Time’s Up, Cars Suck!
New York City used to be all about car culture. But throughout the 1990’s and early 2000’s, environmental advocates and community members built a culture surrounding non-polluting transportation. Eventually, these efforts helped establish the bike lane infrastructure that so many New Yorkers utilize and value today.
In this episode, “Time’s Up Cars Suck!,” Bill Di Paola (Founder of Time's Up! and Director of The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space) tells a story about biking in New York City, the establishment of the environmental group Time’s Up, and the role of grassroots and community-led initiatives in shaping sustainable urban design. Di Paola reflects on the ways that group bike rides build a sense of community and how that sense of community becomes a means for making the city a safer and environmentally healthier place.
All proceeds from this episode will be donated to Time’s Up, a grassroots environmental group that uses educational outreach and direct action to promote a more sustainable, less toxic city.
-
[The voices of all the storytellers from Season One of The Sonocene begin to overlap and blend together in a single, collective gesture.]
Listen.
Listen to my voice.
To spoken words and ambient sounds.
[Bicycle gears “click” in idle. Pedals engage the gears. Someone whistles. A large group of bikers cheer and ring bells. Cars drive through Times Square. Demonstrators shout, “No pollution, no asthma!”]
Together they tell the story about people and place; about plants and animals; about the ecological relationships within New York City during a time of rapid change. And the way they all resonate as an interwoven network of vibrations.
[Voices and sounds crescendo, and then hard cut to silence. All the storytellers from Season One exclaim in unison:]
Welcome to The Sonocene—
[The voice of “Time’s Up, Cars Suck!” episode storyteller, Bill Di Paola, replies.]
ecological stories told through sound.
[A group of demonstrators passionately shout at an outdoor event.]
[00:40] “Time's up, Car's Suck! Time's up, Car's Suck! Time's up, Car's Suck! Time's up, Car's Suck! Time's up, Car's Suck! Hallelujah! Welcome! Wecome! Woo!”
[The sounds of the demonstrators crossfade to a large group of cyclists yelling, cheering, and ringing bells. These sounds fade to your background.]
[00:57] Well, it's time for change, right? We need to change the way we think about stuff. You know, certainly the planet. And I am clear as day that I'm an environmentalist. I started an environmental organization 35 years ago called Time's Up. All we did is copy European designs where they had more livable cities, where there were bike lanes. There were pedestrian plazas. The trains came into the city. It wasn't about all car culture. And then you realize like, "Wow! The freedom I have being on a bicycle is like nothing else." It's an incredible sense of freedom and it's good for the planet and it's good for you.
[1:35] Today's storyteller is...
My name is Bill de Paola. I'm director of Time's Up Environmental Group and also the Director and Founder of the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space in New York City.
[The raucous sounds from the group of cyclists enters your foreground.]
[1:59] I was born in New York City. I was in Queens. I was in the Bronx. Never really in Brooklyn. never in Staten Island. But mostly, yeah, Manhattan. Things have really changed environmentally. Throw garbage on the ground. Blowing CFC gas. Staten Island just became one of those places where we could dump trash and have the least resistance. And years ago, we found out that the highest rate of asthma in the East Coast was in the South Bronx. A lot of environmental racism there.
[The cheering cyclists crossfade to demonstrators shouting, “...No pollution! No asthma! No pollution! No asthma!” The sounds of cheering cyclists then returns to your background.]
[2:29] Central Park was dangerous as well. And cars were just parking there. They were parking on the lawn. Why in this majorly flat city, that everything is so condensed, is no one riding bicycles? And then I realized, because I was riding a bike myself, I can answer my own question: it was incredibly dangerous. People would scream out of the car window. It was very car culture. Later on, I learned that there were places around the world where people could be in cities, and cities could be a place to live and cities could be a place for kids, and cities could be safe and cities could be clean. And it all had to do with sustainable urban design where you can design a city. And that seemed to be something I was very interested in.
[A smaller group of cyclists ride, cheer, and chant together: “Who fights the power? The bikers fight the power. And when the bikers fight the power they fight it all the way down! Who fights the power? The bikers fight the power. And when the bikers fight the power they fight it all the way down!”]
[3:24] So I wanted to make the city more livable. I started an environmental organization 35 years ago called Time's Up. All we did is copy European designs where they had more livable cities, where there were bike lanes. There were pedestrian plazas. The trains came into the city. It wasn't about all car culture. So we had to change that. And the way we change it by just increasing bicycling. Eventually led, after much demonstrating and much lawsuits and the city trying to stop us, led to the bike lanes, which led to the greenways, which led to the auto-free plazas. And it really caught on.
