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Monday, July 2, 2007

Biker Mayor Rides Again

By Jeremy Schwartz | Monday, July 2, 2007, 03:31 PM

It’s the first Monday of the month, so that means Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard is biking to work.

In an oft-ridiculed directive, meant to stimulate bicycle riding and cut emissions in the smog-choked megalopolis, Ebrard has ordered government functionaries to bike to work once a month.

Providing an example to his troops, Ebrard dons his helmet, jumps on his mountain bike and pedals to the office. It’s always a big media event, accompanied by much snickering in the Mexican press. Here’s the photo Ebrard’s photographer e-mailed the media about an hour ago.

ebrardbike.jpg

While Ebrard gets kudos for promoting environmentally friendly programs in one of the world’s most polluted cities, detractors say Mexico City is simply not fit for cycling. With 4 million cars slicing through traffic with an aggressiveness that would make a New Yorker cringe, the city’s streets are a scary place for anything with two wheels.

But Ebrard seems determined to change the city’s car culture.

He recently began pushing hybrid cars and has closed downtown streets on Sundays for big bikefests.

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It’s a Really Bad Sign(ature)

By Jeremy Schwartz | Monday, July 2, 2007, 12:38 PM

A year ago, when I got my Mexican work permit, I never imagined my financial future hung in the balance. As I signed the work visa, I didn’t think twice. The passport-sized visa booklet is small, the signature line even smaller and I was slightly rushed as I hunched over it at the immigration office in Mexico City.

The result was a signature with only a slight resemblance to my normal John Hancock, the letters at the end of Schwartz strangely mangled and truncated. But who cared anyways?

Well, the Mexican banking system, that’s who.

A few months later I opened a Mexican bank account and was forced to fill out multiple signature cards. But the signatures had to match the work visa signature EXACTLY.

I went through about 10 attempts in the bank manager’s office, my hand shaking and thoroughly rattled. It’s pretty hard to copy an abnormal signature (forgery really is a skill). I finally managed to squeeze out a few copies that slightly resembled the abomination on my work visa, but my nightmare was just beginning.

In the U.S., it seemed to me, bank signature cards were thrown in a vault somewhere and only dug up when you closed an account.

In Mexico, signature cards are scanned, downloaded and called up by tellers when you cash a check. The slightest variation in the signature is cause for the bank to reject the check.

Needless to say, I have written a good number of checks with signatures that don’t match that monstrosity on my work visa. I have had checks rejected throughout Mexico City, leaving a trail of unhappy folks. Every month I write a check for office expenses and every month go through the harrowing experience of trying to mimic that signature. I have had to tear up dozens of checks in the process.

I thought the nightmare would end when my work visa expired. I dreamed of the day I would sign it with fluid, normal strokes. But alas, the renewal consists of a stamp inside the booklet.

It seems I am stuck with my mutant signature until I leave Mexico.

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