A Morning Ride ... With Pedals

While waiting for my DMV waiver from the Motorcycle Association of New York State (next week, so they say), I went out for a human-powered ride this morning. I've decided to trade in my elite Manhattan credentials for an actual living space. Some people in Manhattan make jokes about walk in closets larger than their apartment. I don't, because when that's actually true, it's significantly less funny.

I had also never before biked over the Brooklyn Bridge (or walked it), mostly on account of living on the Upper West Side doesn't give you too many excuses to ride the 5 1/2 miles to get to the bridge, another mile over the bridge, and then wherever you want to go in Brooklyn.

Any serious cyclist (of which I am definitely not -- see previous dilettante entry) will turn up their nose at the suggestion that 7 miles to get anywhere is a long way, and they are correct. For most of those 7 miles, it's a very pleasant ride. It starts out in Riverside Park in the West 90s, not far from where I live:

Riverside Park is not really comparable to other NYC parks on account of its shape -- it isn't a big, central area like Prospect Park or Central Park where you go for a day. It doesn't have a theater, or a zoo, or a pond or a lake or rowboats or cars. It is long and narrow, stretching from the low 70s up to the low 100s. A little sliver of pedestrian/bike way called the Cherry Path actually continues all the way up to 125th street right on the Hudson, though you're about ten feet from the West Side Highway, which doesn't do a lot for tranquility.

The park itself can be one of the more peaceful places in the city. It gets heavily crowded on the weekends, but there are lots of little pockets of grass and picnic tables that are out of the way from most of the park's traffic, which consists of people like me using the park (and the connected Greenway) to walk or ride somewhere in Manhattan. I can get to Times Square from the Upper West Side in about fifteen minutes on my bicycle and I am hardly an aggressive rider -- I have a hybrid bike I bought when I lived upstate and so I'm not equipped to be an aggressive rider anyway.

Around 86th street, the Greenway cuts out of the park and onto a shared bike/pedestrian path right on the river. It isn't very long -- it only goes to around 72nd street before it takes you off the river path (that becomes pedestrian only) and underneath the West Side Highway.

There is an overpriced outdoor cafe right around here called the Boat Basin Cafe (so named because of its proximity to the 79th Street Boat Basin) where people routinely wait at least an hour for a table and pay a lot of money for standard grill food. Nevertheless, as one of the few places to eat in Manhattan right on the water, we've all been there at least once.

The Greenway runs parallel to the West Side Highway from 59th street all the way down to Battery Park. The only really remarkable thing for most of this stretch is the USS Intrepid, the WWII-vintage Aircraft Carrier turned Air and Space museum that typically lives around 48th street. It is currently in drydock for repairs until next year (at least) and so no picture of an empty pier.

Instead, this is lower Manhattan, where you turn off of the Greenway to Chambers Street to get to the Brooklyn Bridge. There are no signs at this point for cyclists. I guess they don't want you to know it's there.

It is.

Over 4,000 people bike across the Brooklyn Bridge each day.

They don't do it at 11:30 in the morning, thankfully. It was hectic enough with just a few bikes and a lot of people. I guess there aren't as many people on the bridge during the morning rush hour, because I was nearly run over by guys zooming along on their road bikes. Good Road Invisibility practice.

I'd like to take a moment to complain that there is no easy semantic way of distinguishing "riding" a bike from "riding" a motorcycle unless you call bicycle riding "cycling," which, to me, refers to the sport of cycling. I am a guy who gets on a beat up old bike with mismatched tired and enjoys the little bit of fresh air that New York has to offer. A cyclist is somebody who not only owns several sets of spandex, but looks good in them -- and they were probably given to him by a sponsor. Cyclists have sponsors. I'm a dude on a bicycle. But not a biker. Motorcyclist sounds too stodgy and official, like I'm the Department of Transportation. So, for now, I will stick to "guy on motorcycle" when referring to somebody with a clutch lever, a helmet, and leathers.

When I first arrived in New York, it seemed to me like they had a bunch of Bridge left over after finishing the Brooklyn Bridge and so decided to build the Manhattan Bridge right god damn next to it. Of course it is not actually right next to the Brooklyn Bridge, but it seems that way when you are standing on one of them. And of course they did not complete the Brooklyn Bridge and immediately set about building one right next to it. The two bridges also look completely different.

One day, they will plan ahead and just build an enormous, 30-lane bridge. When they do, bicyclists and pedestrians will still only have a four foot lane.

Brooklyn. Home of the Dodgers (departed), the hawt dawg, the aggressive Park Slope Mother, and the mythical G Train (I have still never seen it, but I am assured it exists.)

This is Brooklyn Heights (I think), on Bergen Street, which is pretty close to the bridge. Brooklyn has gentrified quite a lot over the last ten years. I don't know the actual definition of "gentrification," except to say that it carried an undercurrent of resentment and alarm -- the idea that they are coming from the hills, some nebulous body of people who are not us and will want us out.

I am looking for a place to live not in the really fancy parts of Brooklyn, but in the just plain fancy parts. These are most likely the parts that, ten or twenty years ago, would be less nice (but with more character, so the argument goes) and have since been gentrified. I guess that makes me the gentry. Instead of asking if the apartment is rent-stabilized, I ask if it's rent-gentrified. If they say no, I dab my eyes with a white silk handerchief I carry in my breast pocket and leave for some place more charming.

Then it's back home up the West Side Drive on the Greenway. About 75 minutes in each direction, which isn't bad; it'd be about 45 by subway but I'd have seen a lot less. When the weather is good, I ride the subway around once a week -- typically when I am going out in the evening and will either be coming home inebriated or can't show up in the t-shirt and shorts I bike around in. ATGATT on my bicycle means my sunglasses, which have not been approved by the DOT, and which, if impacted at high speeds by a bird or a pebble, would probably shatter into a thousand tiny pieces of glass, impale me through the brain pan and kill me instantly.

I am sure on some level it is absurd that I have motorcycle gear for every part of my body but I don't even wear a helmet on my bicycle. Probably a lesson in there somewhere.