[Birds chirp from trees. People chat nearby. Music plays from a car stereo system in the distance. This is a soundscape from Tompkins Square Park.]
[4:10] In 1988, we worked on a lot of issues. There's this one neighborhood, you know, the Lower East Side, Alphabet City? Whatever you want to call it. That people have made a difference and they made a difference in this community where the sustainable way and it started off with kind of a tragedy or just a situation where the city was broke. And it happened everywhere. It wasn't political. People had to either leave the neighborhood or they had to fix up their own buildings because they were kind of being abandoned. The landlords left because of a financial crisis. So they had to reclaim the buildings. Then they reclaimed the community gardens. Then they developed all this work through skill-share. I'm a plumber. I taught other people to do plumbing. Other people taught how to do electricity. We wanted to empower people how to use tools, and no one showed up. So then we said, "Hey, come fix your bike." The room is packed.
[The Tompkins Square Park soundscape crossfades to the sounds of an industrial fan, casual conversation, and mechanical tools. People are fixing and cleaning their bicycles at a Time’s Up Bike Workshop event.]
[5:05] Someone might be coming because they love bicycling. Another person just wants, have nothing to do and they want to get outside and ride through Central Park. Another person just wants to meet people. Another person just wants to see something for the first time or make some new friends. I understood that that was really important, not to drill hole in the environmental message at every event. In fact, we tell the ride leaders and the event coordinators say nothing, say almost nothing. Just tell them when it starts. Tell them when it ends. Do safety stuff. If they have questions, answer it. But say nothing, because we want it to be their dream.
[The sounds from the bike workshop event momentarily cut to a group of demonstrators singing “...realize our dream!” The workshop soundscape returns to your background.]
[5:44] It did seem like this group bike ride thing wasn't really there because we were kind of discovering it, but it seemed like we were creating it by traveling places on bikes. Then we got more people and we felt safe. So then it just hit us like, damn, let's go for Central Park!
[The workshop soundscape hard cuts to a soundscape from Central Park. Cyclists ride down the bike lanes in the park. People walk and chat nearby. Birds chirp all around. Someone whistles. No cars can be heard.]
[6:00] Why would we go for Central Park? Because, in my mind, this is it! We can flip this city thing, right!? Because I'm a little bit of a strategist. Instead of, like, New York being the worst place for the environment. Why don't we focus on these famous places? Why should there be so many cars traveling through Central Park? So we'll focus on that. And then we'll focus on Times Square.
[The Central Park soundscape hard cuts to a soundscape from Times Square. Cars honk. Engines idle. People shuffle and mutter amidst the congestion. Police whistles howl.]
[6:20] And everyone was like you can't change Times Square. And I was like, we got to try, right? Because Times Square is a big one! And that should be a pedestrian plaza. It would be anywhere in the world that would be a pedestrian plaza! And it's the most famous place probably in the world.
[The Times Square soundscape continues and then slowly crossfades to a large group of cyclists yelling, cheering, and ringing bells.]
[6:49] It started off with 20 people in the first couple of rides. You know, this is like 30 years ago. So the first couple of rides, most of the people who came yelled at us and said, "the park is way too dangerous!" And we said, "no, community will make it safer." So we increased biking from within Central Park, and those rides were getting up to a hundred people. And then, therefore, it was multiplying and multiplying. So then we just around '95, we just started doing group bike rides everywhere: to Coney Island, the Central Park Ride, the Riverside Ride, the Moonlight Ride. And there was this bike ride that was kind of a little bit later on called the Critical Mass Ride. And the word "critical mass" was exactly what we were after. It was the last Friday of the month. It would last about an hour. And it really kind of like really pushed this idea of bringing in more people. We're getting numbers on the Moonlight Ride of maybe 40 new people and then maybe 80 people. But the Critical Mass could really bump it up to thousands of people a month.
[The cheering and yelling from the cyclist group increases (as if more have joined their ride).]
[7:46] You know, just the math. And that's what we need because, you know, we need to flip the city! So you want to make the rides as short as possible and people will want to go again. And that's what we were after, right? You know, make it short fun. Feed them. Throw some community, throw some music. So that really worked. And that worked around till about 2001. And then the police just really got intense.
[The sounds of the cyclist group seem to grow more intense or dark. Police sirens and more yelling can be heard clearly within the soundscape.]
[8:12] They said to us, like, "look, these group bike rides need a permit. You're blocking." We're like, "we're not blocking traffic. We are traffic."
