BARE-BREASTED BABES BIKE IN YOUR FACE

NAKED CYCLISTS VS. HASIDIC JEWS: BATTLE OF THE BIKE LANE
Activists say ultra-Orthodox caused removal of bike lane to drive away riders in scanty clothes

Associated Press
December 19, 2009

BROOKLYN, N.Y. -- Bicyclists planning a Saturday protest are calling it their "Freedom Ride" - free of clothing, that is. And they may be pedaling naked in a fierce snowstorm, if the forecast holds.

The removal of clothing is meant as a protest over the removal of a bike lane in Williamsburg, an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn.

The activists want to go topless in front of Hasidic residents who "can't handle scantily clad women" on wheels, bike messenger Heather Loop told a local newspaper earlier this week.

The newspaper, The Brooklyn Paper, suggested the scantily clad protesters might roll into the neighborhood at sundown Saturday - just as families leave synagogue services on the Sabbath.

Bicycling advocates claim New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg erased the bike lane because conservative residents don't like seeing women in skimpy clothing riding by every day.

Members of the Satmar branch of Judaism "don't want to see women in shorts," says Baruch Herzfeld, who runs a bike-sharing program in a community where Jewish women wear hefty skirts and blouses with long sleeves and men heavy coats and hats, even in summer.

"The rabbis want to keep their people in the 18th century, and they don't want the world to intrude into their enclave," says Herzfeld.

The bike lane battle is pitting Hasids against hipsters and, in some cases, Jew against Jew. "The mayor made a deal with religious fanatics trying to enforce old traditions that don't belong in the 21st century," he [Herzfeld] said.

The biggest challenge for the topless riders, however, might not be the law - it's legal to go topless in New York in public - but the weather: Forecasters are predicting as much as 10 inches of snow and brisk winds.