From a tipster on Bogart Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn:

I thought you might appreciate this picture. It was taken today out of my bedroom window. A car drove up onto the sidewalk, and the man in the car promptly got on his cell phone while sitting in the driver's seat. Two police cars drove by (this picture shows the second cruiser), and neither even slowed down. I have heard rumors from TA that my neighborhood is home to one of the highest concentrations of tickets for cyclists for equivalent offenses (my roommate was given a ticket a few blocks away for biking on the sidewalk around street construction). While biking on the sidewalk perhaps justly deserves a ticket, a ticket for driving on the sidewalk is even more justified.

Maybe it's a matter of sharing the windshield perspective.

Triple-parked cops and judges in Lower Manhattan

The Daily News reports:

After months of community pressure, city Department of Transportation officials promised Brooklyn News the traffic-light timing would be adjusted over the weekend ... with an increased interval allowing pedestrians more time to cross the street.

"A little call from a reporter never hurt anything," said Principal Christina Fuentes who was notified by Brooklyn News late last week - not the DOT - that the light would be adjusted.

A third-grader was hit by a car and injured near the school last spring, prompting parents and others in the neighborhood to seek safety improvements -- along with Transportation Alternatives, which has consistently cited signal timing as an easy and effective means of reducing pedestrian injuries and deaths.

Transportation Alternatives has requested safety measures for other schools along dangerous Third and Fourth Aves., said TA official Brooke DuBose.

More than 30 pedestrians have been killed along the avenues since 1995 - including six children since 2004, according to TA figures.

Meanwhile, in Bushwick, a 7-year-old who was looking forward to starting first grade today was run down by two vehicles on Sunday as he crossed Bleecker Street with his mother and 8-year-old brother. Christian Acteopan died after being hit by a Mitsubishi Eclipse, which fled the scene, and a second vehicle traveling behind. The driver of the Eclipse was found and charged with leaving the scene of an accident; the second driver stayed at the scene and was not charged.

Acteopan's death comes less than a week after the unveiling of the heart-rending monument to three children killed by motorists on Third Avenue. The event included an announcement that DOT will be making long-awaited pedestrian safety improvements to intersections throughout Downtown Brooklyn.

Photo: New York Post

B.I.K.E.
A feature-length documentary by Jacob Septimus & Anthony Howard

If you've been to underground noise rock shows, dangerous loft parties in derelict areas, or unlawful bicycle events in the streets, you might've noticed some of the members of the Black Label Bicycle Club. They tend to be tattooed and pierced and wear black-painted jeans-jackets. They seem to like to party and fight. And they build their own bicycles. Tall-bikes, in particular: frames welded on top of other frames so the seat rides six feet off the ground. They're easy to spot cruising down a crowded avenue, or jousting under a bridge, carrying a long plumbing pipe and trying to knock an opponent to the tar.

But if you've only ever gawked from afar at these pedal-powered Hell's Angels, you don't know the whole story.

Granted, they're hard to get to know. As visible as they are, the Black Label Bike Club remains a tight knit, self-protective, secretive sort of group. Anthony Howard wanted to know more, so he tried to join the club. And he made a film about it.

Howard throws himself headlong (and headfirst off more than a few tall-bikes) into the Black Label lifestyle, and, along with co-director Jacob Septimus, discovers that Black Label is about a lot more than booze, brawls and bikes. Comprised mainly of artists driven by anti-materialism and a belief that the impending apocalypse will render cars useless and bicycles in power, BLBC battles mainstream consumer culture and rival gangs for its vision of a better tomorrow. Howard's vision, however, becomes increasingly blurred by drugs and self-destruction. In his desperate attempts to appease the group, Howard loses perspective on what the group values, and loses control of his own life.

This fascinating and gorgeously gritty film provides insight into a passionate political subculture, and exposes the darker aspects of living on the wild side.

THE VENUE:
We at Rooftop Films are thrilled to return to our outlaw days on the warehouse roofs in the East Williamsburg Industrial Park, our home from 1998-2003. If you remember those gritty old days—showing movies on top of nearly abandoned buildings with car fires and gun shots crackling in the near-distance—you won't want to miss the opportunity to watch this renegade film on a gorgeous industrial roof on the border of Bushwick.