[The sounds of the cyclist group momentarily transitions to a demonstrator stating, “We're traffic. And we have a right to be on the streets just like anybody else.” The sounds of the cyclist group and police return to your background.]
[8:24] And the weird thing is, when you look at this in history, people are going to focus on this Critical Mass Bike Ride because this is the one that got all the media attention. This is the one that had the most police. But we were putting out a calendar of events, Time's Up, which we still do today, with a lot smaller rides. So, in my mind, it wasn't just the Critical Mass.
[The sounds of the cyclist group and police fade to silence as a group leader addresses a group of cyclists: “This tour is for the Second People's Environment Bike throughout the South Bronx, and we've been touring a number of environmental sites, but also historic…”]
[8:53] So we are back in the year of around 2002. What about getting women on bikes and what about different style bikes? Because Americans are all riding bikes for sports reasons. So I started bringing these up at the meetings of Time's Up. I was like, "Hey, you know, this is kind of a big deal now. We look like we're going to win this thing. We're going to flip New York City." And, you know, they're like, "You're crazy. We're never going to get that stuff." I was like, "No, because we just have to create it.
[The dialogue from the group leader slowly crossfades to a large group of cyclists cheering and yelling.]
[9:17] Those people are going to bike to work. They'll bike to Wall Street, you know what I mean? We're going to just flip it." We got the bicycling, pedicabs, electric vehicles, kind of low tech electric vehicles. It was going well. Around 2003, there might have been 4000, 5000 people on this Critical Mass Ride. Maybe 100 people on all the other bike rides. Our bike workshops were going. We had over a hundred volunteers. So then the 2004 Republican National Convention rolls into New York City.
[Car brakes screech. A motorcycle engine revs. A group of cyclists yell nearby.]
[9:55] And we're like, just doing our thing. We're increasing biking. The city is trying to stop us. So, yeah, we put out something that said the "Bike National Convention" because we wanted to show the Republicans—I felt in a good way—like, "Hey, the cities are changing. There's people biking in all the cities." They did not see it that way. The New York City Police Department, they were like, "look, we're going to crack down on you like you've never seen before."
[The buzzing sound of a helicopter enters your background.]
[10:18] They actually showed up to our space on Houston Street and they're like, "No negotiations! You need to get a permit. You're all going to be arrested. We're going to have a helicopter, you know, above your space tonight," which they did. They flew a helicopter above a space and they surrounded our space on Houston Street. So then they tried to sue us to stop the rides. And there were several lawsuits back and forth. We won almost every lawsuit. The most important thing, if you live in a city is not free speech. It's the right to assemble and the right to have these spaces open to the public.
[The helicopter sounds fade to silence as someone uses a megaphone to address a group of demonstrators:]
[10:47] “Over the last few months an inordinate amount of police are assigned to this peaceful First Amendment activity. We saw last month, and I've seen this evening, even helicopters up in the sky. We've seen needless and false arrests being made. We've seen bike locks that have been broken by power saws. Bikes have been seized by the NYPD. Moreover, last month, for the first time since the RNC in August, orange netting was used to conduct preemptive arrests. We also have already heard this evening that the orange netting is already being set.”
[The megaphone speaker fades to silence as the sounds from a large group of cyclists enter your foreground.]
[11:37] So public space in a city is difficult. And the streets are difficult. And there needed to be allowance for other things besides cars. And we pushed it. And maybe it came a little too early, maybe it would have happened anyway. But we pushed it, and sure enough, the Republic Convention did happen.
[Sounds of conflict: police whistles blow, people yell in anger and frustration, bodies shift and push.]
[12:00] I had to get the St. Mark's Church on 10th Street. It has a big courtyard. Can we come to the church after the ride? Just because we need a safe place to end? So they said, "Sure." The ride happens. The police tried to stop it, but it goes fine. You know, we make it. But we make it to the church and they arrested like 200 people right outside the church, maybe 250. Very violently, I might add, bicyclists got arrested. I was quoted in the Times the next day that, you know, "This isn't anarchy. This isn't, you know, anti-capitalism. This is community. And community has positive things and negative things. And community in this case doesn't pollute. And community could be the future." Did we attack the Republican National Convention? Did we even go near Madison Square Garden? No, we just did a bike ride promoting nonpolluting transportation, but we called it the Bike National Convention, you know, for a month. Big deal.
[The sounds of conflict intensify. You can hear Bill exclaim, “Let them through!” Someone else yells, HEY!” Then a hard cut to silence followed by a slow fade of light traffic, pedestrians walking, and mechanical work. The sounds of Times Square slowly enter your foreground.]
