New York, NY – When Senator Charles E. Schumer arrived in Jackson Heights, Queens, for a Sunday afternoon news conference with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg about the 2010 census results, he began regaling the gathered officials with tales about his bicycle ride through the neighborhood the previous day.
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And when it was his turn to speak, he mentioned his cycling adventures again – twice.
“Just coincidentally, yesterday I rode my bike around these neighborhoods,” Mr. Schumer said to the reporters and television crews. “I rode through Maspeth and Middle Village and Jackson Heights and Elmhurst.”
He added proudly, “I ride my bike all over the city.”
Even Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, Democrat of New York, chimed in. “I know that Chuck Schumer likes to bike,” she said. “I do too.”
But the senator became abruptly and uncharacteristically reticent when, at the end of the news conference, which had been called to discuss the city’s appeal of its census count, a reporter asked him about the most high-profile cycling issue in the city: the bike path along Prospect Park West, the elegant Brooklyn avenue where he resides.
“I am not commenting,” he said, at first politely and then more emphatically: “I am not commenting.”
Mr. Schumer’s position is especially curious because the lane became the focus of a lawsuit this month, and the groups that filed the suit have close ties to Iris Weinshall, Mr. Schumer’s wife and the city’s transportation commissioner until 2007.
Read more in NY Times
He rode his bike on shabbos!?
Queens has an Eiruv.