival skills, prone to the lemming syndrome, are gradually knocked out of the genomic pools, so be it. I, for one, have great faith in the future of humanity. We will be left with individualists, people who not only question received wisdom, but also care for social interaction and each other.
Unfortunately, evolution is a slow process, and – in the US, at least – slow to gain theoretical recognition. Perhaps you can see why the current administration, Enron and Global Crossing directors and veterans of S&Ls do not want evolution taught in schools. They don’t want to be reminded that like the sloth, their days are numbered and their seed will soon be as one with the dodo. But it does give the rest of us something to look forward to.
The Speculator