[13:02] And then at a certain point, Bloomberg came in and he was like, "So what do you guys want?" And we're like, "in the most amazing city in the world with a grid system. Give us a DOT person who understands the basic concept, who went to school for it," and they did. They put in Janette Sadik-Khan. And she understood the basics. And sure enough, they started putting in the bike lanes. They started having the auto-free plazas. And finally we got the cars out of Central Park, that took a little bit more demonstrating. And they started rebuilding Times Square.
[13:34] Then somewhere between 2007 and 2010, we started working with the city and they're like, "okay, we did it. You know, no one's using this infrastructure. Go out there." I'm like, "Yes! I'm going to interview people who are in this new infrastructure that the city created because we pushed the city." And they're on the phone, because cell phones were around back then, and the Europeans, like, "you're never going to believe I'm sitting." They're inviting their friends, as I'm talking to them, to come to New York City. So these are people with a lot of money, tourists, right? They travel around the world. They have never seen New York City with sustainable infrastructure. It has always been car culture. So this is their favorite thing to do: hang out in Times Square, go in Central Park, go in a community garden. So I went back with my report, I said, "throw away these reports. It's going to happen by itself. You created it. They're going to do it." And sure enough, that's what happened. So that's the story of New York City that I was involved in.
[The sounds of cyclists yelling and cheering, bikes passing on the street, and police whistles begin to blend with the sounds of Times Square. Demonstrators begin to chant, “Time’s up, cars suck! Time’s up, cars suck!” There is a swell in volume, a swift crescendo, which then hard cuts to the soundscape of a quiet New York City. No traffic noise. Just the ambient resonance of an abandoned city.]
[14:33] COVID. Bam! Manhattan is paralyzed, gets hit harder than any other city. A thousand people dying a day! You know, we're the first person hit. We have no vaccine. We have nothing. It's crazy. No one wants to get in the subway. No one wants to do anything. But what do people think about? Like, "hey, I'm looking out the window and there's people bicycling.
[A bicycle gear “clicks” in idle. Pedals engage the bike’s gears as a cyclist propels themselves and the bike down a bike lane.]
[14:51] Yeah, that's clean air. I don't need to be in the subway. I don't need to be on a bus. Oh, wow." You know, companies then say, "well we could deliver stuff on bikes. We're already doing that. Let's step up our presence on the Internet. Hey, restaurants, why don't you go on the street?" They would had never gone on the street 20 years ago because the streets were just for cars. So when COVID came, because we had opened up this area. It really helped, I feel, safe in New York City and people like my mom, who I couldn't get food to, so I had to go online and get bicycles delivering food. And most of these bikes, were not just bicycles, they were electric bicycles which are moving the food around. Now, did this just happen in New York City? No, it happened in every city in the world! So right now, bikes got credit. I don't know how far it's going to go...
[A solo cyclist rides a bike in New York City. They pedal along a bike lane and around traffic. They audibly inhale and exhale.]
[15:38] But when you're riding a bicycle, you feel the air hit your face. You feel like when you breathe the breath, it actually comes right in your lungs and you're making the energy that's making the bike go faster. And you don't want to lose that energy by braking. And you just have this amazing feeling. And then an obstruction comes in your way—a problem, a pedestrian, a car— and you move around it. And then you realize, "Wow! The freedom I have being on a bicycle is like nothing else." It's an incredible sense of freedom and it's good for the planet and it's good for you.
[The sounds of the solo cyclist slowly fade to silence.]
[A simple electronic melody, alongside a resonant percussive groove elicits a feeling of earnest contemplation. This is the outro music, composed by UCC Harlo.]
[16:27] It's hard work. It is. There's no doubt about it, to do anything. These things are hard, but it's not as hard as people think, right? Because if you look at bicycling, the group bike ride concept can be done in any city where you just start a Moonlight Ride through your park and that'll increase biking and then keep trying. Never give up.
[16:46] The Sonocene is supported by Humanities New York, the NYU Center for the Humanities, and the NYU Graduate School of Arts and Science Music Department. Our production team is a collective of environmental humanities scholars and artists, including Elizabeth Fickey, Bailey Hilgren, Konstantine Vlasis. Original Music by Annie Garlid, a.k.a. UCC Harlo. Sound Design and Mixing by Yi-Wen Lai-Tremewan. And voiceover by me, Elizabeth Geist. All proceeds from today's episode will be donated to Time’s Up Environmental Group. If you'd like to support this podcast, have an ecological story you'd like to share, or would like to learn more about the topics of today's episode, please visit our website at www.thesonoscene.com or check out our social media pages @thesonocene. Thanks for listening.
