Mr. Byrne. (Photo: Catalina Kulczar)

About two-thirds of the way into How Music Works (McSweeney's, 352 pages, $32) by David Byrne, one of rock music’s most omniscient presences, there is a rare attempt at stark self-awareness: “The online music magazine Pitchfork once wrote that I would collaborate with anyone for a bag of Doritos,” Mr. Byrne recalls. “This wasn’t intended as a compliment—though, to be honest, it’s not that far from the truth.”

This helps explain why David Byrne the brand is getting, for lack of a better word, boring.

That's not to say that the former Talking Heads front man’s output is of a diminished quality, or that there’s nothing of interest in it. There is, however, something that feels dutiful about Mr. Byrne now—one doesn’t so much genuinely desire to read his musical manifesto as feel strangely obligated to do so. (It’s probably not a coincidence that I felt similarly about listening to his most recent musical project, an utterly predictable collaboration with the much younger musician Annie Clark, who records under the name St. Vincent.) There are legions of books—all those “For Dummies” guides, for instance—that try to answer Mr. Byrne’s titular question. But those books aren’t by the man who wrote “Girlfriend Is Better.” So: read on. How Music Works isn’t just a grand proposition; it’s a serious one too, notwithstanding Mr. Byrne’s cool dismissal, in his preface, of the idea that this is a definitive text on anything—neither music nor, for that matter, his music: “This is not an autobiographical account of my life as a singer and musician, but much of my understanding of music has certainly been accrued over many years of recording and performing. In this book I draw on that experience to illustrate changes in technology and in my own thinking about what music and performance are about.”

By and large, the 10 chapters that follow cover much of what Mr. Byrne promises at the outset: knowledge that never gets too personal derived from his experiences as a listener, a creator and a businessman, in that order. The most enjoyable moments are those when he reneges on his prefatory claims and lapses into memoir. Mr. Byrne’s lengthy description of how the Talking Heads shopped for their look after their first record was released is an out-and-out joy to read. A little later, he recounts the evolution of the Talking Heads’ proficiency, but stops abruptly to ask what “being tight” as a band means today. It’s not a rhetorical question: “It’s hard to define now, in an age where instrumental performances and even vocals can be digitally quantified and made to perfectly fit the beat.” Throughout the book, there are moments like this, hints at what would have been a better book—Mr. Byrne fully ruminating on his life and music—but he never allows these personal insights to take shape. His grumpy sentiment here is intuitive, and maybe even correct, but it reads like a self-conscious avoidance of writing about himself, a cutting off of things before too much is given away.

When Mr. Byrne’s crankiness gets the best of him, though, it is all the better for the reader: there are two chapters on technology and music, and the second is titled “Crappy Sound Forever.” He chastises seemingly the entire world of listeners for allowing music to be distilled into formats of lesser and lesser quality. It’s at least entertaining. In a section on business and finance, he asserts, “I, for one, would not want to be beholden to Live Nation.” Assisted by charts and graphs, he explains how the money that goes into the recording of a piece of music comes out of it—this is all rooted in hard numbers and, in the stronger moments, even harder experience. And the eighth chapter—“How to Make a Scene”—while not a step-by-step on how to rewrite the culture of live music in North Brooklyn, isn’t a half-bad blueprint.

Even when Mr. Byrne is at his most impassioned, though, his book is never exactly a call to arms. Perhaps there is too little at stake. In the final chapter, he breezily runs through the neurological and societal foundations and implications of music (among other things), and the result is as highfalutin as it sounds. (The section bears an epigraph from none other than T.S. Eliot.) He skims these sprawling topics as neither a scholar nor a student nor a full-throated music-maker (even though he’s clearly all three), but instead opts for the passive voice of the knowing—albeit detached—observer. It is likely the most evenhanded approach he could take in attempting to describe several centuries’ worth of musical culture. His efforts are commendable, but the question on the cover is never really answered, even in terms of what it means to Mr. Byrne personally.

It’s likely Mr. Byrne never set out to discover how music works. Throughout, he comes across as indecisive at best, uninteresting at worst. He ends by discussing pop music versus a more structureless cacophony, but it’s hardly a conclusion: “I like a good story and I also like staring at the sea. Do I have to choose one?”

