I will definitely roll that way the next time I'm in Vegas. Sweet.
I thought walking was the problem the Segway was meant to eliminate?
Yeah but Segways didn't eliminate the problem of standing up.
However, it looks like these wheelchairs still require one to perform the onerous task of maintaining a vertical neck.
Just the other week I saw a guy on a Segway tootling up Madison Ave around 83rd. I was not favorably disposed toward him.
Soon, he'll be a cop.
I want more bike cops. It seems like a better idea from a policing point of view, and more humane for the cops.
4: are you thinking what I'm thinking? Electricgurneyrentals.com here we come!
4: Clearly the solution is evolving toward a motorized iron lung.
Well, they do enable you do drink and drive. That guy's planning ahead.
"more humane for the cops"
Yes, but sometimes they fall and break a leg and have to be put down.
From the article: "and now I can drink and drive, be responsible and save my feet."
This guy is making me ANGRY.
Disneyworld, when we went two years ago, had a disturbing number of awfully old looking kids in huge rent-a-strollers; like, six/seven-year-olds. If your kid can't stay on their feet for a day, don't take them to Disneyworld; go for a goddamn walk with them.
If there's a market for it, it must be a good thing.
I'd ride around in one of those things if it had a toilet installed in the seat. That would make it worth it.
It is always very strange to me to meet people who aren't good at walking. I hadn't encountered it before I got to Southern California. It really seems fairly fundamental to me, but apparently no.
11: I'm serious. My neighborhood has a big hilly park, and right after we moved there they put some bike cops on patrol in and around the park. There was one guy who was a cruel stereotype of everything bad you might think about cops; fattish and redfaced and mean-looking and snarly and generally pig-like, and he was having a hell of a time with the hills on his bike. Over the next two years, he gradually got happier and fitter and friendlier and more competent on the bike -- whatever the policing benefit was, that guy was much better off than he would have been sitting in a car drinking coffee.
The Las Vegas Strip is an abomination unto God, of course. I suppose I shouldn't be so horrified that visitors would behave abominably.
18: Trust the hippie to endorse a police-as-pets program.
The bikecops are generally a lot better at community-policing because they don't have that heavy-handed "I'm coming out of my car to git after YOU" effect. I mean, they just seem a little silly, and that takes away some of the resentment a lot of people feel towards police.
Maybe that's the solution for the lazy intern: ogged should go for a goddamn walk with him.
"The Las Vegas Strip is an abomination unto God, of course."
Hell of east coast elite.
13: Have you never visited Park Slope? Half the kids in strollers are in first grade. Obligatory Onion link.
21: that's why you need to mount the bikes with lasers. Police should be feared, distant, science-fictional warriors.
I thought this would play out with increasing numbers of not-disabled-just-lazy older Boomers getting motorized wheelchair things, and suddenly becoming very interested in curb cuts and ramps.
Vegas seems like as good a place for a trial run as anywhere.
Actually, on the Atlantic City boardwalk, there are these sort of Victorian two-person big wicker chairs that you can hire someone to push you around in. That's so fucked up it almost comes all the way back around to being cool, but not quite.
So if I hate that as much as Las Vegas scooter-users, does that make me a generalized elitist, not just an east coast elitist?
25: As of today, they would really only have the technology to have powerful pen-lasers, so they would have to compensate with Mad Max-style bikes. Blind the crooks (and/or peaceful protesters) and then run them down.
28: There is that great episode of King of the Hill where Bobby has gout and is thrilled because it means he gets to ride on a Rascal everywhere.
I don't know why I put "28:" in 29.
This does not cause me to reconsider my Emersonian position on Las Vegas.
on the Atlantic City boardwalk, there are these sort of Victorian two-person big wicker chairs that you can hire someone to push you around in.
I know where that slippery slope is leading.
30: I naturally attracted a response is why. I'll take what I can get.
Yep. Along those same lines, do pedicabs freak other people out? I can't see sitting in a vehicle that I was paying another human being to move around by muscle-power. But I may be irrationally squeamish about this.
I like Vegas. It manages to be sick and wrong joyfully. Plus, the desert makes everything strange.
I would totally ride around Las Vegas in a litter, were it available, were I there.
27: My socialist great-grandfather hated those things with a passion.
I'm from California, Sifu, and I have close relatives in Reno. Wait, actually, I have a cousin in Las Vegas itself, and she's not happy there. The first time I saw Vegas, I had just backpacked out of Havasu Canyon; the contrast is overwhelming.
I'm with Sifu on this. Vegas is teh awesome. You haters suck.
