Showing posts with label Divvy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Divvy. Show all posts

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Idiot Bicyclists and Bistro Voltaire

Image result for bistro voltaire chicagoImage result for bistro voltaire chicago



 “Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.” ― Voltaire

  DNAinfo ChicagoThe video shows a bicyclist apparently slowly pedaling into the intersection of Halsted and Roosevelt when a car hits him, sending the man over the car's roof and landing several feet away.
The driver of the car, a 22-year-old woman, stayed at the scene and has not been cited in the crash
Read more at https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=995_1500584271#UeqSxFGsIJCZARVJ.99

“Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal.” ― Voltaire


My lovely friend and I enjoyed a superb evening at a remarkable destination - Bistro Voltaire at 222 West Chicago Avenue.  The getting there was like watching Dunkirk on IMAX.

We began our trip to Bistro Voltaire at 4 P.M. on a hot and sticky Saturday, armed with an umbrella for the much threatened rains.  No rain.  I decided to take North Avenue from Oak Park to the restaurant, because Taste of River North was getting under way and the expected traffic at Ohio exit of 94 North would be as thick as creme brulee on hot sidewalk.

North  Avenue is a wonderful ride east to the hipper environs. You travel through Austin and West ad East Garfield Parks, where my Aunt Nellie Shea and her husband Dinny had an apartment until their moves to Heaven and then Humboldt Park.  I turned south at California and we saw old gents playing dominoes in Humboldt Park.  We passed the wonderful Flying Saucer diner run by a brilliant Australian lad named Andy and headed east again at Chicago Avenue heading into Ukrainian Village with its magnificent Churches and Museum and finally the bedroom community of the self absorbed.
Image result for Cyclist runs red light ChicagoImage result for Cyclist runs red light hit by car Chicago
These hipper environs are noticeable more by its tattooed and tanned denizens pedaling expensive CEEPO Vipers, or the more modest 6061 BLACK LABEL - PEARL WHITE.  These people want everyone to know that they are alive . . ., at the moment. 

Last week I watched a video (above)  of a graceful idiot imitating a bug on a windshield, in DNAinfo Chicago.
Image result for Bike creeps  in chicago
Yesterday, I watched no fewer than four such well-accoutred imbeciles sped through red lights at Chicago and Western , Chicago and Damen, Chicago and Ashland and finally at Chicago and Larabee.  These death defying morons caused traffic, which was not inconsiderable, to buckle and wane in expectation of meeting between force and matter.

My son lives in Wicker Park, as do many young people brought up with Old World values in the un-hippest of neighborhoods and continue to live accordingly.  These young people know what it means to not receive participation trophies, how to wait their turns, have deference for other people and how not to spark a confrontation with their elders and betters.

Living among them are tattooed and tanned spawn of Montessori, Lab and Liberation education.

Free to form, do what they may with creative intensity and speak their little minds.

There were no speeding ninnies observed from Oak Park to Sacramento along Chicago Avenue, it was only at the boundaries of Wards run by Proco Joe Moreno and Brian Hopkins that the Clay-brained people emerged.  Always aboard a most expensive set of wheels

Our Lady Blue Divvy bikers tended to their slow pace and themselves.

Once we found on-street parking on Chicago Avenue, we took an amble to the Brehon Pub and caught the pivotal 8th Inning of yesterday's W over St. Louis.  My lady had scrumptious baked pretzel as a pre-prandial salivation for the delights awaiting at our 5:30 P.M. reservation.

Opened in 2010, Bistro Volatire is top of the charts.  The music is an exquisite combination real jazz, jazz Manouche, Edith Piaff, Michel Le Grande and Ray Charles.  The walls are festooned with image of Western literary giants, save the bothersome portrait of career bullshitter Studs Terkel - Volatire, Balzac, Victor Hugo, John Dos Passos, Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Gertrud Stein, Virginia Wolf, Joseph Conrad, Guy de Maupassant, James Joyce and Eugene O'Neill.

The lighting is perfect, the seating cozy-comfortable and the service wonderfully attentive, friendly and pure Chicago homespun at its best.

Our server, James, was a Dubliner and student at UCD enjoying the freedom of our city and working the fresh markets in the same neighborhoods that are home to the Morons sur les bicyclettes of our trip here.
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The menu is simple and inviting .  We both had the Bistro Salade of crisp and chilled Romaine and endive lettuce, bacon, and  a poached egg over a Dijon mustard vinaigrette.