Of course not. He is, after all, David Byrne. Beyond that, why take a strong hand when you can take an even one? The book feels safe, sensible. The problem is that the reason we care about Mr. Byrne at all is because his musical work of decades past was all about not making sense, to paraphrase one of Mr. Byrne’s lyrics. It didn’t always work, but it was never boring.

editorial@observer.com

But then Mr. Glimcher’s wife, Andrea, the gallery’s communications head, who he said had been the driving force behind the acquisition of the space (“As usual, she got what she wanted”), had another idea. “She thought that this would be the perfect place to do a project with David,” he explained, referring to David Byrne, the former lead singer of the new wave band Talking Heads who has since ventured into the art world.

“I first encountered David’s work in the 1970s,” Mr. Glimcher said. “The fact that I waited at the stage door, trying to get an autograph from Dave back then is not important to the story.” He laughed. “Actually, I just found my pin from the concert they did in Central Park, which was nice. But I digress.”

When The Observer visited Mr. Byrne’s Soho studio recently, a drawing of the artist’s proposal for under the High Line hung on one wall: a giant light-blue globe squeezed underneath, pushing up against the bottom of the park and the two side walls, as if it had just popped in from another dimension, or an elementary school classroom.

“You couldn’t hang art on the walls because it’s too messy,” Mr. Byrne, 59, told us. He sat at a desk in the loft, and was wearing a green shirt and white pants. He looked as though he’d forgotten to age, appearing nearly the same as he did in photographs 30 years ago—slim and tall, and a little imposing, though his hair is bright white these days instead of black, which gives him an air of erudition. He had recently returned from a trip through South America, during which he discussed bicycle use, one of his favorite topics.

“You could put a big solid object in there,” he said, speaking of the High Line space, “but it wouldn’t look any more impressive than anything else stashed in there.”

The lot is often filled with parked, rundown cars from a nearby automobile repair shop and all manner of debris and garbage. “You have a lot of visual competition,” said Mr. Byrne, holding up a miniature model of the lot and the High Line that Pace’s fabrication team had made for him. “It had to be something that really takes up the space. I thought, ‘Ah, a balloon—an inflatable balloon.’” There was a tiny replica of the globe sandwiched under the miniature High Line.

He made all of this sound matter of fact, almost straightforward.

Not surprisingly for a musician, the giant globe has an audio component, a low rumble that will come from inside its belly, which he created by singing and then processing his voice. “It kind of goes wooo woo woo wooo,” Mr. Byrne said. “Actually that’s pretty much exactly the sound it makes. If we can get it loud enough, but not be totally obnoxious, it will draw you—as sound can do—to look in there, either down from the High Line, or from the street.”

He continued, almost whispering. “You’ll say, ‘What’s in there?’ That’s the idea anyway.”

“It’s the last thing I imagined—something crushed in there,” Mr. Glimcher told us. “But besides all the allusions that come along with it, it’s just a fantastic definition of that space.”

For his part, Mr. Byrne described his globe largely in formal terms. He purchased a variety of grade school globes and globe beach balls, and experimented with color choices. The work features political boundaries and major cities but few topographical markers. “I didn’t want one that shows all the geographical features,” he said. “That would hammer the ecological idea or climate change idea. It would go right to that. Then it really looks like our planet being squished by a highway.”

As is immediately apparent to anyone who visits his studio, Mr. Byrne does more, in the visual art department, than merely make giant globes. In one corner of the room were chairs that he had made—a roomy one constructed out of atom models, and a narrower, straight-backed one lined with macaroni. The walls were covered with art, including, in one room, a long drawing by the reclusive outsider artist Henry Darger that Mr. Byrne purchased about three decades ago from the Soho gallerist Phyllis Kind, just after the art world’s posthumous discovery of Mr. Darger’s work, before it really took off.

Mr. Byrne has been painting. While The Observer spoke with him, he worked on a composition on a large sheet of paper. When he showed it to us, we saw a large blowup of an Apple iPad app called GottaGo. Inside the tiny square reserved for the icon there was an open mouth enclosed within a giant red circle and slash.

“It automatically drops your phone call,” Mr. Byrne said, as he traced the red lips of the mouth and began filling it in. “It makes it seem like the phone has had a glitch or that the service provider has suddenly just dropped your call, so that way you can get out of any call.” He laughed. “No call lasts longer than two minutes!”

He’s created a whole series of these paintings of imaginary apps that offer users farcical, absurd and occasionally sinister programs. The text of an app called Childster explains that it “turns your phone into a babysitter!” Bigamist is “an online service that manages your cheating!”

The titles are not the sarcasm of a Luddite—Mr. Byrne has both an iPhone and iPad, and he uses apps, like OpenTable, for booking restaurants, and Kindle, for reading electronic books. It’s just that he thought there were a lot of apps—maybe more than anyone could ever really need. “There was a new article every week saying, ‘Look, now there’s an app for this and this. This will coordinate your driving habits with your real-estate needs,’” he said. “I just thought, you know, this is out of control!”