As horrified as I am by this, I would add that the design of Las Vegas (huge lots and vast distances between places, such that it can be three quarters of a mile down to the corner) doesn't really help. (Or at least, that's what Geography of Nowhere says; never been there myself, deserts make me nervous.) If you were going to design a city to discourage walking, vast lots fronted by vast oceans of parking would be a great way to start.
36: The two places I've seen pedicabs used a lot the primary client base was (daytime) tired tourists who tipped well and (nighttime) drunk people, as an alternative to DUI, who tipped really well. So everyone working it seemed reasonably happy with things. I've never actually ridded in one, mind.
36.---You're not alone. I don't think I could ever take a pedicab. It's a little irrational, when you think about it since putting gas in your car is just an alienated form of consuming labor (and capital). And I had a friend who drove a pedicab for a while and loved the job.
I have a natural aversion to pedicabs not because it's locomotion but because it's efficient locomotion. If I'm going to pay someone to move me around a city, they'd better be barefoot and running.
Right. It really is inconsistent with my thinking that putting them on bikes would make cops happier and healthier -- it just gives me what I would call the heebie-geebies if that weren't confusing around these parts.
40: oh, no question. It's one of the most massive insults on the natural world perpetrated by man. Edward Abbey would rightfully want to dynamite the whole place.
I don't know, I just find it high weirdness, and I've had some really spectacularly fun times there. I don't gamble, particularly, and I'm sure I couldn't take it for more than a couple days, but the city really has provided remarkable experiences to me, personally, as fucked-up a place as it is.
36: When I lived in Beijing, the pedicab guys were really aggressive. It improved my pronounciation no end, having to tell them "no thanks" over and over again with more and more conviction. Yes, like I'd like to try to give detailed directions in Chinese to someone riding a bicycle right behind me while everyone looks on and thinks "Yeah, those white people sure are both fat AND lazy".
Back before 1949, there were rickshaw guys who specialized in making the run (not, mind you, walking) from downtown Beijing to the luxury villas (most for foreigners) around the Summer Palace in the mountains. They didn't live very long.
I took pedicabs in China sometimes, but that was because in the little podunk town I was in my first year, they were the only taxis available (save for one or two car ones that you could never ever find when you needed one) and if I was heading to the train station with a suitcase or two, walking or riding my bike wasn't really an option.
But yeah, it did make me feel uncomfortable. Getting a shoeshine from someone feels the same way.
Gambling is pretty much the one sin I haven't indulged. Ok, that and heroin, I guess.
My mom went to a Bar Mitzvah in Vegas a couple months ago. I've only been on the tarmac there (just a stopover, didn't even change planes), so I don't have any particular opinions of the place.
I have hiked Havasupai, though. Now that's an experience.
Rickshaw Beijing is pretty interesting.
someone riding a bicycle right behind me
That reminds me. One kind of cool thing about the pedicabs is that if you travelled around you noticed that each city or region had their own distinctive style. As Frowner mentions, in some places you sat in front with the driver behind you, whereas there were also models where you sat in kind of a sidecar like thing next to the cabby, or directly behind him or her. I even remember one town where the pedicabs were basically the bicycle equivalent of a flatbed truck and you just perched back there on the "bed" clinging tightly to avoid being thrown off as the pedaller weaved between traffic.
I read this as "That's so fucked up it almost comes all the way back around to being coolie ..."
My grandfather put an old Vegas slot machine in his basement to keep the grand kids out of his hair. I won 5 dollars once! Yay!
I just can't believe that pedicabs are safe in NYC, though. There's a weird little Mayor-vs.-City Council showdown going on right now about regulating the number of pedicabs, and I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm kind of interested in how it turns out.
All you squeamish people need to get over yourself and enjoy a match of rickshaw polo.
Is there a good reason we still have equestrian cops in New York? Couldn't the money for stabling and feeding the horses be better used for, if nothing else hiring more OR better human cops?
I bet they are, because they're too wide for lane splitting. They may be annoying to drive around, because of the low top speed, but they're mostly in slow traffic.
All you squeamish people need to get over yourself and enjoy a match of rickshaw polo jousting.
I think the government generally likes mounted cops because they are teh awesome for crowd control. There's nothing scarier than being baton charged by mounted police.
I notice that when ever the animal rights wankers are out in force in central Oxford, there's always a few cops around on horses (unbelievably fucking gargantuan horses, too).
64: Visibility's also a lot better from a horse than from any other mode of conveyance a cop's likely to use.
So combining the two threads here, when will NYC see its first pedicab cops? 2013 maybe?
