Comments (0) Best Aggravating Advocate - 2011
Aaron Naparstek
Streetsblog founder, Honku creator, and longtime bike-lane advocate Aaron Naparstek is not an easy person to ignore. While the biking community, such as it is, has worked with the bike-lane-friendly Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, years on the margins have made its advocates a touchy group. Naparstek and acting Streetsblog EIC Ben Fried have pushed back hard against what they've seen as anti-biking messages and reacted aggressively and in concert with organized pro-bike interests to fight against bad press—even just loose tweets and asides—and to push stories about injured bikers and the perfidy of the anti-biking forces. In the course of that, they've managed to earn the resentment of some media types with what can come off as disproportionately aggressive responses. Joining an older and out-of-vogue tradition of advocates who might be addled but are basically right on the facts, Naparstek, currently on a fellowship at Harvard but continuing to weigh in frequently on New York issues, is a force to be reckoned with, especially as long as he can keep the commissioner's ear.