The app paintings will go on view at Pace’s 510 West 25th Street branch this Thursday as part of a group show called “Social Media,” the same day that the gigantic globe, Tight Spot, will be presented to the public next door. “Social Media” was conceived by Peter MacGill, the president of the Pace Gallery’s photography arm, Pace/MacGill. “I watch MSNBC every morning,” Mr. MacGill told The Observer. “Earlier this year I saw how fast Facebook and Twitter were changing things, how incredibly fast dictators were falling. I said, ‘This is an exhibition.’”

Besides Mr. Byrne’s work, “Social Media” features a number of other pieces related to the Internet and social networking, including artist Jonathan Harris’s I Love Your Work (2011), a series of videos documenting the lives of models of internet porn models and an excerpt from Learning to Love You More (2002-09), the project by artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher that asked people to craft responses to various prompts on a website, which were then posted online.

Mr. MacGill—who first began working with Mr. Byrne after meeting him through Robert Rauschenberg—saw the fantastical apps on a studio visit and was charmed. “It was pure David Byrne,” he said, “because it was utilizing something available to all of us, and making it into something aesthetic, creative and critical.” (One of Mr. Byrne’s earlier shows at Pace/MacGill featured a PowerPoint presentation about PowerPoint presentations, which was later sold as a book and a DVD.)

And almost the entire look of his apps is predetermined. “You can go online and get a template for all the Apple stuff,” Mr. Byrne said, “the type faces, the drop shadows, the gray fade in the background.” He writes text, prints it out, then paints a little icon in the prescribed position.

Painting, though, is hardly Mr. Byrne’s usual practice—he has typically been far better known for his large-scale installations and public art projects. In 2008, he outfitted the Battery Maritime Building in downtown Manhattan with a keyboard attached to various rods, solenoids and motors. As people tapped the keys, girders, pipes and radiators created strange and beautiful music. It also appeared in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2005, and traveled to London after its stay in New York.

That same year, he designed whimsical bike racks—shaped as a silver dollar sign for Wall Street, a scantily clad woman for Times Square—for the Department of Transportation. Pace offered to cover the fabrication costs if it could sell the racks or create an edition of them. “Nobody bought them,” Mr. Byrne said. Instead, the city voted to leave them in place beyond their one-year run.

“I’m kind of their public art guy in a way,” Mr. Byrne said of his relationship with Pace. That’s a position that would irk some artists, but he was delighted. “I actually love that,” he said. “I don’t know how it works for the gallery because they don’t have anything to sell. After the other projects I thought, ‘Eventually you’re going to need some income here, guys.’”

Mr. Byrne thinks his globe could be shown elsewhere, if the space is right. “I just sent a picture of it to a guy who has a gallery in Guadalajara,” he said. “They have an elevated highway that runs right through the center of town that’s very contentious because it’s new, it cost a lot of money, and it’s a question of, ‘Why did you put this Robert Moses work right through the middle of our town?’

“But it’s beautiful,” he said, “and if the height is correct, it would fit under there.”

We put the question of the globe’s salability to Mr. Glimcher. “It’s a philosophical question, don’t you think?” he said, with equanimity. “You never know. You have to go into projects like this like it’s a total leap of faith. If they work—and this is going to work—they become like his organs, they become itinerant minstrels, and they go and play their song somewhere else and somewhere else.”

arusseth@observer.com

Rangel.

 

Wednesday, August 3

The Ultimate Art Machine

Is the Guggenheim the Shake Shack of museums? Locations, locations, locations! Not content with outposts in the Basque Country and the United Arab Emirates (as well as the now-shuttered Las Vegas outpost, which seems in retrospect a bit of an overreach…to expect real culture to take hold in the land of bilk and money), the Guggenheim is now creating a mobile lab, opening today, that will set up shop in nine cities over six years in a quest to spur discussion on urban life. The slow migration of the auto-company-sponsored BMW Guggenheim Lab (a mobile laboratory isn’t cheap, dears!) begins in New York with the erection of a mobile structure themed around “Confronting Comfort.” (While the Guggenheim Lab is referring to balancing individual desire with the common good, surely you’ll be reminded that a new BMW forces you to “confront comfort” in a whole new way!) Catch it while you can—the mobile lab jaunts to Berlin next, then on to a yet-to-be-announced city in Asia.

BMW Guggenheim Lab, 33 East First Street, opens today from 1-9pm, visit guggenheim.org for more information.

