What Mystery?

to the editor:

i've lived across the street from ansche chesed since the '60s, and i feel very protective of the place. the night that the ghost bike first appeared, i saw two men fiddling with it, and it looked like they were trying to light something underneath it, but i am not 100 percent sure; in any event it made me nervous. (keep in mind, at this moment i had no idea it was a memorial: i saw two guys possibly messing with electricity right next to a synagogue across the street from my building under cover of night. it seemed noteworthy.)

so, i did the right thing and called 911. i told them that i wasn't certain if anything "wrong" was happening, but that it seemed to fall into the "if you see something..." category. watching from the window, i saw both nypd and nyfd show up, the two men provided id, there was a discussion, the two men got into a pickup truck, and everybody drove away. that was it. so why is there still such a mystery?

after initially finding the ghost bike kind of touching, now i'm getting kind of disturbed by it, and whatever its "true story," i think it's time for it to go. if it's a legitimate memorial to a tragic loss, i very much doubt that its presence is doing the child's poor parents any good; if it's not, the people who thought it would be an interesting performance piece or social experiment or whatever need to get over themselves and have some respect for the feelings of the living people around them. life is tough enough, sad enough, painful enough, and looking out my bedroom window at a faux memorial every day doesn't make it any better.

suzanne la muniere upper west side