Archive for the 'media' Category

Packer & Bilton, on Twitter

It’s been fun fol­low­ing the debate between the Times Bits blog­ger Nick Bilton, and New Yorker staff writer George Packer, on whether Twit­ter is a god­send, or a har­bin­ger of doom.

Packer opened with a dec­la­ra­tion that he’s old school:

I don’t have a Black­Berry, or an iPhone, or a Google phone, and I don’t intend to get an iPad. I’ve been care­ful not to men­tion this to sources in Wash­ing­ton, where con­ver­sa­tion con­sists of two people occa­sion­ally glanc­ing up from their Black­Ber­ries and saying, ‘I’m listening.’

After point­ing out recent news sto­ries that Twit­ter had a hand in breaking—Iran, Haiti, Obama’s Election—Bilton fires back:

…when trains were a new tech­nol­ogy 150 years ago, some jour­nal­ists and intel­lec­tu­als wor­ried about the destruc­tion that the rail­roads would bring to society…

I wonder if, 150 years ago, Mr. Packer would be riding the train at all, or if he would have stayed home, afraid to engage in an evolv­ing soci­ety and demand­ing that the trains be stopped.

Ouch. One gets the sense that there is some kind of gen­er­a­tional clash going on here. Packer tries again:

If a Lud­dite is some­one who fears and hates all tech­no­log­i­cal change, a Bil­tonite is some­one who cel­e­brates all tech­no­log­i­cal change: because we can, we must.

George is asking the right ques­tions, but it’s hard to dis­agree with Bilton’s point—by refus­ing to par­tic­i­pate in social media, he’s miss­ing part of the story… you can’t bury your head in the sand and expect to keep up.

February 5, 2010 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Mediaite Launch

Rex Sor­gatz on the design of Medi­aite, Dan Abrams’s new media website:

…‘horizontal sites’ build a new kind of impor­tance hier­ar­chy. Design­ers don’t real­ize it, but unaligned ver­ti­cal stacks are a rem­nant of the way that news­pa­pers were designed—in columns, up and down. These new lay­outs are more like movie screens and wide mon­i­tors, with action moving left and right.

A very simple, but poten­tially evo­lu­tion­ary step in our under­stand­ing of how read­ers can best scan and make sense of content.

July 6, 2009 » Tags: , , . » 0 Comments

The Times Wins 5 Pulitzer Prizes

NY Times newsroom, Pulitzer announcement

Photo by Soraya.

The New York Times, my employer, won 5 Pulitzer Prizes today, “for work on sub­jects as varied as America’s wars in Asia, the sudden down­fall of a polit­i­cal titan, art from ancient to modern, and a history-​making pres­i­den­tial campaign.”

The inter­est­ing one, from my point of view, is the award for break­ing the Gov. Eliot Spitzer pros­ti­tu­tion scan­dal. No, not because it’s sala­cious or bawdy, but because the exclu­sive wasn’t held for the next morning’s paper – it was put up online, on NYTimes.com, in the middle of the day. I think that this will be an impor­tant mile­stone in the evo­lu­tion of qual­ity journalism.

The Nieman Lab points to a funny anec­dote that ran in the NY Observer last year:

Back in the day — you know, five years ago — when a big news story had been writ­ten, edited, fact-​checked, vetted, proof­read, and anguished over one last time, an adrenaline-​pumped editor would cry out, “Run it!” As in, the presses.

When The New York Times was ready to report that Eliot Spitzer, then gov­er­nor of New York, had been impli­cated in a pros­ti­tu­tion ring, man­ag­ing editor Jill Abram­son yelled 20 feet across the news­room, “O.K., hit it!” As in, the button to pub­lish the story on NYTimes.com.

I love that. Con­grats to my col­leagues in the news room, and let’s keep it up!

April 20, 2009 » Tags: , , , , . » 1 Comment

The Crash of Flight 3407

Flight 3407 – Reuters

CREDIT: Gary Wiepert, Reuters [via]

Last night, Con­ti­nen­tal Flight 3407 crashed in route from Newark to Buf­falo Nia­gara Inter­na­tional Air­port, just a few miles from its sched­uled des­ti­na­tion. The crash site is just five or six miles from where I grew up, in a suburb of Buf­falo, NY.