"Once more 'round Queensbridge at a steady pace, peon!"
61: They're very practical for demonstration/riot control. A mounted officer can see above a crowd in a way that someone on foot or in a car can't, and can shove people around with a thousand-pound horse rather more safely than they could with a car. (They can also bust heads from horseback with great effectiveness, see the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riot, but I don't so much approve of that.)
I'm forgetting where I read this---and it was just yesterday! what's wrong with me?---but apparently protestors back in the 1960s used to carry a bunch of glass marbles in their pockets to spook the police horses.
64: Except when they manage to dehorse themselves via tree branch. Then it's momentarily hilarous.
69: Spooking a police horse doesn't seem like a good idea.
People also are justifiably a bit skittish around a large animal that might not be 100% predictable. It is kind of like having a psycho friend to watch your back.
re: 71
I suppose if they are charging at you then spooking them might be preferable to the alternative.
Many, many people at protests have all kinds of erroneous beliefs about various ways to sit or things to scatter on the ground in order to spook the horses. One of those people, who is known to me personally, came away from a protest with a broken leg from being stepped on.
73.---Yes! An otherwise annoying article, with that one interesting tidbit of information.
75.--Ah. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me. During the few protests I've been to, I gave the horses a wide berth, myself.
All you squeamish people need to get over yourself and enjoy a match of rickshaw polo dick jousting.
74: I guess, but what exactly are they expecting the horses to do once they're spooked? Back away quietly?
#70. A few years ago, a couple of local cops climbed the confederate flag pole on the Capitol grounds after a protester who was trying to set the confederate flag on fire. When they got to the top, the first cop--having never watched The Simpsons--tried to mace the protester above him. Of course, the mace blew back in their faces, cops and protester tumbled off the pole, ass-over-teakettle, and hilarity ensued.
75: Yeah, caltrops work better. Designed that way, and everything.
69,74,79: I'm pretty sure the marbles are (meant) to make the horses slip and fall, thus stopping mounted police from advancing and/or making an area impassable for them. See here, for example (scroll down to 'marbles').
82.---That's such a great article.
I don't know about annoying, but the end of that NYer article reminds me of one of my late dog's great moments. We were walking through the woods at the edge of an Amish town, when she saw a horse-and-buggy going down the main drag. She was off like a shot - half a minute later, I saw her through a gap between houses, sprinting alongside and looking up in awe at the horse. She returned a few minutes later with a bloody nick on her brow and the happiest look I ever saw on her face.
The only thing better than a dog is a dog seeing a horse.
Our little Lola never responds well to horses. The mass differential is too great for them initially to register; then when she notices them she cowers.
Lola. Pixie has not yet seen any horses, don't know what she will think about them.
Thisbe was only 35 lb, but fearless. She would catapult down near-shear stone retaining walls in our wildest urban park, and somehow come back up only slightly-less-shear portions. She looked like a fox - no idea of her mixture - no one could ever guess, much less determine.
(I had no idea that we actually had pics online of her in this park. We rarely go there, now that she's gone. Also, dig the Smicksburg Pumpkin Festival linked on that page - that's the Amish town, albeit with no pics of horse-and-dog)
The cop-rickshaws could be powered by dudes (or dames) doing community service. Thus neatly getting our fat nation some much needed cardiovacular exercise, while making them serve their debts to society.
42: "If you were going to design a city to discourage walking, vast lots fronted by vast oceans of parking would be a great way to start."
You mean, like a suburb?
The mounted police need cavalry sabers! Maybe give them lances too.
The anarchists can then form square with sign-poles that convert to pikes. Training the anarchists to do this and to hold fast might be tricky.
Riot Act. Not just an Elvis Costello song.
91: They have to join the ARE first. The Anarchists for the Reversal of Entropy.
I really OUGHT to like Vegas, since it's chock full of the kind of camp and cheese I love, but it annoys me and I can't spend more than 24 hours there without getting thoroughly sick of it.
Probably that time I had a 3-hour layover in Vegas with a massive, massive hangover didn't help either. There are no public areas in McCarran where you can get away from the slot machine noise. Ow.
One thing I definitely noticed while sitting on the runway at McCarran is that it's literally right next to the Strip. You couldn't see anything of the city except the casinos, which were right there.
The one time I went to Vegas (for work), it was fascinating and I had a good time. Like Sifu says, the weird is at 11 and the desert just amplifies it. But I couldn't imagine living there or, god forbid, going to college there.
There's more to the city than the casinos?
