even the parks have very restrictive hours in many cases.

enjoy having a downtown full of nothing but tweakers & fent zombies i guess. sure beats letting some kid skate the plaza.

Am I supposed to prefer tweakers, fent zombies, AND destroyed property?

You're supposed to be generous in interpreting other's statements even[1] when you think they're wrong.

This is a great opportunity to "converse curiously"[2] instead.

1. especially

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

i mean i get the cops called on me just skating down the street

as a parent you have all the control. why does your kid need a tablet? why do they need a smart phone like at all? these devices did not just magically materialize in your home, the tooth fairy didn't put them there. you chose to plop your toddler in front of a screen because electronic vicodin was easier than parenting and then you chose not to lock down their devices with the abundant parental controls you are given and then you decided you couldn't be assed to teach them basic internet safety habits or how to develop healthy skepticism and that seeing isn't always believing. really the only thing your children have been '''exposed to''' is your own laziness and utter unwillingness to offer them direction. the world will continue to exist whether we like it or not, and some day our kids will have to live in it just like we do. we can either prepare them for what's really there, warts and all or we can hide them away only toss them to the wolves when they turn 18 with the delusion that this somehow preserved their innocence. i personally believe giving them the grace of a childhood to learn how to deal with the bumpy parts of life is a much kinder option.

i just want to be able to live in the town i was born in.

Apparently many other people now do too.

i felt similarly until i actually ended up homeless and had to deal with shelters. they are shockingly non-viable and since most close early in the day, getting a bed for the night and getting employment so you can stop being homeless end up as mutually exclusive propositions.

it kind of boils down to a question of who is the actual customer? me or advertisers? if i'm paying a subscription to youtube, then i don't want post-adpocalypse censorship & sanitization.

here at least that just leads to ditches and bike paths strewn with shopping carts.

Travel by car has covered the land with pavement, polluted the air, and filled our public spaces with endless noise.

more likely they think 'rush hour is awful' or 'traffic is awful', i highly doubt they would prefer to experience the same density of bodies traveling on the bus or train.

You can't exactly replicate the density of congested cars as people on buses...

Although here is an attempt from a Saturn commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_oWmY_mkCA

Sure and that's your choice. But if I, a bike autist, want to live somewhere with density, where do I go? How many open units of housing are available for bike autists? If there was plenty of space for dense and sparse living then people would self-select, based on preferences and time in their life (maybe choosing a suburb when their child is very young and needs a lot of support but moving out once their children need autonomy.) Right now in America, the vast majority of housing is hostile to bike autists. That's why the title of this piece is "How to quit cars" because we've mandated car centric development in the US for almost a century.