The Buf­falo News has a living topic page ded­i­cated to cov­er­age of the event, which they are updat­ing with arti­cles, photos, video and other resources, as they are put up. They also started live blog­ging the story, and link­ing to out­side resources pro­vided by cit­i­zen journalists.

CNN is car­ry­ing live video from the local NBC affliate.

My heart goes out to the vic­tims, their fam­i­lies and the nearby com­mu­ni­ties. It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that these things rarely happen, but when they do, espe­cially so close to home, it’s impos­si­ble not to feel sad.

February 13, 2009 » Tags: , , , . » 2 Comments

NY Magazine on Innovation at the Times

Renegades

Aron Pilhofer, Andrew DeVigal, Steve Duenes, Matthew Ericson, and Gabriel Dance.
Photo courtesy NY Mag / Mike McGregor
Election Day Word Train »
Faces of the Dead »
Pogue-o-matic »

Sure there’s been a lot of recent bad news about the New York Times Com­pany, and news­pa­pers coast-to-coast are pulling back cov­er­age, filing for bank­ruptcy and clos­ing. But there is also another story to tell.

New York Mag­a­zine has a piece in this week’s issue on the Times Mul­ti­me­dia, Graph­ics, Inter­ac­tive Tech and R&D groups, titled The New Jour­nal­ism: Goos­ing the Gray Lady. It details some of the orga­ni­za­tional steps taken by the Times, in order to posi­tion itself for the day when the online prod­uct eclipses the print edi­tion in reach, rev­enue and relevance.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘NY Mag­a­zine on Inno­va­tion at the Times’

January 14, 2009 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Saving Buffalo’s Untold Beauty

Downtown Buffalo

Photo Credit: Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesA photo of downtown Buffalo.

The Times had a great piece yes­ter­day on Buffalo’s archi­tec­tural legacy, and recent attempts to save his­toric buildings:

Buf­falo is home to some of the great­est Amer­i­can archi­tec­ture of the late 19th and early 20th cen­turies, with major archi­tects like Henry Hobson Richard­son, Fred­er­ick Law Olm­sted, Louis Sul­li­van and Frank Lloyd Wright build­ing mar­vels here. Together they shaped one of the grand­est early visions of the demo­c­ra­tic Amer­i­can city.

Yet Buf­falo is more com­monly iden­ti­fied with the crum­bling infra­struc­ture, aban­doned homes and dwin­dling jobs that have defined the Rust Belt for the past 50 years. And for decades its archi­tec­ture has seemed strangely frozen in time.

There is also an accom­pa­ny­ing slide show, from which the photo above was taken.

Full dis­clo­sure: I’m orig­i­nally from Buffalo.

November 17, 2008 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

Newsweek’s “Hackers and Spending Sprees”

Newsweek.com has some inter­est­ing tid­bits about the recently com­pleted pres­i­den­tial elec­tion between Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin:

  • Palin’s “rogue” shop­ping spree was greater than the ear­lier reported $150,000.
  • Obama didn’t choose Hillary Clin­ton for the VP slot mostly because of her husband.
  • Palin appeared with noth­ing on save for a towel, when McCain aides and strate­gists came to her hotel room to brief her at the Repub­li­can Convention.
  • Obama thinks some debate ques­tions are stupid.

More will be released on Newsweek.com in the coming days.

November 5, 2008 » Tags: , , , , . » 2 Comments

Who Said Print is Dead?

OBAMA

Today’s edition of the New York Times.

I count myself lucky today, for scor­ing a copy of the paper before they ran out. Appar­ently, the sit­u­a­tion is the same through­out the city, (though I’ve heard rumors of another 50,000 copy run).

In fact, there are a hun­dred or so people stand­ing on line out­side the Times head­quar­ters, wait­ing for a fresh deliv­ery of news, printed on dead trees.

Print Isn’t Dead

A hundred or so people, waiting on line for today’s paper, in front of the Times headquarters in midtown.

From Gawker:

Every­body wants a sou­venir of Obama’s vic­tory, and you know what makes a great sou­venir? That’s right, a news­pa­per. This is a photo of a line out­side the NYT build­ing on 40th Street of people waiting—for a newspaper!

I hope that people still come to the Times for more than just a souvenir.

November 5, 2008 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Time.com Redesign

New Time.com

New design for the homepage of time.com, the website of Time Magazine.