I canvassed southest Vegas in 2004. Very different than the strip. Didn't seem all that pleasant, really, but there definitely is a big city outside the strip.
It was pretty awesome to go back from knocking on doors all day to a room at the Venetian.
The casinos aren't even in the city proper.
The casinos drive a lot an awful lot of the economic activity, though. The city really wouldn't be much of anything without them.
There wouldn't be a city at all without the casinos, but in terms of the physical layout of the city they're not as overwhelming a presence as you might think. Or so I've heard; like I say, I haven't really been there.
The strip is definitely "in the city", although you're right that it's not in what is called "downtown" Las Vegas.
I visited some folks who live in Vegas, and they live in what's basically a gated community plopped into the middle of nowhere, sucking tons of water for a golf-course, pools, and man-made lake. It was a little bizarre. You could live there and never see the casinos.
I was in Vegas for the 2004 elections too. We didn't have such posh accommodations--we were two to a bed in a little independent motel near downtown. Great pawn shop access, though. I almost picked me up another accordion.
101: Depends how you define "the city," I guess, but most of the strip is definitely outside the city limits.
(91: I was actually in a protest where people had built clever devices to carry and (it was hoped) impede the police. Turns out the police beat you a lot harder under those circumstances....The moral of which is that when you're fighting people who can legally carry and use clubs, tear gas, pepper spray and guns, you need to have numbers massively on your side. Otherwise, minimizing the actual fighting is a good idea.
That was the protest, too, where my film with the pictures of the police beating people was mysteriously "lost" at the developer's. Yes, it was stupid of me not to find someone I trusted, but still--they stole my film! They stole my film for political reasons! Society is so corrupt!)
I adore Vegas. Sifu and Labs and I will go and rent motorized chairs and drink crazy drinks with umbrellas in them and have a whale of a time while all you dull earnestos can sit around tut-tutting in your sensible shoes.
Also, Frowner's right: distances are deceiving in Vegas--even walking around inside the casinos, on the carpets, you can log a lot of miles over the course of a day.
Also, throwing marbles under the feet of horses is mean, and I'd totally turn on any fellow protesters who did that.
Also, throwing marbles under the feet of horses is mean
Well yeah, but if the cops are going to use that horse to trample people...
Using horses to trample people is mean, and I'd totally turn on any fellow peace officers who did that.
Anyway, the idea with marbles is to create a space where the horses won't charge through, kind of like a visible mine field. You don't throw them under the horses, you throw them (bunches of them) in a swath between the crowd and the line of police on horseback, to keep them away. Having a horse slip and fall right near you is not a desirable situation (and yes, is mean).
106:
I adore Vegas. Sifu and Labs and I will go and rent motorized chairs and drink crazy drinks with umbrellas in them and have a whale of a time while all you dull earnestos can sit around tut-tutting in your sensible shoes.
B., you are not a hippie.
OT: I totally saw the first guy on the right side of the girl in this video today smoking outside what is presumably their office.
And then I saw Beatrice from The Burg, who ended up going to the same cafe as me. Big internet sightings day.
How did the guy from the video look? Sick? Well?
I think he might have been wearing exactly what he's wearing in the video, oddly, and his facial hair is the same. I wondered if I could think of a way to say hi, both to him and to "Beatrice," but decided no one on the internet really wants to meet the people who recognize them.
I'm a prominent commenter at Unfogged. Perhaps you've heard of it?
I introduced myself to a white bear in the frozen north and it tore me limb from limb.
115: I have a feeling that if that office knows us, they hate us.
How in the world do you type comments, then?
but if the cops are going to use that horse to trample people...
Horses, in fact, won't trample people. Anyway, one of the reasons for mounted police is the intimidation factor, sure, but another is that even more than bikes, horses humanize cops. Plus horses can go places cars, and even bikes, can't.
B., you are not a hippie.
I'm a lot of different things. It all depends on context.
I have a feeling that if that office knows us, they hate us.
So they would. Dommage.
Someone's been listening to Meredith Brooks again.
I was saved by a passing naturalist on a research trip. The worst thing about the experience is that it was all a misunderstanding. Why didn't anyone tell me that sometimes bloggers don't resemble the pictures in their banner images?
Horses, in fact, won't trample people.
I'm pretty sure this is a myth.
124: We do, but it doesn't keep others from resembling us as well!
125: Dude, they're prey animals, and they flip out easily. They might *accidentally* end up trampling you, but they'll try damn hard to avoid doing it. They don't like stepping on things that aren't good footing, which is why the marble thing supposedly works. DUH.
Anyway, who knows more about horses, me or you? Please.
