That said, New York is full of really, really stupid white people. Some of who ride bicycles. This city is driven, nay defined, by its electric, ever-combustive melting pot culture . . . something Spike Lee, a truly great NYC filmmaker, brilliant evokes in his new thriller, The Inside Man.

There are innumerable reasons to, as Public Enemy said in Spike's classic Do The Right Thing, fight the powers that be in this town . . . poverty, injustice and racial inequality come to mind right off.

Mayor Mike 'The Billionaire' Bloomberg just announced the biggest bump in the number of street cops in over a decade . . . now, a town with an overwhelming police presence, post 9/11, plans to take Rudy Giuliani's Zero Tolerance ethos to the next level.

Taking this into consideration, the concerns of a hardcore croup of radical cyclists . . . that's right, grown men on pushbikes . . . should probably register somewhat lowly on the greater list of concerns. Why, then, have the activities of 'anarchist' bike gangs been landing a lot of ink in recent weeks?

It all began when painfully fashionable clothing outlet Brooklyn Industries installed a series of window displays, featuring the oversized custom bicycles lovingly referred to as 'tall bikes', constructed from cannibalised parts of vintage models. Before you know it, the windows have been defaced . . . with the words 'Bike Culture Not 4 Sale' etched, in acid, no less . . . at four separate Brooklyn Industries outlets.

Now, a series of radical 'mutant' cycling gangs . . . with names like Black Label Bicycle Club and C.H.U.N.K.

666 . . . have threatened to step up hostilities against anyone daring to commodify their beloved bike culture. Oooooh . . .

we're really scared.

Don't you love middle-class, Caucasian pseudo-hipsters who can't get over the fact that they belong to the most vacuous, narcissistic and ineffectual generation in American history? Isn't there, like, a war on, or something?