Time Mag­a­zine started rolling out a redesign of time.com yes­ter­day – it was designed by my friend and former col­league Sean Vil­lafranca, who left our group at the Times ear­lier this year to become the Design Direc­tor for time.com.

It strikes me as a wel­come depar­ture from its pre­vi­ous CNN-esque iter­a­tion, and a little more faith­ful to the print design. I like the use of Arial Black, and the daring use of the TIME word­mark on the white back­ground. (Daring because it would’ve been far more pre­dictable to use the word­mark reversed on a red background.)

They seem to have only rolled-​out the home page and the arti­cle pages at this point – sec­tion fronts still show the legacy design. But on the whole, it’s a very good improve­ment to a very good news resource – just in time for the gen­eral elec­tion season.

ALSO – A few birdies tell me to expect some major design changes to wsj.com today or tues­day, coming hot-off-the-heels of their mag­a­zine launch this month. Yes, we’ve heard this before, but there are some pre­view screen­shots out there. Stay Tuned!

September 15, 2008 » Tags: , , . » 2 Comments

What Could Possibly Make Someone Want to Leave New York and Move to Buffalo?

Buffalo #1

Lisa’s tattoo confirms that Buffalo is indeed #1.

New York mag­a­zine has an inter­est­ing fea­ture on New York­ers moving to Buf­falo, NY, the very city that Lisa and I were raised in and sub­se­quently couldn’t wait to leave from after high school.

Some people will read this as a story of defeat. They will look at Her­beck and Cloyd and think, They came; they couldn’t cut it; good rid­dance. That’s also a famil­iar New York nar­ra­tive, one that’s espe­cially com­fort­ing to those of us who stay and stick it out. Because, sure, stained glass and spare bed­rooms are nice and all, but no one moves to New York because they think they’re going to get a great bar­gain on an apart­ment. You move here because you want to live in New York City.

The writer then goes on to say that this is not a story of defeat, but rather an opportunity:

But New York, for all its mythol­ogy, is no longer a fron­tier. Buf­falo is a fron­tier. And when you think of the actual fron­tier, you’ll recall that no one ever packed up and moved West to a gold-​rush town because they heard it had really good local theater.

Um, okay… Truth is, I know more former 716 area coders that are now in 212 or 718. But, it’s a pro­vok­ing premise for a city famous for little more than snow and four con­sec­u­tive failed Super­bowl bids.

August 31, 2008 » Tags: , , , . » 4 Comments

The Macktivist

macktivist

Illustration by Shira Golding

My friend of some 15+ years, R. Alvarez, just launched a sex column for The Indypen­dent, New York City’s lead­ing social jus­tice news­pa­per. It’s called The Mack­tivist, and she intends to make the column a “sex-​positive, edu­ca­tional, kink-, vanilla-, homo-, hetero-, bi-, trans-​friendly, smart go-​to for the dis­cern­ing reader.”

Not only is Ms. Alvarez a dear friend, but she also hap­pens to be an enter­tain­ing and gifted writer. Go read her column now, leave her a com­ment, and send in your questions!

August 11, 2008 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments

nytimes.com Outage

Graham

Reaction from Twitter user Graham Mudd, on the nytimes.com outage this afternoon.

Nytimes.com has been down for about an hour, and thank­fully it wasn’t my turn to watch it. I haven’t heard of any expla­na­tion yet, but it could be any­thing from prob­lems with DNS or our CDN. Who knows? I’m just a designer here.

It seems like just yes­ter­day, when every­one was com­plain­ing about recent down­time trou­bles at Twit­ter and Amazon, includ­ing us.

Adrienne

Despite Adrienne Shaffer’s tweet, we’re housebroken, I swear!

Hope­fully this is just a tem­po­rary blip. But, I had a good time read­ing people’s tweets.

6:27 pm UPDATE: The site is mostly up, but some func­tion­al­ity is not work­ing, such as Search.

August 5, 2008 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments

The Big Picture

NYTimes.com isn’t the only NYT prop­erty that’s doing inter­est­ing things with blogs these days – Boston.com launched a dif­fer­ent kind of photo blog ear­lier this month, The Big Pic­ture. With its over­sized photos, min­i­mal ads, and hardly a promo to other site con­tent, the pre­sen­ta­tion is clear and strik­ing – and praise is pour­ing in.