Horses do wig out on a regular basis, which is why I would not want to do any marble stuff to them.
They might *accidentally* end up trampling you, but they'll try damn hard to avoid doing it
And in the process, end up trampling you. They're not the brightest of animals, and it doesn't take much of a kick to do a person serious injury.
129: other than the obvious, what kind of marble stuff did you mean?
124 is awesome.
Horses, in fact, won't trample people.
So horses will, in fact, trample people, but they won't mean any harm by it. Noted.
I have totally bookmarked these horse-trampling comments.
Dude, they're prey animals
So they won't eat my body after they kill me? Fantastic.
This isn't strictly to the point about horses, but it's a classic.
So, horses: don't want to trample you, but do anyway, because of the policemen riding them. Sounds like an agent of the patriarchy to me. Good thing no-one's told them about the rape culture.
136 Hurts to watch -- and yet I laugh! Pretty much the human condition, right there.
Rule of thumb is that one mounted policeman = 20 on foot, when you're talking crowd control.
Mounted policemen can also cover a lot of ground very quickly, and are therefore useful in urban parks. There were a lot of attacks in the Arnold Arboretum, and they went down considerably once there were mounted policemen. (Being able to see an attack was also useful.)
Horses might accidentally trample you, or they might purposely kick you in the head. But they're not trying to kill you, even though that happens often enough, because their little minds have no concept of "death". All they mean is "Please quit annoying me."
Mongol horses kick with their front legs. Fact. They're only half-tame, and if you approach them from the wrong side they will attack you. (Note to self: I can't remember which side is the correct side).
Horsemeat is heart-friendlier than beef, at least commercial beef.
All you people who want to throw marbles in front of the mounted cops in order to keep them from riding in among the protesters, why don't you come down here for the 2008 Republican convention and try it? You can stand--with your little bags of marbles--between me and the police. That way we'll know for sure who's right, and I'll get the protest medic over right away for your poor little crushed limbs.
No, Frowner, I'm going to keep you between me and the cavalry when I throw out the marbles. Do you think I'm an idiot?
Why don't you come down here for the 2008 Republican convention and try it?
"So, in town for the convention?"
"Yes."
"Attending, or protesting?"
"Attending."
"Asshole!"
That's the reception I'd like every damn one of them to receive, from the moment they get here to moment they leave.
I'm feeling conciliatory.
Frowner, this is a theory-not-praxis blog. We've conclusively shown that in theory marbles work great.
146: There's all kinds of stuff being planned to protest the convention, ranging from the mix-it-up-with-the-cops to media and design stuff. (Buttons, posters, etc so that the attendees will know that they are not welcome even when they aren't being protested, plus building solidarity). We aren't some conservative town, we're the Berkeley of the Midwest, goddamnit! We don't want these fascist thugs coming here to rubberstamp their stupid policies. It's a slap in the face, and we'll show them.
(Although I'm hoping that the sheer "mix-it-up-with-the-cops" stuff is kept to a minimum, since we will, er, not have an element of surprise on our side. It's going to be pretty weird, too, since there will be a lot of people from out of town. Not as many, maybe, as if this were out on one of the coasts, but still enough for a city this size. I'm taking the week of the convention off work so that I can either get arrested (yuck) or do jail support (boring). Never say I don't do anything for the revolution.)
Now that I think about it, though, I'm sort of revising my position on the mix-it-up/rent-a-riot thing; there will be so many out of towners here, and so many cops (And aren't they just using this situation to get money and new toys!) that there's going to be bad stuff going regardless of planning, so best be prepared, I guess.
best be prepared, I guess
Translation: Glass marbles are on sale at Wal-Mart! Be sure to stop by on your way to the barricades!
I'm now picturing demonstrators trained to use the poles holding up their signs as pikes -- everyone knows cavalry can't stand up to infantry with pikes.
But that's overly violent, and the horses, let alone the demonstrators/police could get hurt.
Frowner, I suggested this for New York in 2004, and New York didn't listen. But one simple thing that MPLS could do is make sure that every single non-Republican in town had an appropriate bumper sticker, yard sign, or window placard.
The hospitality industry will welcome the Rs, of course, but no one else has to.
Non-Republicans in Minneapolis are close to 80% because of Jesse Ventura's party. The Republican Congressional got 22% of the vote.
Seriously, given the world we live in: we're all joking. We joke a lot around here. Frowner is right. Confrontation is not the way to go. (Also, we're completely ineffectual. )
Hi, Rush! Hi, Hannity! Hi, Falafel-man! What brings you this way?
