It's spring, the weather has been perfect and May (which starts Thursday) is Bike Month. Middle-aged folk like me (and Room 8's Larry Littlefield ) are looking for exercise, cheap transport and global warming solutions. Bike messengers, Critical Mass riders (like my Council Member Rosie Mendez), edgy fixed-gear fanatics and teens are already out there. Join us. (For a full list of Bike Month events, click here (For Jennifer 8 Lee's NYT Bike Month Round-up, including NYC DOT plans, click here ).

It's already too late to sign up for the biggest NYC pleasure ride the Five Boro Bike Tour on Sunday May 4 which filled up at the beginning of April. The 42-mile car-free ride through NYC's streets parks and highways is an odd mob scene with a cast of tens of thousands, lots of snacks, flat tires and sweat. Because the whole ride is done with no cars, you get a little of the feeling about what a car-free-NYC might be like. Pedaling on auto-free highways is a revelation. It is definitely not for those who want to be alone. If you're going, look for me there.

Three still-open May bike rides:

The 6th Annual Brooklyn Greenway Bike Tour on Saturday May 3, 2008

Oy vey.

In what is likely the first poll taken of New York City Democrats about the 2009 mayoral election - aside: this permanent campaign business really is tiring - results show an unlikely frontrunner: Brooklyn Borough President, Marty Markowitz.

No, seriously.

Markowitz was the top choice for mayor of 18% of Democratic voters, followed by 13% for Rep.Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn, Queens) and 11% for City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan), a new Marist College/WNBC poll shows.

City Controller William Thompson and Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum each snagged 9% of the vote, and City Councilman Tony Avella (D-Queens) trailed at 4%.

Even Markowitz's wife was incredulous. "Is this serious?" asked Jamie Markowitz after The News informed her of the results. "This is all over New York City, right?"

2009 is going to be an absolutely glorious food fight, our own version of a thousand flowers blooming. The term limits on the City Council alone will see to that. With Marty being as well positioned as he seems to be, certainly, the sheer entertainment value of the whole exercise seems guaranteed.

I have voted Republican. Once, I think. Just once. I have voted Green. Once...maybe twice.

The vast majority of the time I vote, donate, agitate and work for the Democratic Party with varying degrees of pride, enthusiasm and, occasionally, holding my nose.

The Democratic Party Machine in Brooklyn, led by Vito Lopez, pretty much makes you hold your nose because there is always a stench of sleaze around them. There are debates as to whether they are an improvement over the previous incarnation of the Brooklyn Machine, the one whose former head is now deservedly in jail. Well, if you have to debate whether they are better than someone who is jailed for corruption, you know you are in trouble.

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario. You are in the Jim Crow South. You are in a courtroom as a party to a lawsuit. You are black. Your judge has actively campaigned for segregation.

How certain are you that you will get justice from the bench?

Fast forward to the very near future, in January 2008, when this exact scenario will play out in Brooklyn, one of the constituent parts of the shining global metropolis that is New York City. Except that, in keeping with the most current prejudices, you need to be gay or lesbian to face this disquieting perspective, should you wind up in the courtroom of one Noach Dear, who recently prevailed in a primary battle for a civil court seat.

Dear, of course, led the opposition to New York City's gay rights bill; was the only member of the Brooklyn City Council delegation to vote against the 1998 domestic partnership bill; and, in an abortive Congressional run as a republican against Anthony Weiner, had the latter's speeches in favor of LGBT equality taped and then replayed to Orthodox audiences. As bigots go, he is nothing if not consistent; so perhaps it's not a surprise that he's also done business with Apartheid-era South Africa. In that context, it's particularly ironic that, while running in a black-majority district for state Senate, he called himself Noah and pretended to be black.

Noach, or Noah depending on which voters he courts, is currently a commissioner with the Taxi and Limousine Commission, a post to which he was appointed by none other than Rudy Giuliani; which may perhaps explain why half the funds he raised for his state office run came from taxi and limousine companies, which of course rely on his regulatory functions to shape their business environment. This time around, however, there's no indication that he received forty seven sequentially numbered money orders that turned out to not have been made out by the people listed on them as donors, as happened in the above-mentioned Congressional race.

