Kiko Meets Mike IV

The Hipster Antidote, Eccentric Gear

When we went to Staten Island there was a race jumping off. It was one of those post modern messenger races, that of course, because it is full of young well organized, well equipped and, yes, white people, gets lots of press. As Scott and I got off of the ferry we noted all of the tattooed hipsters on fresh track bikes, and Scott said to me, “there’s some sort of a messenger race happening here.” It reminds me of when we used to hang out in Washington Sq. Park in ’80 or ’81 and it was apoint of honor not to wear your messenger bag (“no, I’m not working”), which also helped to avoid criminal justice attention, because messengers in the village often got sussed. They had beautiful new track bikes in really good shape. I doubt that any of them were used for deliveries 40 hours a week. I didn’t see many helmets, though there were a fair amount of pork-pie hats (Sigh, I’m a hater: how the mighty have fallen.)

I wrote to cynematic

Yeah, the funny thing about that race was that Scott and I got off the
ferry at the same time as alla them young’uns with our kids for a
flashback birthday party. I was going to post on the blog about it, but
I am swamped.

We saw some of them on the way back to “Manhattoes,” and were waxing
nostalgic for our days before the wheel. But there we were with our
five kids amped on sugar and a ferry ride, and you know, I’m just glad I
survived (the party and track bike messengering in the 1980s).

I gave the whole track bike messenger thing all I had, but you can’t
stay cool for ever. Hell, I’m just glad tattoos and piercings are a late
addition to the whole messengering thing, because the last thing I need
is a saggy tattoo of a track bike on my tuckus.

But, in fairness, I have to say that this was in the Times, about recycling (or re[cycle]cycling), which gives me hope. Not everybody runs out and buys the new new thing, some people -my heroes- try to reduce, reuse, recycle (and I do love the thrift store stylings). My favorite track bike was a chrome-steel metro track bike with straight bars and no brakes. I doubt I have a picture of it, but it often lived outside and worked flawlessly for a year or so, ’til my life caught up with me.

Holla at me. Here Kiko continues to re-meet Mike, which is how things start to happen in a linear way again. I want to speed up the pace. And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

Kiko told Mike where he worked, and gave him a menu bungee-chorded in the basket, thinking no more of Mike’s proposition than the Salvadoreño borracho who opens the door to the Pastilleria Colombiana on Sutphin Boulevard.

—

At four that day Kiko was shocked when, upon returning from a delivery, Señora Choi called him over to the register and gave him a phone message from “Mike on Bridge.”

Kiko immediately knew who it was and was now suspicious of the thin guy on the skinny bike. Was he un maricón, because Kiko knew he had no money to take compared to the man on the thin bike with a matching skin-tight outfit. He was also suspicious of Juan Valdez, the cartoon campesino on his back. Was Kiko some sort of noble experiment to this white guy with a fake wetback on his back? He thought long and hard whether he would call the guy on the bridge before dawn. Before he through out the number peremptorily, three things ran through his mind.

First was Key-Vin, the Chinese guy who asked him about racing bikes, and helped him to appreciate how much better a well maintained bike would ride. He had describes the clothes that Bridge Mike wore: “Tight-bright-picture-writing-clothes! Funny clothes!” He wondered why anybody would wear suck skimpy clothes in New York, a city that prized appearances, not understanding the aesthetics of boutique sports.

Kiko Meets Mike III (& Astoria and Red Hook Pools)

Yesterday we did the grand tour of the premier public swimming pools in Brooklyn and Queens. We started at the Astoria Pool, which I believe is the first in the New York Parks system. There is a good passage on it in The Power Broker, and it figures prominently in Salk’s search for the Polio Vaccination also, though I don’t exactly remember how. The pool is huge and well maintained, with the exception of the diving platform and pool, which are closed with a hurricane fence around it that sports a sign, “danger thin ice.” In many ways the pool is still like is was when it was built in the 1930s, huge locker rooms, a grand pool, great views of the Triborough and Hellgate bridges straddling the East River, and the two platforms for the Olympic flames from when the pool was used for tryouts once upon a time. They even had a snack bar. There were stadium-like benches on two sides wide enough to lay your towel out on, which is where I spent a lot of time reading Killing Pablo. I started reading the book about the US government assassination of Pablo Escobar. I had started it last summer, and thought I’d keep up with my Colombian Theme after Rosario Tijeras. Lennox was able to walk in and spent much of her time holding her nose and “swimming” underwater. She had a blast, and the gradual deepening made it so that she could get to the right depth and “swim.” Glorious!