California Fires

Firefighters work to contain the Humboldt fire which started Wednesday, had grown to 19,000 acres and threatened more than 5,000 structures. (AP Photo/Jason Halley – Chico Enterprise-Record)

Another inter­est­ing facet about the blog is that it not writ­ten by a Globe pho­tog­ra­pher or photo editor, but by one of their web­site devel­op­ers. Andy Baio posted a great inter­view with the blog’s cre­ator and author, Alan Taylor, where he dis­cusses his inspi­ra­tion, method­ol­ogy, and what it’s like being a web devel­oper work­ing in a journalist’s world. When asked why more news­pa­per sites haven’t done this before, he replied:

“Even some of my favorite photo sites are often lim­ited to ‘Photo of the Day’ or ‘24 Hours in Pic­tures’ fea­tures. That’s inter­est­ing, and you can find some mind-​blowing images there, but I always felt like it lacked con­text, depth, story.”

Iowa Floods

Brandon Smith carries his two cats, Fry and Bender, to dry land from their flooded and evacuated home on June 12, 2008 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Photo by David Greedy/Getty Images)

As we move to an age where motion graph­ics and video reg­u­larly enhance our tra­di­tional news pre­sen­ta­tion, it’s inter­est­ing to take a step back and con­sider the power still pho­tog­ra­phy has to tell a story. And work­ing online with­out the space con­straint of print, news orga­ni­za­tions have an oppor­tu­nity to bring more depth and con­text to read­ers, through excel­lent photojournalism.

June 24, 2008 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

Infographics

I com­pleted a three-​day inten­sive news­room ori­en­ta­tion last week, in which the new faces at the Times are trained on poli­cies, prac­tices, and quirks of the paper. It’s an onboard­ing pro­ce­dure the likes of which I’ve never gone through in my career, and I think it’s a credit to the orga­ni­za­tion that they care so much about its tra­di­tions and cul­ture to invest so much time and energy wel­com­ing new people.

In addi­tion to the sem­i­nars on sourc­ing, ethics and back­ground, it was espe­cially inter­est­ing to meet all of the Desk Edi­tors and learn how they run their teams both online and in print. One-by-one, they filed in from National, Style, Travel, For­eign, the Mag­a­zines… it was a whirl­wind 3 days.

infographic

Deadly Rampage at Virginia Tech, updated April 23, 2007

One of the most inter­est­ing half-​hours was pre­sented by Archie Tse, a Graph­ics editor. Archie explained how the Times Graph­ics Desk is really unique among news orga­ni­za­tions, in that they go out and do report­ing before sit­ting down at their computer.

When you con­sider that news­pa­pers are cut­ting back on cov­er­age of every­thing these days, this is remarkable.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Infographics’

June 23, 2008 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring

The Times broke a huge story today, con­cern­ing New York Gov­er­nor Elliot Spitzer’s involve­ment with a pros­ti­tu­tion ring:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a fed­eral wire­tap arrang­ing to meet with a high-​priced pros­ti­tute at a Wash­ing­ton hotel last month, accord­ing to a law enforce­ment offi­cial and a person briefed on the investigation.

There are a lot of unan­swered ques­tions at the moment, but that pretty much says it all.

Slate points out the irony that Spitzer’s was brought down by the same inves­ti­ga­tion tac­tics he pio­neered as a pros­e­cu­tor. And, the Smok­ing Gun pulls an inter­est­ing tidbit out of the complaint:

…the affi­davit notes that after her appoint­ment with Client-9 ended, “Kristen” spoke with a Emper­ors Club booker, who said that she had been told that Client-9 “would ask you to do things that, like, you might not think were safe…” “Kristen” responded by saying, essen­tially, that she could handle guys like that.

Wow, let’s hope those details never come out.

March 10, 2008 » Tags: , , , . » 2 Comments

Subway Love

Lisa’s photo on Gothamist!Another Valentine’s Day related post – Lisa’s snap­shot of this note in the Car­roll MTA sta­tion made it to a post on Gothamist!

The orig­i­nal is avail­able in her Flickr photostream.

She is kind of a big deal, ’round these parts.