Thursday, August 4

Single-Source Stories

When we hear “Talking Head,” we think rock star/bicycle enthusiast David Byrne, of course—we see that guy everywhere! But some talking heads come on reels, not wheels: the Anthology Film Archives continue their Talking Head screening series of documentary films featuring testimonials from a single individual. The mini-genre’s rife with unreliable narrators and charismatic characters: today brings screenings of The Confessions of Winifred Wagner (about Richard Wagner’s daughter-in-law and her friendship with Adolf Hitler) and Martin Scorsese’s Italianamerican and American Boy (regarding, respectively, his parents and the Taxi Driver actor Steven Prince).

Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, The Confessions of Winifred Wagner at 6:45pm, Italianamerican and American Boy at 9pm, visit anthologyfilmarchives.org for tickets and information.

Friday, August 5

Soundgarden

This weekend, the Shinnecock Indian reservation, in Southampton, is invaded by hordes even wilder than cigarette buyers looking for a tax-free carton. The Escape to New York music festival brings electro-loving ravers in for a weekend spent sleeping in campers (it’s glamorous camping, or “glamping,” for the Sunday Styles set), listening to music and enjoying all the good, clean fun the Hamptons have to offer. Tonight, noted memoirist Patti Smith and girl-group-but-not-in-the-Phil-Spector-way Best Coast perform on the main stage. It’s not just music and glamping (something about that word—we just can’t take ourselves seriously when we say it!): the organizers were responsible for the U.K.’s Secret Garden Party, an annual festival that transforms a manor house’s grounds into what a Telegraph reporter described as “a fairy woodland filled with strange sculptures” and “a Tower of Babel disco.” If this all sounds a bit foreign to you, gentle partygoing reader, know that in bringing a manic all-weekend festival to the States, the organizers adopted one indigenous custom: there will be a massive brunch for all attendees. Glamorous!

Escape to New York runs through August 7, Shinnecock Reservation (Southampton), visit escape2ny.com for tickets and information.

Saturday, August 6

Newport Lights

If you find yourself among the Gilded Age relics in Newport tonight (we mean the mansions, not the social set), contribute to the preservation of one grand home. Once owned by Pennsylvania coal baron Edward Julius Berwind and modeled after a French chauteau, the house at the Elms is fine ($1.4 million in 1901 money could buy you a pretty sturdy house), but its carriage house and stables are in need of a pick-me-up. Tonight’s black-tie dinner dance—whose theme is “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”--will raise money for Newport’s Preservation Society, which plans to turn the stables of The Elms from equine domicile into a historical society devoted to researching the town’s architectural history. Let’s make sure that horsey smell is powerwashed out before the important work of this research center begins!

The Elms, 367 Bellevue Avenue (Newport, R.I.), 7pm, call (401) 847-1000 x120 for reservations.

Sunday, August 7

McQueen for a Day

The Met is open until midnight tonight so that late, late latecomers can check out Alexander McQueen’s wares before the exhibit closes permanently. A night spent experiencing the glories of the museum? We remember that children’s book! Most everyone we know has raved about the Costume Institute show, but we’ve been pretty busy all summer (the Newport mansions can’t save themselves, you know, and there’s pretty intriguing costumery to check out there as well!), and the museum’s been bending over backwards to accommodate busy (lazy!) people like us all summer, with admission on Mondays and now late-night shows. Is any innovation quite so welcome in this go-go city as a museum for the nocturnal? We hope the trend catches on—nothing would lull us to sleep quite like the soft glow of MoMA’s Rothkos. (We do love McQueen, too, but we’re sure those severe, radical clothes will give us a few nightmares!)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, exhibition open until 12am August 6 and 7, visit metmuseum.org for more information.

Monday, August 8

Day for Night

We’re still vicariously embarrassed for dear old drama geek Anne Hathaway in her noble, pathetic attempt to host the Oscars by sheer force of will. She tried so very hard! She laughed at her own jokes to fill cavernous silences! Well, her new film might have put the brakes on her earnest, overbearing schtick and given us the chance to remember why we loved her in the first place. Ms. Hathaway, as a British lady separated from her one true love but for an annual brief encounter, puts her high-school-production-of-Oliver! on for the new film One Day, which she’s fêteing at the red carpet premiere tonight. Do you think Ms. Hathaway’s erstwhile Oscar co-host James Franco would consider it a suitable art project to come as our plus-one?

One Day premiere, an Upper West Side movie palace, screening at 7pm.

