where! Is! Your! License! Where is your license?!” shouted a police officer with a food-clogged mustache. He sat inside his van, parked in a crosswalk, while his baby-faced partner chuckled. I explained for the fourth time: I forgot my license; I was biking to the library. I had pedaled 50 feet up the sidewalk to the intersection, where Mr. Moustache stopped me before I could turn onto the street.

“You know riding on the sidewalk is illegal, don’t you?” Baby Face asked.

“Excuse me?” Illegal? Well, yes. So was jaywalking or sidewalk spitting, laws cops turn blind eyes to—like serving as Mafia hit men.

“Pedaling on the sidewalk, that’s a crime. Real quality-of-life issue. You could’ve hurt some kids.” He motioned across the street to the elementary school, the one filled with mini–Pedro Martinezes who pitch snowballs at my head every winter and rocks during the summer.

“How long you lived here?”

“Nearly four years.” Residing on Brooklyn’s Crown and Prospect Heights border is like eating blowfish sushi: exciting, but inherently dangerous. My daily menu consists of gun-wielding weed salesmen, iPod Nano–thin crackheads with a yen for bike theft and blob-like women conversing at 100 decibels.

“Then you should know better.”

Mustache Cop opened his pink summons pad and gifted me a court date.

“Can’t I pay a fine?”

“Nope, ya gotta show up. It’s quality of life.”

Quality of life. Ahem. Let me read between the lines: “We’re bleeding our citizens dry because we blew our budget like a bum on plasma payday.” I wouldn’t have a problem if the city’s quality of life was improving, but crazies are power-tooling subway riders’ chests and outer-borough roads are bumpier than the Cyclone. But priorities are priorities, and such is the city’s need to fleece pregnant women resting in stairwells, grandparents feeding pigeons and a bike rider returning Annie Hall to the library.

So I pocketed my pink summons. Wished the police well. Then pedaled the wrong way on a one-way street, past the weed dealer too busy to give a damn.

The court date came one sunny afternoon. I slipped on my blue pinstripe suit paired with bleached-white slip-on shoes. Then I trudged to summons central—346 Broadway, blocks from Canal Street’s knockoff DVDs—and shuffled through the metal detector. I slunk upstairs to the processing room, which was as antiseptic and bright as brand-new dentures. Sullen dreadlocked men, parents with do-ragged teens and a woman with a militantly shaved skull clutched pink summons tickets. I clicked my white heels like Dorothy and listened.

“The cop, man, he just picked on me for no reason,” said a teen clacking at his cell.

“I cannot believe they gave me a summons for drinking in front of my house,” said an Indian man, wife clinging to shoulder.

“Pissin’ on the street,” said a guy with more fingers than teeth. “I’m here for pissin’ on the street. I should’ve pissed on the cop.”

When I reached the bank teller-like Window of Judgment, a woman with glasses as thick as her banana fingers snatched my pink slip. Ten seconds later, she said, “Head to court-
room three.”

If you consider criminal court to be, say, the restaurant equivalent of Chanterelle—refined, with an innate sense of procedure and decorum—consider summons court McDonald’s: chaotic, smelly and detrimental to your health. A black-and-white sign commanded us to have the decency to cover our mouths when coughing.

“Turn off your cell phones and remove your headgear,” an officer with a gelled flattop repeated robotically. Glum defendants—including a Hassidic man feverishly praying—filed in through the squeaky wooden door and filled benches. Some defendants wore pink flip-flops. Others, stained work shirts. A few men sported knee-scraping basketball jerseys. My pinstripe suit stuck out like a pimple on a supermodel’s forehead.

A grandfatherly judge with a face the color of pickled pig snouts lorded over us, while a female officer with short black hair apparently cut by a weed whacker called our cases.

“Joseph Gonzalez,” she said,
“open container.”

“Twenty dollars,” the judge said.

A public lawyer, whose head of grey hair didn’t obscure that he was older than the courthouse, whispered advice to the nervous-looking Hispanic defendant. He nodded.

“He pleads guilty, your honor,” the lawyer said.

“Next case,” said the female cop.

Thirty seconds, start to finish. Impressive. Pickpockets didn’t work this fast. The assembly line of judgment rolled on: public urination, $20; car leaking “fluids,” $295; another open container, $20. Defendants left as soon as they were charged, replaced by new defendants shuffling through the squeaky door.

Thirty minutes after I sat down: “Joseph Bernstein, please come to

the stand.”

“Uhh, you mean Joshua?”

“Umm…yes…Joshua.”

I stood up, straightened my $300 suit and strode toward the judge.

“Hazardous operation of a bicycle on the sidewalk. Fifty dollars,” he said.

I turned to my lawyer. His breath stank of something long-forgotten and rotten. “But I was only on the— ” I began, ready to explain that I didn’t mean to ride on the sidewalk. It was a mistake. I learned my lesson. Before I could wheedle, my court-appointed lawyer repeated the one immutable fact:

“Riding your bike on the sidewalk is against the law,” he said, with all the finality of A Christmas Story, when little Ralphie’s teacher burst his BB gun dreams with, “You’ll shoot your eye out.” No choice. Only right or wrong. Yes or no. Guilty or not guilty.

“Guilty,” I said meekly, contradicting the very trait that, for almost six years, has sustained me on this island: the belief that I’m always right. Whether it’s directions to Coney Island or Chinatown’s juiciest dumplings, I am always 100 percent correct. Know of a better place for a post-work drink in Hell’s Kitchen? I think not. These are iron-clad beliefs that can be qualified and argued to death, but in court we’re stripped of bluster, our argumentative natures neutered. I. Was. Wrong.

My shoulders dropped inside my suit, the pinstripes becoming zigzags. I went into the hallway and, a few minutes later, a woman with librarian glasses led me to the cashier’s window.

“Cash or charge?” asked the cashier. I threw down my Mastercard and signed my name with a petty squiggle.