Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about The Conscious Commuter

On Potato Omelets and Winter Cycling

By Alex Marshall | Mar 18, 2008 | 36 Comments

A Spanish tortilla, unlike the Mexican version, is essentially a potato omelet. You fry some diced-up onions and potatoes in oil, and then pour in some beaten egg. Flip it over, and voila, you have a tasty, round golden thing to cut into slices and eat. Back when I was living in Spain some 25 […]

Let’s Chop Up Superblocks

By Alex Marshall | Feb 22, 2008 | 22 Comments

Forest City’s Atlantic Yards project would create two massive superblocks in Prospect Hts., Brooklyn Portland, Oregon, which has ascended the ranks of cities judged most walkable, bikable, and urbane, benefits mightily from its small 200-foot square blocks, which provide businesses more street frontage and people more streets on which to bike, cycle and walk. These […]

From Mad Messenger to More Peaceful Cyclist

By Alex Marshall | Jan 14, 2008 | 11 Comments

Alex Marshall some time in the not-too-distant future… A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was a bicycle courier. It was in the fall of 1979, during the semester I took off from college to start a rock band in Washington DC with friends. When not playing guitar in a roach-infested […]

Rocky Road

By Alex Marshall | Dec 19, 2007 | 26 Comments

Cycling intimately acquaints you with every bump, slice, crease, divot, ledge, ripple and of course pothole in a street, because not noticing means you might get thrown off your steed into bone-breaking and life ending car traffic. While riding along Lafayette Street in Manhattan, or Bergen Street in Brooklyn, or essentially anywhere in New York […]

Hats and Top Coats: Unsung Casualties of Car Culture

By Alex Marshall | Dec 17, 2007 | 24 Comments

What we wear or don’t wear — fashion, that is — tells a lot about how we live, including how we get around. Take the hat, for example. The wonderful broad-brimmed, high-peaked bowlers, boaters, derbies and fedoras worn by men, and the even more extensive variety worn by women, some with precarious architectural acrobatics. What […]

Good Streets Include Streetcars

By Alex Marshall | Dec 4, 2007 | 50 Comments

Last stop for Brooklyn’s trolley dodgers at Fairway Market in Red Hook. Devotees of the Red Hook, Brooklyn Fairway grocery store can have the pleasure, after loading up on gourmet salt and other essentials, of sipping coffee on their back veranda over looking the river. It’s a wonderful view. On your right is the Statue […]

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