Wednesday, August 10

Rangel Me an Invite

It’s Christmas for politicos with the annual Charles Rangel birthday gala (the Congressman was born in June, but that’s not a slow news month that will guarantee headlines!). Planned attendees at the Plaza Hotel bash include Governor Andrew Cuomo, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer—all familiar faces from last year’s bash, which went on during Mr. Rangel’s ethics investigation. Also planning to attend is Aretha Franklin, who’ll sing for the assembled guests: she was supposed to sing last year, but fell and broke her ribs, so Psychic Friend Dionne Warwick turned up instead. Broken ribs are perhaps the only excuse that can keep prominent machers away from the ever-popular Mr. Rangel: “I felt bad—because Aretha felt so bad!,” said Mr. Rangel’s fundraising consultant Darren Rigger, who noted that Ms. Franklin was pleased to make up for her truancy. As for the party--why the Plaza and not, you know, something in Mr. Rangel’s district? “Charlie is iconic,” said Mr. Rigger. “We needed a place that had that same feel—you remember the Black and White Balls, the galas, it sends a powerful message. There’s a lot of places, and I’m not going to say bad things about other places, but this place is iconic for throwing a gala.” Indeed! If Truman Capote were alive today, he’d love nothing more than hanging out with New York politicians.

Plaza Hotel Grand Ballroom, Fifth Avenue at Central Park South, 6pm-8pm, visit charlierangel.org for tickets and information.

With the erasure of Osama bin Laden hours away, D.C. fixated itself on this slight glimpse of fame—it was nighttime and the end of the weekend of the White House Correspondents Dinner.

“Bristol Palin!” Wolf Blitzer said to The Observer as they both leaned against the cracked marble bar-top. People and Time had wrapped the ceremonial first party of the weekend, long forewarned to be the last chance to experience something other than drunkenness or pre-brunch hangover.

When approached earlier, Ms. Palin refused to talk about two things: whom she wanted to meet at the dinner, and the president’s birth certificate.

“Is she still here?” Mr. Blitzer asked.

She wasn’t.

“I’m looking for celebrities but I’m really bad at spotting them,” he said. “National-security-type figures, foreign leaders, yes. Celebrities, I’m not particularly good at. But I’ll find some.”

Over at the W for The New Yorker’s party, David Remnick stood looking out the window next to Sean Penn, a contributor to the Huffington Post.

“Evidently, that’s the Treasury Building,” Mr. Penn said. He was pointing to the building draped in yellow glow that houses the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The Washington Monument shot up behind it.

“David Remnick is a fantastic writer,” Jon Hamm told The Observer.

Standing by the sushi platters, the man who plays Don Draper pointed to The Observer’s tweed jacket. The Observer glanced down at his sleeves and fraying elbow patches.

“That Rag & Bone?” the actor asked.

The reporter had purchased the item for a few dollars at a thrift store in the South.

“No,” he said.

“Shit’s great, man,” Mr. Hamm said.

Next was a party co-hosted by The Atlantic and that magazine’s peer institution, the Web site Funny or Die.

ON SATURDAY THE CORRIDOR beneath the Washington Hilton stuffed a publication in each of its identical rooms. A tired Samantha Ronson spun at Reuters, purply-eyed, headed back to New York after. Andy Samberg posted up at the bar at CNN. Arianna Huffington kissed friends on the cheek. Tina Brown and her handlers beelined toward the dinner, her bob of porcelain hair glossy as ever. CNBC’s Jim Cramer tried to pluck a beer from a bar after closing time and went Mad Money on the man slinging drinks at the Reuters booze kiosk until he relented.

Mayor Bloomberg lingered near Steve Buscemi.

“What’s the main difference between Washington and our city?” The Observer asked.

“Talk to Stu Loeser, my press secretary!” the mayor yelled back at him. “What part of that don’t you understand?”

The Observer smiled and, upon recognizing that sneer, missed New York City.

Mr. Blitzer had apparently learned how to spot celebrities.

“Oh, Wolf’s my date,” said Mila Kunis. “He’s showing me around.”

He had other fans, too.

“I hear that Wolf Blitzer is somewhere around,” Scarlett Johansson told The Observer. “I would really love to meet him.”

But Ms. Johansson was taken. The Washington press corps had been abuzz over the rumors that she’s dating Mr. Penn, an occasional freelancer for The Nation.

At a party hosted by MSNBC, The Observer had Rachel Maddow mix a French 75, went to the Johnnie Walker Cigar Tent for whiskey and a smoke and saw Elliot Spitzer walk in. Then he left to watch the autograph seekers at the enormous mansion.

