Regarding your recent “Dining Out” column: come on! As a writer, you can do better than using New York as a frame of reference for discussing restaurants’ cuisine and atmosphere. Most of the dishes described in your O Ya review come out of Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore — not New York. I’ve read your reviews for a long time, but that one seemed as though you had about five minutes to write it.
Mihir Shah
Burlington
Two sides to every story
Your in-memoriam piece on bicyclist Kelly Wallace said she was “hit by a car in a crosswalk.” You didn’t say whether she was obeying motor-vehicle laws at the time. That’s key. Most bike riders in Boston, for example, run red lights. Did she?
Many bikers ride against traffic, too, and in between rows of cars. They also whoosh by on sidewalks, treating people like inconvenient meat pylons on cement slalom courses. They’re supposed to ride slowly, announcing their presence via bells, but few to none do. What do they care if mere pedestrians suddenly turn and get maimed by 200 pounds of rolling steel? Yet they expect the public to care about them. Perhaps they should stop caring so much about “global warming” and start being more courteous to their fellow humans.
Unless and until cyclists start obeying current laws (for instance, by using reflectors and lights at night, and by discontinuing to ride without the use of hands) they shouldn’t be surprised if “dooring” becomes a fine — and widely practiced — art. It’s not enough to wear helmets; cyclists need to use what’s inside those helmets, too.
Robert A. Sides
Brookline
I didn’t know Kelly, but many of my friends did. It’s sad that there have been two bicycle deaths already this year in Boston. It just goes to show how horribly inadequate the streets in Boston are when it comes to cyclists. I bike to and from work, and also run errands around the city, logging an average of 30 miles per day. Each day, I narrowly avoid at least one accident because there aren’t any bike lanes, or because the potholes are so bad that I have to dart in and out of traffic to avoid them. In fact, just the other night, while biking from my friend’s house in Kenmore Square, a drunk driver veered right and forced me into a row of parked cars. I struck three parked cars and flipped over my handlebars, spraining both wrists while also cutting up my knees and elbow.
To top it all off, bikers have to contend with Boston’s notoriously bad drivers, who often seem more concerned with talking on their cell phones or cutting off other drivers than with minding their own surroundings and looking out for pedestrians or cyclists.
J.P. Shipley
Somerville
A little less than kind
Regarding your recent editorial “The Sense of It,” same-sex unions are different in kind from marriages. A marriage is an exclusive, one-flesh biological union between a man and a woman. As such, it is the only human relationship that can produce a child and allow her to be raised by both mother and father. The good of marriage is therefore necessary to the survival of society and should be protected by the state.
