The hasidic community in Brooklyn's South Williamsburg neighborhood is protesting a city plan to build a bike path through the haredi enclave, citing congestion concerns - and worries about the modesty of hipster cyclists passing through.
The debate, which erupted last week at a community board meeting, is the latest salvo between the veteran hasidic residents and the artists and college students who have taken over the Greenpoint and Williamsburg areas just to the north, bringing stores such as American Apparel and attracting racy H&M billboards in their wake.
"The issue with modesty, it's a problem, but we live in New York, you know what I mean?" said Simon Weiser, a community board member who represents the Hasidim.
"My concern is that there are three bike lanes right next to each other and so many children, so many schools, in a very small area. Everyone understands and knows a bike lane is a nuisance."
Weiser pointed to recent accidents involving cyclists and drivers, and said he himself was nearly run over by someone biking the wrong way on a one-way street. He said he had proposed requiring cyclists to have licenses and insurance.
The lane, part of a proposed "greenway" path linking the north Brooklyn waterfront to neighborhoods farther south, would join two existing bike lanes on parallel streets.
The city Department of Transportation said in a statement that the lanes would increase safety by channeling cyclists into clearly marked lanes. The project was developed with the approval of the community board, according to spokesman Seth Solomonow.
The issue attracted television news vans to Brooklyn after the New York Post reported that Weiser had also aired the concerns of a constituent who complained about scantily-clad cyclists coming through the area.
"It's something that was brought to me, one resident who raised a concern, but it's not something for non-Jews so I didn't bring it up," Weiser told The Jerusalem Post on Friday. "We live in a civilized world, you can't ban things like this, people wouldn't understand it."
Weiser said his ire over modesty was reserved for a billboard company that has so far refused to take down an ad near the neighborhood for the new television show 90210, a spinoff of the popular 1990s program Beverly Hills 90210 that features a group of nubile teens wearing bikinis and swim trunks lounging in a pool.
He said the Swedish clothing company H&M had agreed to remove a billboard the community considered too overtly sexual earlier this year.
"Usually companies understand. We call them very politely and ask them to take these things down, and [they] respect our request not to put up a racy billboard in our neighborhood," Weiser said.