The next morning, The Observer woke needing coffee and walked five blocks, a long search for something omnipresent in his home city, but soon found a cup and a Sunday Times. A man he’d seen just hours before exited the Hilton, slowed down and politely approached. He knew this man: thin cheeks warped inward like old balsawood, oversize head, live-wire shock of white hair.

Then came a question that has never been uttered in New York.

“Where did you manage to find that coffee?” the Talking Heads singer said.

Mr. Byrne, you were always right. Home is where I want to be.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

During half that decade, the Bloomberg administration laid down roughly 250 miles of dedicated bike lanes. That is, generously speaking, less than 1 percent of the city's roadways, but it remains one of the myriad ways the administration has subtly re-engineered the five boroughs, from the posting of calorie counts to the widespread banning of smoking.

Four of those boroughs have the worst commute times in the country, according to the Census Bureau. Meanwhile, MetroCards have surpassed $100 a month as service is curtailed. Bridge tolls have jumped to boot. And yet here comes the mayor and his men (and, in this case, one particular woman), painting green stripes all over town, promoting what many see as little more than a children's toy.

"I think many motorists are mad," said James Vacca, chairman of the City Council's Transportation Committee and a representative of the car-heavy Bronx neighborhoods of Throgs Neck and City Island. "They feel under siege, and in many ways I don't blame them. Gas is $3.59. They see the mayor proposing increasing parking-meter fees. They were hit with registration and licensing increases from the state. Insurance rates are higher. The parking ticket phenomenon. The blitz is unbelievable, and of much frustration. Add bike lanes to that, and it's the straw that broke the camel's back."

In a city where the teachers are already seen as terrible, where most people rent and do not personally pay property taxes, where public health care has long been as close as a ride to Bellevue, in this moment of national angst, New Yorkers need something to rally against. They have settled on bike lanes. Welcome to New York's last culture war.

Four days after the shootings at Kent State in May 1970, more than 1,000 hippies rallied on the steps of Federal Hall on Wall Street. Construction workers at the nearby World Trade Center site, fed up with these longhaired shenanigans, stormed across Broadway and set upon the rally. It was Nixon's silent majority rising up against the counterculture that had gone and changed everything.

The event became known as the Hard Hat Riot. It lasted for two hours and ended with the workers nearly seizing City Hall. "This has always been going on in New York," Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said. "Back in the '60s, it was between the beatniks and the longhairs and the people who went around in suits. It's always been about that tension, and it's a good tension. You want that next generation to push."

Riots of a nonviolent sort began sweeping the city last fall in response to the spread of bike lanes, mostly in more liberal redoubts--the Upper West Side, the East Village and that most progressive principality, Park Slope, where even avid cyclist Chuck Schumer is said to oppose a new bike highway along his home street of Prospect Park West. Yet this time it was the hippies in the role of the hard hats, backed by the longhairs in suits at City Hall. As for the silent majority, they were stuck on a broken down F train.

The Abbie--make that Abigail--Hoffman of this group is Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. Opponents have called her Janette Sadistic Khan and Roberta Moses, as well as much worse, and there is some truth to the latter. Long ago, Ms. Sadik-Khan realized that her agency was not subject to the city's land-use review, with its divisive politicking and City Council votes. If the DOT wanted to close a corner of Dumbo, say, and turn it into a public plaza, all her department had to do was throw up traffic cones and slap down paint. This led to ever-more-ambitious projects, such as the closure of Broadway, first in Times and Herald squares, though now the closure stretches from Union Square north to Columbus Circle.

The acrimony between the red-sauce set and the truffled mac-and-cheese crowd followed, quickly framed around the larger question of what kind of city New York should be. And much like other culture wars--gay marriage, Hollywood ratings, the president's birth certificate--bike lanes became a convenient punching bag for larger concerns.

To bike-lane foes, the socialists seem to be on every corner, plotting. "I don't want to get into aesthetic arguments, but would you put a bike lane on the Champs Élysées?" asked Norman Steisel, a former deputy mayor who wrote the original bike master plan with Ms. Sadik-Khan during the Dinkins administration--and who was unaware Paris had actually approved such lanes last fall. He is now one of the chief opponents of the Prospect Park West lane, citing safety concerns to pedestrians and cars.

Somewhat odd, given that many of the bike lanes are being built in the name of "traffic calming," an effort to slow vehicles and thus save lives. Studies show that the slower the traffic, the safer the streets. On stretches such as Prospect Park West, Grand Street in Chinatown and Eighth and Ninth avenues in Chelsea, incidents are down 50 percent since bike lanes were installed, according to the DOT. (Mr. Steisel and his cohort in Brooklyn filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to remove the lane on the basis that these numbers are fabricated.)

