Well, well, well. Citibike is putting the finishing touches on their New York City bike share program, which Manhattanites such as David Byrne note in today’s edition of The New York Times, is designed to offer an efficient and fun new method of intra-city transportation.http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/opinion/sunday/this-is-how-we-ride.html
Simultaneously, the good people of Chelsea, near the High Line, fed up with the influx of tourists into their neck of the woods, plastered their nabe with flyers chastising tourists who flood the neighborhood on their way to, and on their way back from, the High Line.
“West Chelsea is not Times Square,” the flyer’s writer squeals (photo via the excellent Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York). “It is not a tourist attraction.” 
Au contraire, mon ami. Thanks to the handiwork of Bloomberg and his hand puppets, who relentlessly market New York City as the ultimate luxury product, your neighborhood — like so many others — has become just another corner of Epcot/New York.
See the mall stores on Sixth Avenue! See the luxury condos cheek-by-jowl with Katz’s Deli on the Lower East Side! See the tour buses snake down Plaza Street in Park Slope, as confused tourists in the upper deck watch the locals’ dogs poop!
And, soon to come, new hordes of tourists, weaving down YOUR STREETS and YOUR SIDEWALKS on dopey looking bikes emlazoned with oh-so-cool blue-and-white Citibank visual identification!!! Imagine the thrill of dodging the throngs, as they roll your way, dropping bikes off ON YOUR BLOCK, visiting YOUR STORES and then picking up another bike to wreak havoc (as defined by taking pictures of your building, walking two or — horrors — maybe three abreast) in another neighborhood within a 30 minute riding radius.
Real New Yorkers have known for some time that the game has changed here in town. David Byrne extols the freedom of the new bike share program, but that freedom largely benefits those who live in wealthier precincts, and those who travel about during non-peak periods.
Your basic New York wage slave is probably not going to hop on a Citibike at 8 a.m. in Elmhurst and travel to work near Union Square. No, that person will continue to take mass transportation. Nor is the Wall Street trader going to bike to work from the Upper East Side in his or her bespoke suitings.
The benefit of the bike share program will be for those who are not desk bound — and to enhance intra-city transportation for tourists. It’s fun! It’s cool! It’s “just like they have in Paris!!!!”
“Do not sit on the stoops of buildings, or take pictures of and film buildings or residents,” the Chelsea flyer orders….”Observe New York sidewalk etiquette….”
Ha! And what etiquette would THAT be, oh exalted Chelsea-ite?
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On the corner were guys playing dominoes and drinking nips of Miller all day. The deli counterman had anchor tattoos, slicked back hair and a glass eye. The Key Food on Eighth burned down and was vacant for years and years. Riss was the chee-burgy, chee-burgy place of choice. There was a pool hall upstairs on 23rd and 8th.
One year, Empire Diner came. Camouflage clothing. The Elgin Cinema (remember midnight showings of The Harder They Come?) became The Joyce. No more Mi Chinita. No more Asia de Cuba (the old diner, not the newer restaurant by the same name). Chelsea got the galleries and became cooler than cool. And that attracted even more affluence, tilting the see-saw way up. And then came the High Line, so that now, the last people to migrate into the neighborhood are pulling up the gangplank. “No no,” they hiss at the huddled cupcake-eating masses. “Don’t come aboard…”
New York changes. It always did. It always will. The key is balance. The impatience of today’s Chelsea flyer-writer — no doubt affuent, no doubt from another part of the country, is understandable, to a point.
The growth of Epcot-like, tourist-centric inventions, such as the High Line, needs to be gentle, mindful of the urban ecology. Yes, real estate developers benefit. Yes, it’s kinda cool. Yes, new shops spring up around it, like mushrooms after the rain.
And yet. Do the people in the Chelsea housing projects west of 9th Avenue benefit from these stores? Is the intent to drive out all non-affluent New Yorkers, from every corner of the city?
Meantime, the tourists come. They rent our hotel rooms, buy our goods and services and eat in our restaurants. And that’s a good thing.
But don’t mess with the tax base — the NYC resident. We are becoming overrun. Don’t destroy the quality of life of residents, in the effort to woo ever more tourists.
The flood of two-wheeled, camera-toting, velveeta-butted, track-suited nitwits through the nabes of NYC on Citibikes this summer may be the last straw.