Enough With The Central Park Horses Already

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

Every time I walk through Central Park, I think the same thing: enough with the f*cking carriage horses. They look absolutely miserable. It’s horrifying to see them out there on 100 degree days trotting around the park. They leave huge piles of shit all over the city, and in this day and age—where we have lithium battery-powered scooters, skateboards, and unicycles—it simply just doesn’t make any sense.

I’m ashamed to say that until today, I hadn’t felt strongly enough to actually write about the well-being of these animals. Some of my close followers know I was vegan for a long time and still eat mostly vegetarian, but the last thing I want to do—or be accused of—is preaching what works for me as something that should work for somebody else.

This is why I love being a libertarian: it allows me to put a name to my stance of “not telling other people how to live.” But that doesn’t mean I can’t have opinions.

I’m sad to say it took this post on Twitter this evening—showing a horse collapsed and dead in the middle of Manhattan—for me to finally be compelled to write this piece.

Some of my friends in Philadelphia know I’ve spoken out about the carriage rides offered in Old City there, but I’ve never gotten on a pedestal and preached about animal rights, mostly because I always found other vegans and vegetarians so f*cking annoying that I didn’t want to identify as one of them.

I ate vegetarian and vegan for both health and ethical reasons, having witnessed tons of footage from factory farms—a rite of passage in the punk rock scene of the 1990s and early 2000s where PETA was prominent. All of my favorite bands were animal rights activists, and I understood the cause completely.

Later in life, I had the fortitude to make the decision to...(READ THIS ENTIRE COLUMN 100% FREE HERE).