Brooklyn cyclists to go nude in snow to protest bike lane removal

London, Dec 19 (ANI): Angered by the removal of a cycling lane, Brooklyn bicyclists are planning to protest nude in snow.

The "Freedom Ride" is a move to protest against the removal of a bike lane in Williamsburg, a long-time Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood, which objected to seeing scantily-clad women riding through the neighbourhood every day.

Heather Loop, a bike messenger, told a local newspaper the activists intend to go nude in front of Hasidic residents who "can't handle scantily clad women" on wheels.

According to Brooklyn Paper, scantily clad protesters are likely to pass through the conservative neighbourhood at sundown on Saturday - just as families leave synagogue services on the Sabbath.

The Met department has predicted heavy snowfall in New York on Saturday.

The members of the Satmar branch of Judaism "don't want to see women in shorts," said Baruch Herzfeld, who runs a bike-sharing programme in a community where Jewish women wear modest long skirts and blouses with long sleeves and men heavy coats and hats, even in the hot NY summer.

"The rabbis want to keep their people in the 18th century, and they don't want the world to intrude into their enclave," the Telegraph quoted Herzfeld as saying.

However Leo Moskowitz, an Orthodox Jew and a father of five, disagreed and said the main issue was safety.

"Kids can be knocked over because school buses are not allowed to stop in the bike lane - it's dangerous," said Mr Moskowitz, a salesman at a telecommunications company who acknowledged that he felt "very uncomfortable" seeing women bare their legs in public. (ANI)