Traffic calming sounds nice. But since when has anything about New York ever been calm? "It's part of this weird, misplaced nostalgia for a New York that was much rougher and more crime-ridden," said Tom Vanderbilt, author of the book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). "Someone was saying, 'Well, you know, Janette Sadik-Khan is trying to domesticate the city.' As though being run over by a taxi was a sign of New York's urban vitality."

Eben Weiss grew up in the Rockaways, and like many suburban kids, he misspent his youth riding bikes, BMX in particular. He still rides in road races, and did a stint as a bike messenger in Manhattan, but he also has a healthy appreciation for cars, having come of age a New York driver.

"Some people may say, 'Oh, bike lanes, they want to sissify the city, you can't handle it, and all these transplants are coming,'" Mr. Weiss said. "For all of that, I'm sure you have people who just don't want people coming into their neighborhood and messing around with it."

Mr. Weiss has been chronicling the foibles of the city's cycling culture for the past four years at Bike Snob NYC, an anonymous blog up until last year, when he outed himself to promote a book of the same name. He believes a good deal of the responsibility lies with cyclists, especially for doing a poor job of selling themselves, not only to others but to each other.

"The mistake the cycling advocates make is pushing the fact that cycling is green," Mr. Weiss said. "And the problem with that is during a time like now, when there are much more pressing concerns, like people are out of work and all this stuff, the last thing you want to worry about is being green. Being green is sort of a luxury.

"Or David Byrne," he continued. "I have huge respect for him, but he's become like the poster child for cycling in New York. I'm a writer for a living, and an English major in college. And I look at David Byrne as the example I should follow? I can't relate to this guy. He lives in a loft on the West Side and bikes to a studio he works in on the West Side and he can cycle back and forth. Good for him."

As for Mr. Byrne, the former Talking Heads frontman
and longtime New Yorker, he is happy to be lumped in with the Lycra-wearing masses.

"Yeah," he emailed, "riding a bike as a way of getting around isn't a super-macho thing, is it? Other cities around the world have absorbed it into their culture--and I dare anyone to call the Vikings and the Latin-Americans sissies."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Well, maybe. As the already crowded streets get more crowded, things can go wrong. Deliveries are missed, parking is harder to find, babies get left in bike lanes, joggers get impaled. (Life in New York is so hard!)

Naturally, a backlash is underway. Not in Queens or Staten Island, though, but the beating heart of boho New York. Both the East Village and Park Slope are home to relatively new bike lanes -- one on First and Second avenues, the other along Prospect Park West. Apparently, some locals are not happy about the interference the new lanes are causing to their usual routine -- like double parking and standing in the middle of the street while waiting to cross it -- and so protests have been planned! As have counter-protests! Things could get ugly.

We've been here before. Last year, Councilman Alan Gerson (an elected official, for gosh sakes) led a protest of the then-new Grand Street bike lane. Which is still very much there 14 months later. Then again, a bunch of politically connected Chasidim got a lane erased in South Brooklyn, supposedly in exchange for voting for the mayor. According to an online poll from Crain's, people are overwhelmingly in favor of bike lanes. Then again, that's not the most scientific proof. For all anybody knows, those voting for bike lanes could just be a bunch of madmen.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo

Only 900 people were there to witness it, and each one was there by invitation only, "each as preciously selected as a six-thousand-yen mango at the Takashimaya gourmet grocery."

Lady Gaga and Mr. Koh have collaborated twice before, both times on custom-designed pianos. As ArtForum puts it: "In Koh, Gaga seems to have found her flamboyant and press-hungry art-world counterpart." Or as Lady Gaga herself put it to ArtForum: "When I'm around Terence I just want to poop out art ideas nonstop." OK, great!

What happened in Tokyo at this club opening sounds like the result of a lot of "art ideas" jumbled together. First, "four chiseled studs in tighty-whiteys and bunny masks led Gaga and Koh-veiled and silent-into the club," then when the show started Lady Gaga performed her song "Speechless" while Mr. Koh wailed along atonally. ("I sound like a horse and Gaga sounds like a magical angel," he would explain to the ArtForum reporter. "So that makes it art.")

Later:

Gaga concluded with "Bad Romance," and the music simmered to a pulsating bass drone. The dancers slavishly delivered long fluorescent tube lamps to Gaga and Koh, then crawled away. Koh resumed his pseudo-Gregorian crooning, while shuffling toward Gaga like a blind man. He filed behind her, pressing as if asexually consummating their union. The lamps formed into a cross and artificial snow and cherry blossoms fluttered down from above.