After sampling the driest of white wines and settling on the Chardonnay, the birthday girl ordered the Vivaneau - Red snapper over spinach and parsnip puree.
Image result for steak frites bistro voltaire
My only disappointment was they were out of swordfish and I opted for the wonderful steak au poivre.  You can not miss this.  The Frittes (fries) are seasoned with garlic and pure love of Man.   I could cut the steak with a spoon.
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Knowing that my lovely guest was celebrating her birthday, the wonderful manager sent over the lady's favorite cocktail Kir Royal and a candle topped Profiterolle ( a pastry puff stuffed with gelato and covered in a sinful chocolate sauce.  I got more than few spoons of it.

Bistro Voltaire is the ideal  romantic evening, special dinner treat that will put you in solid with the one you love.  Get there before James returns to his studies in economics at University of Dublin in September.  He is a great entry to the superb entrees at Bistro Voltaire.

I took I 94 to the Ike home - no bikes.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Divvy Chicago: Orders from Der BikeStag ( formerly Chicago Dept. of Transportation)



Now, I am a close-knit ethnic, Roman Catholic, meat eating (fish on Fridays),  south side dwelling heterosexual and then some, moderate-to-savage cigarette smoking, fossil-fueled motoring, tax-paying and tubby middle aged male - not cool. Unless. of course, I change and change utterly . . .Nah.

I hear tell of mean folks.  People who shout, "Hey That's My Bike!" whenever they spy two or more persons  aboard a Schwinn and out for a two-wheeled speed. Just mean.

I mean bikes are okay. If Jesus rode a bike he'd look like this -

 but He did not and the Romans nailed Him to Cross. Hey, I'm just sayin'!
Another morsel from the Right Sides of History - The Axis Armies used bicycles extensively in WWII



The Bataan Death Ride April 1942. Those ain't G.I.s aboard them Mitschwinbitsis.

I rode bicycles up to my twenty-fifth year on Mother Earth.  I took a header when the front tire of ten-speed blew like Susan Sarandon in White Palace.  I was biking back from a morning's fishing under Warner Bridge Road in Kankakee County, when this mechanical misfortune took me off the ten speed aficianado demographic for keeps.  Illinois 102, IL

The hike back to Kankakee City which followed my ergonomic tossing of the bent frame in a big-assed dumpster somewhere near the Parkway Inn Tavern (above) in the region known as Altorff.  Fine folks there about the Brady family dominates the woods along the river -taught most the children, I did. Bandaged and spirited the seven mile perambulation to my windowless apartment above Home Appliances on Station Street was dedicated to Peace with Bikes.

Bikes are fine.  Most cyclists are grand folks, but every NPR listening jerk with a trust fund deemed it most important to become a mirror image of the bicycle messenger on PCP.  Congested,gentrified hipster communities attract bicycle fascists quicker than Obama makes a federal regulation. In recent years, after the new millenium, the bike lobby hooked Richard M. Daley through the gills and boated that bass.  Lance Daley cleared the way for Critical Mass activism to its supreme achievement (be like Seattle) -turning the Chicago Dept. of Transportation in Der  BikeStag.

I have nothing against bicycles nor the people who choose to ride them.  I have a universal dislike of jerks, JOs and Janissaries of agendas large, loud and limited.

Divvy is owned and operated, I think, by the City of Chicago in the same way that Chicago owns the Skyway and Parking Meters. The concept is swell:

  • Ride Public Transporation
  • Be a Divvy
  • Bike away traffic
  • Bike the shopping
  • Bike the dining
  • Bike the concerts
  • Bike to court to bring suit against the Mexican Lanscapper you cut off when giving the finger to an elderly Jewish lady trying to cross Dearborn over by the Newbury library
  • Bike the bars- you will not be charged with DUI unless you hit and scratch up Ald Cappleman's PriusLock the Bikes and make sure you lock it according to the code, People!
  • Be Bangor, Be Bangalore, Be Bejing!

Already the the south and west side communities are Bike Deserts.  Is it Progressive, is it Hip, is it Coo, Is it Chicago Proco Joe to deprive people whose ancestors survived Maafa, Jim Crow and CPS the opportunity to Divvy? Is it Chicago values to break out Break Away Everyday in white upper class arugula and Whole Foods communities?
Divvy stations are taking up parking spaces - no parking -no driver - no customer at Wicker Park gin mill but walk-in trade. N.B. Biker peddlars don't tip

Bicyclists are as rare as Progressive philanthropists here in Gresham, Englewood, Roseland and even Chatham.  The bike lanes on Vincennes Ave. have faded like the last Rose of the 2012-13 Bulls Season.