Felsenmeer wrote:
And what would you like done with the homeless? Have them scooped up
and dispatched to some burnt out industrial district so they can't
make the yuppies nervous when they go for strolls in the park?


Two words:

HOMELESS SHELTER

OK so we lock them away in 'shelters' from which they are not free to
leave. That's f***ing brilliant.

My point was the OPs apparent hypocrisy in being outraged about kayaking
being banned as 'potentially dangerous' and in the same breath condemning
the homeless as 'potentially threatening'. The fact is, a park is a much
nicer place to be than a homeless shelter. Have you ever seen the inside
of one? My reading of his arguments (which really needn't have involved
the homeless at all, as they were irrelevant to his kayaking problem) was
a sort of juvenille, "If I can't play here then why should they?"

How can he demand respect for people who go without motor vehicles, for
whatever personal reasons they have, if he's completely unable to respect
people who go without homes for their own personal reasons? It's easy to
see how the most common complaints one might have about the homeless (IE
they're dirt poor, are probably crazy and are homeless because they can't
manage a real lifestyle, they're an inconvenience and a hazard to the rest
of us) could easily be applied to a cyclist by a motorist. And if we can
say nothing else for homelessness, we can be sure it has less
environmental impact than owning a home, even a home with no SUVs.