February 15, 2008 » Tags: , , , , , , . » 1 Comment

New Hampshire

It’s New Hamp­shire Pri­mary Day, (already?!), but I’m not going to make any pre­dic­tions. Hillary? Obama? McCain? Huck­abee? The polls have swung dra­mat­i­cally in the past week or so, in both par­ties. And, it seems that the coun­try is coming to one of those cul­tural tip­ping points that only occur once or twice per generation.

Some have com­pared this cycle to the elec­tion years of 1992, 1980, 1960… But, per­haps it’s more like the first months of 1968, before the assas­si­na­tions of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. derailed all hope, as well as the cam­paign of Eugene McCarthy. We find our­selves in an unpop­u­lar war that nobody knows how to get out of, sad­dled with an lame duck Pres­i­dent with low approval rat­ings, and no sit­ting Vice Pres­i­dent in the race, and we’re facing some eco­nomic uncer­tainty ahead. Still, there is hope on both sides of the aisle.

Is it a gen­er­a­tional tip­ping point? Are we as a nation head­ing toward a year much like that annus hor­ri­bilis of 1968? Nobody knows at this point, but maybe it’s best not to look back for com­par­isons – every­one across the polit­i­cal spec­trum is eager to move forward.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘New Hampshire’

January 8, 2008 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Village Academies/Esquire Event

We attended a fundraiser for Lisa’s work last night, hon­or­ing Bill Cosby and others. It was held in Esquire’s swank Esquire North pent­house on Cen­tral Park North, and the mag­a­zine is also fea­tur­ing Vil­lage Acad­e­mies founder Deb­o­rah Kenny in this month’s issue:

In six years, Kenny’s vision has grown into a trio of char­ter schools under the rubric of Vil­lage Acad­e­mies, located in New York precincts where a mus­cu­lar poverty has thrived for gen­er­a­tions. The num­bers alone tell a com­pelling story. Locally, pass­ing rates for seventh-​grade math hover around 30 per­cent. At HVA, the rate is a stun­ning 96 percent.

Cast mem­bers from Gossip Girl showed up, and Tyler Hilton played a few songs, (who played Elvis in Walk the Line Johnny Cash movie).

midtown office + loved ones

At least the ladies look good – Matt and I have taken better pictures.

More photos below the fold.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Village Academies/Esquire Event’

November 20, 2007 » Tags: , , , , , , , , . » 0 Comments

Business Week Redesign

Business Week redesignI saw that over at Brand New today, that Busi­ness Week mag­a­zine has done an inter­est­ing rebrand­ing and redesign.

Noth­ing major on the logo­type – gone are the serifs. But, between the covers is the real treat:

It’s inside that the mag­a­zine feels more rel­e­vant with a clean design and con­sis­tent typo­graphic treat­ments that sway you from begin­ning to end. Simple size shifts from front of the book to fea­ture sto­ries to back of the book are enough indi­ca­tors that you are chang­ing sec­tions with­out resort­ing to extra fancy open­ing spreads for the fea­ture stories.

It has a very crisp and modern look, remind­ing me a bit of CNN International’s on-​screen design. I wish other Amer­i­can pub­li­ca­tions and media would take this approach. The worst offend­ers are sport broad­cast­ers, who use tick­ers, graph­ics, and picture-in-picture inter­views to do every­thing but show you the game.

UPDATE: David Sleight takes a look at the typog­ra­phy behind the redesign.

October 16, 2007 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

ICA Boston

IMG_2306

Photo, originally uploaded by droush16.

It looks like the new ICA on the South Boston water­front has to delay it’s Sep­tem­ber opening:

In inter­views yes­ter­day, ICA offi­cials, archi­tect Ricardo Scofidio, and con­struc­tion com­pany man­ager John Macomber said that the remain­ing work was not major. Among the pend­ing tasks — termed “minutiae” by one ICA trustee — was the need to test the building’s ticket counter and cli­mate con­trol system.

[via]

August 4, 2006 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

Weekly Dig Redesign

Weekly Dig LogoI look for­ward to pick­ing up the new Dig every Wednes­day morn­ing while I’m in line for coffee at Herrell’s. It’s the only read­able “alt” weekly I’ve ever come across – anywhere.

And finally, the Dig has a new web­site to match their print offer­ing. There is a daily blog, my favorite column Media Farm, a round-​up of local events in the right column. Also, you may sub­scribe via a vari­ety of RSS feeds.