Alan Fleischman, an out district leader in Brooklyn, sums up the problem neatly:

"It is outrageous that Noach Dear claims to have honesty and integrity. He is a notorious anti-choice, homophobic bigot who led the fight against the 1986 NY City Council Gay Rights bill and doesn't have the basic fairness and judicial temperament to serve on the Civil Court bench.

It is questionable why anyone in their right mind would support him for judge."

This is the man who was endorsed by the following elected officials, all Democrats:

Soon Brooklyn will have a man, Noach Dear, as one of its Civil Court judges. This is a man who never seems to have practiced law in his life and has been declared unqualified to be a judge by the NYC Bar Assn. How did this man become judge? Because a handful of politicians decided it would be politically convenient for him to be shoved aside on a court bench, essentially making the Brooklyn court system a political garbage dump. This is what these backroom politicians think of Brooklyn.

Things were supposed to change once Clarence Norman was in jail. That is what people keep telling me. Brooklyn politics will be better now that Clarence Norman is out of the way. No more unqualified judges, some told me. They had their chance to prove that this year and, to some degree, there certainly was an improvement in the quality of judges endorsed by the political insiders of Brooklyn. But they spoiled that effect by bringing out possibly one of their worst choices ever for a judge. Well, now the proof is in the pudding and this time the pudding is the unqualified Judge Noach Dear. Who delivered this unsavory pudding on our plates? These politicians:

Awhile back I wrote about Marty Markowitz decline from popular Brooklyn Clown to a vindictive, rampaging creep. Markowitz was shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU, at the vehement opposition to his becoming Bruce Ratner's Rat. He blamed extremists who don't understand him for the opposition (myself probably included).

Now he has another group of "extremists" who just "don't understand" the clown. Brooklyn's Gay and Lesbian community is outraged at Marty Markowitz's endorsement of the unqualified, homophobic Noach "Call Me Noah" Dear for judge.

From The Brooklyn Papers:

A Civil Court race pitting firebrand former Councilman Noach Dear against a lesser-known judge has been thrust into the spotlight by gay and lesbian activists because of Borough President Markowitz’s endorsement of Dear, who was rated as unqualified for the bench by the City Bar Association...

I could write scores of Marty Markowitz stories; but I won’t; at least not right now. It would be fun though; it really would be. For full disclosure, let me state upfront that for many years, I was one of quite a few in the Crown Heights/ Flatbush community, committed to taking Marty Markowitz out of his senate seat (20 SD). We failed.

Marty was in office for about 20 years or so, in a district where minorities made up about 80% of the residents-with more than half of them either born in the Caribbean, or of parents so born. Some called Marty a comedian, others snidely remarked that he was a clown; lore has it that one Easter Sunday, he even ran around the black community in a white Easter-bunny suit. Needless to say: many of the more militant-black types thought he was an embarrassment. Well; I am not sure that those comments can hold up any more folks; Marty has been and continues to be: a winner (politically speaking).

[UPDATE: Typos corrected! Put this out too quickly for spelling's sake! Thanks to a kind proofreader!]

I have to call BS on Bill de Blasio and Marty Markowitz. I really do. On Marty it's easy. He has gone from populist to Ratner yes-man and doesn't seem to understand that helping Ratner destroy Brooklyn is NOT what he was elected for. But Bill...Bill is smarter and I am surprised he would put himself in a position of such utter blatant hypocrisy.

Last night at the CBID meeting the topic of Borough Clown Marty Markowitz came up quite naturally. No one had a good word for him and a connection with Marty was debated as a big negative for an otherwise good judicial candidate.

During one conversation I was told that Marty Markowitz has been away on a cruise during the whole CB6 circus that has been making news recently. We laughed at this, realizing Marty may have missed a great deal of the anger and may, perhaps, even be taking it easy, waiting for it all to blow over. Well, even clowns need vacations.

Turns out Marty's little ocean cruise is more than just a vacation: it looks an awful lot like a kickback...or at least an eyebrow raising freebie. This comes to me thanks to Queens Crap.