One thing is for sure: this wacky performance should put to rest any controversy over Lady Gaga's art world credibility--which was called into question recently when David Byrne revealed on his blog that Klaus Biesenbach, the spiky-haired bull of a man who now runs P.S.1, does not consider the "Poker Face" singer an artist.

Mr. Byrne's scoop, brought to our attention by Hrag Vartanian at Hyperallergic, came from a dinner party where Mr. Biesenbach told the former Talking Heads singer that he'd "crossed paths with Lady Gaga" and heard her assert that she was a performance artist. According to Mr. Byrne's account, Mr. Biesenbach informed Lady Gaga that she was not an artist of any sort, which left her "a bit taken aback and stunned."

Mr. Byrne had to retract the post a few days after Hyperallergic linked to it. Apparently to Mr. Biesenbach--who could be seen over the weekend hanging out on the steps of P.S.1 enjoying a late afternoon set by New Jersey band Real Estate--was not pleased to see the quote in Mr. Byrne's blog, and emailed him to correct the record. In the e-mail, according to Mr. Byrne's follow-up post, Mr. Biesenbach said, "Of course Lady Gaga is an artist" and added that he "hopes to work with her someday."

It is hard to tell, based on the ArtForum item at least, how exactly Mr. Koh feels about his partnership with Lady Gaga. "The art world is a bubble that, like the fashion bubble and the music bubble, is just not ready to fuse into a new bubble," he is quoted as saying. "Art is a diamond. The rest is just soft, silk pillows for art to tear apart."

Last night at a private viewing of the Ron Arad: No Discipline exhibit at MoMA, guests received a much-needed break from clothes and runways. No Discipline is the first major U.S. retrospective of this influential artist and it was a fantastic introduction to Mr. Arad’s work.

Mr. Arad’s asymetrical sculptures with Modernist lines made use of the natural light and shadows of the gallery, appearing different depending on which angle you looked at them.

“It would be great for a shoot, actually,” photographer Patrick Demarchelier said.

Musician David Byrne arrived early and left quickly. He carried his bicycle helmet and stood in line like eeryone else. He was hard to miss, though, with his stark white hair and wide-awake eyes.

Apparently, Mr. Byrne wasn’t there for the drinks, but everyone else seemed to be. The bartenders at MoMA know how to make a very strong Screwdriver and the guests drank heavily, in spite of—or maybe because of?—the eternally judgmental eye of Rodin’s Monument to Balzac looming over them.

The party was hosted by model Linda Evangelista and signer Mary J. Blige. Former P. Diddy valet Fonzworth Bentley, photographer Terry Richardson, and actor Josh Hartnett all made appearances.

Still, Mr. Arad’s exhibit was the most impressive display of the night. It's on view till October 19th.

8 p.m. Talking Head David Byrne will perform songs from his collaboration with Brian Eno. Radio City Music Hall, 1260 6th Avenue. Ticket prices range from: $39.50 - 129.50

10 p.m.  Music download site Beatport celebrates "half decade of servicing DJs and the clubbing community" with a party at 18
Little West 12th Street, between Ninth Ave and Washington Street. Tickets are: $25, $15 in advance.

10 p.m.  Dim Mak Label represents an Alex English and G.B.H. return to Webster Hall with band: Girls & Boys. At 125 East 11th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues. Tickets are $20, $10 in advance.

10 p.m. Santos Party House welcomes A Tribe Called Quest alum Q-Tip, joined by Rich Medina for dance party (upstairs) at 100 Lafayette Street.  Admission is $10.

11 p.m. Bollywood Disco will be hosted at Vault at Element, where DJ Rekha dishes up " mix of discofied musical treats, concentrating on thumping subcontinental material from India’s bustling film industry." At 225 East Houston Street and Essex. Admission is $10.

The shoppers of Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney, and Kohl's reportedly favor John McCain over Barack Obama. [WWD]

Victoria Beckham is deeply offended at the allegation that her sister is sneaking her diet pills from the U.K. [SF Gate via The Cut]

David Byrne has designed a shoe-shaped bike rack that has been placed outside Bergdorf Goodman. [NYP]

American Apparel has a new "Afrikan" collection. [Gawker]

We didn't think this could be possible, but it turns out there are actual rules to wearing Mandals. [NY Daily News]

Calvin Klein Inc. signed a new licensing agreement with G-III Apparel Group to expand their women's sportswear and outerwear for next spring. [WWD]