July 27, 2006 » Tags: . » 0 Comments

The New NYTimes.com

The New York Times launched a modest redesign over the week­end, and it does a great job of pre­sent­ing large amounts of infor­ma­tion in a coher­ent, orga­nized way.

new NYTimes.com

The new homepage of NYTimes.com.

Khoi has the details on his weblog:

I think it’s a ster­ling piece of work, a great exam­ple of how to evolve a user expe­ri­ence rather than rein­vent it: the best reac­tion it could receive from read­ers (those not among that van­ish­ingly small subset of the gen­eral pop­u­lace who can be called “design savvy”) would be some­thing along the lines of “The new design looks just like the old design.” That would suit me fine, because it would signal a con­ti­nu­ity that I think is com­pletely appro­pri­ate for such a closely watched site like The New York Times’, and besides, I know for a fact that it’s more ele­gant and more useful than it was before.

And though Khoi says that he is not respon­si­ble for the design, it’s clear to me that who­ever is was heav­ily influ­enced by his work – espe­cially the recent re-​launch of The Onion. Bravo!

April 3, 2006 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

Waitin’ Tables

Can’t help but pass along this Remain­der from Jason Kottke – NY Times food critic Frank Bruni spends a week “undercover” as a waiter at a [Cam­bridge] restau­rant. In the end, he real­izes the hell that is being a waiter:

trying to be fluent in the menu and the food, calm in the face of chaos, patient in the pres­ence of rude­ness, avail­able when diners want that, invis­i­ble when they don’t. It’s a lot, and I should remem­ber that.

Does this real­iza­tion dampen his dining expec­ta­tions? Nope:

I’d still like fre­quent water refills. And a mar­tini from hell. Straight up.

It reminds me of the polite little argu­ments Pres­ley & I have on whether or not to leave 20%, even when receiv­ing shitty ser­vice. Though I never advo­cate leav­ing less than 15%, I also think that the bonus tip should be reserved for com­pe­tent, polite servers. What’s wrong with that?

January 26, 2006 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

“Underground Man” update

Thanks to Mint, I noticed that a few vis­i­tors were referred here look­ing for the text of a New Yorker arti­cle writ­ted in Feb­ru­ary 2004 titled, Under­ground Man: Can the former C.I.A. agent who saved New York’s subway get the Tube back on track?. I had scanned the text a while back, but my direc­tory secu­rity set­tings on my server were tight­ened, and the scans were no longer available.

So, if you’re look­ing for the arti­cle, it’s is now prop­erly linked in the orginal post.

I still wish I had a way of extract­ing the text via OCR…

September 12, 2005 » Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . » 3 Comments

Scooterist killed in Boston

I am shocked and hor­ri­fied by a report in the Globe today, that a Scooter­ist was killed last night in a col­li­sion with a truck:

Police were search­ing last night for the driver of a trac­tor trailer sus­pected of strik­ing, drag­ging, and killing an 18-year-old man riding a motor scooter at the Mass­a­chu­setts Avenue onramp to the Mass­a­chu­setts Turnpike.

After the impact, the truck con­tin­ued down the ramp, taking the scooter and its rider with it, police said. Both were found at the bottom of the ramp, which was closed for sev­eral hours after the acci­dent, police said.

Even more dis­turb­ing that this, the driver either didn’t know the col­li­sion occured, or fled the scene:

After hit­ting the teenager, the driver of the 18-wheeler stopped momen­tar­ily on the Turn­pike to look at a tire that was on fire, said Boston police spokesman David Estrada. He refused the help of sev­eral Turn­pike work­ers and drove off with the tire ablaze, police said.

We don’t know much about the victim yet, but this inci­dent should serve as an impor­tant reminder that motor scoot­ers are not toys — they are motor­cy­cles. Too many people just buy a new twist-n-go Vespa, with­out much expe­ri­ence riding, or knowl­edge of safe riding habits. We fre­quently see Vespa riders in shorts and t-shirts, with no hel­mets or gloves, duck­ing in and out of busy city traf­fic. This is simply insane.

Do your­self a favor — take a motor­cy­cle safety course. It’s well worth the $200, and you get a dis­count on your insurance.

September 9, 2005 » Tags: , , . » 0 Comments