Dog owners in the city ...

The weather was great on Christmas day so I took a looping bicycle ride through Brooklyn and the Lower Eastside. It has been a while and I was a happy, happy guy.

Just before I started back across the Williamsburg Bridge, I stopped for coffee at New Punjab Deli on 2nd Avenue, just north of Houston Street. New Punjab was voted, according to the newspaper article taped to the window, to be the best Pakistani Cabbie Chow place in the city. I don't know about that, but I do know there were half a dozen Pakistani cabbies blocking my way to the coffee, and the food looked pretty good.

I fought my way through the throng, got my coffee and went outside ... to keep an eye on the bicycle because I only had my light chain ... and to get out of the way of the cabbie parade. While I was there, this older gentleman walked past with his long-legged, skinny, twitchy little rat dog -- a whippet, I think, but it doesn't matter because the thing was wearing a puffy vest and thereby relinquished it's right to be part of any breed. The dog started to pee on my bicycle tire while I stood there. I pulled the coffee cup from my lips.

"Oh, man, don't let your dog pee on my bicycle," I said.

The dog heard me, lowered its leg and moved on to a mailbox. The gentleman snapped his head in my direction and ... and ... and GLARED. His dog was about to pee on my bicycle and he glared at me. And then he muttered under his breath, something I couldn't quite make out except that the words "bladder problems" was in there. ... the dog's I presume, but maybe (and this would make me feel a whole lot more happy on the holiday) he meant he had bladder problems.

I like New York City because there are so many people who honest-to-God think the whole damn world belongs to them. It's like a high-rise asshole convention, a surreal circus where a dog's bladder problems are more important than my right as an American to keep my bike pee-free. And maybe they are correct, these dog owners. Maybe I shouldn't expect a sidewalk that isn't seeded with doggie landmines and a tire that isn't sticky. Maybe I shouldn't expect another human being to have the slightest regard for ... for ... hell, I don't even know what to call it. "Manners" comes to mind, but that's too weak a concept. Respect? Decency? Basic consideration?

The dog at least stopped. It showed more humanity than it's human. Maybe this city should go to the dogs. The gentlemen have been measured and found wanting.