Red Hook Pool was just about as crowded, though smaller, so there might have been fewer people. The entire pool is too deep for Lennox, and that presented a problem for her (& us) that had a nice resolution. The pool is chest deep (4 feet?) and is a bit cold, but you can swim anywhere in it. Red Hook pool has a part separated for lap swimmers, which is great. When I called Astoria pool larger, it might only be in surface area, not volume. Here in Brooklyn, in the shadow of the behemoth Park Slope, there were tattood hipsters aplenty. I wish that I was more cynical so that I could make a snarky comment about how “pure” Astoria was, with less Manhattanites, but it was really nice to have the mix at each pool. There seemed to be more young people (of the courtin’ and sparkin’ age) in Brooklyn, but the family vibe was strong at each pool. One negative note about Red Hook: the locker room is mostly taken up with a weight room and while my son, brother, 3-year-old niece and I got changed in the men’s Locker Room one of the workers (white guy, balding, in a Parks polo shirt) watched us from about 3 feet away behind the barricade that separates the weights from the lockers. As my brother said, “now I know what it must be like in prison.” Another Negative about the Brooklyn pool (are you reading Marty Markowitz) was that it closed 15 minutes earlier than the posted time (so that the workers could leave early. While the Astoria Pool asked to see the lining of my suit, to prove that it was hygienic, and did so brusquely, they did so professionally, without the sense of domination that the Red-Hook guard did. All-in-All, not Bad.

Bikes are fast. Holla at me. Here Kiko continues to re-meet Mike, which is how things start to happen in a linear way again. I want to speed up the pace. And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

Mike, who had been looking for Kiko for the month or so since he had first been passed by him, got up out of his saddle and chased him up the bridge in the dark. It was difficult to catch him, but once Kiko realized Flaco on the thin bike was trying to get his attention he eased up and let the North American catch up and ride astride him. As he caught his breath Mike looked at the bike Kiko was riding, “I don’t know how you go so fast on all of that junk.”

Puzzled Kiko responded with interest about Mike’s razor thin bike and its specifications: “that bike it no weigh much, how much?”

“Oh, about 20 Pounds,” mike responding humbly, and a bit embarrassed thinking about how much it must cost per pound: with two full water bottles, he thought.

“My bike maybe two of yours,” Kiko went on chatting for politeness sake.

“Yeah, and even if you didn’t have the basket, tape and –are those zip ties?- that erector set you’re riding would be heavy.”

Missing the put-down, “Señora Choi, my boss, she buy for me and let me ride it home,” explaining his gratitude, “save me $4 a day!”

“Where d’ya ride from?”

“Ha-May-Ee-Cah, by Suphin Boulevard”

After a few minutes of small talk, as they descended the bridge into Manhattan Mike got to the point, “So Kiko, I race bikes, and I think you’d be good at it, would you like to try?”

“Race? Me? On this?”

“Well, no, and you’d have to come learn how, and I could lend you a bike that you’d do better on,” like a teenager asking for his first dare he babbled on, “and there’d be all kinds of other things. Where do you work? What is your phone number? How can I reach you?”

Kiko Meets Mike II

 

 I rode to meet Linda and the Kids in Central Park yesterday (I tried to fix this computer and failed, while they went and played [$$$], but I missed them terribly by evening).  It took me 19 minutes to ride from my house in Sunnyside to Heckscher playground Central Park.  On the way back, at night (I’m losing my daring) it took me 30 minutes from 81st and Broadway (Uncle Louie G’s) to home.  Bikes are fast.  Holla at me. Here Kiko meets Mike, which is how things start to happen in a linear way again.  I want to speed up the pace.  And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

So it was a relief to see the thin man with his thin bike snaking between the pillars before him.  The unrealistic triangled mule and campesino that advertised Columbian Coffee on his back was the perfect point to focus on as he snaked through the plaza.  Kiko found that by watching a fixed point in front of him, on a cab or a truck or whatever, he could allow his peripheral vision to take care of the cars, potholes, pedestrians and other unpredictable elements.  By keeping his focus ahead he allowed his subconscious in league with his reflexes to navigate the details he was riding over.  If he were looking for Heineken bottles, steel plates, manhole covers, rats, pets, broken glass, and litter he would not be able to ride as fast and efficiently as he does.  It is by losing himself in the act that he makes the time he does. 

He first discovered this empty mind theory when he delivered lunches and thought only of the address and the route.  Eventually he knew his delivery neighborhood so well that the routes took care of themselves, and he was free to just focus on where he was going: “69 Murray Street, across our street, up Church, across Murray, lock at sign on corner” became, simply, “69 Murray.”  So when he came across the man whom he had figured out by now was a bike racer it really didn’t dawn on him until, again climbing the bridge, he passed Mike.

KIko’s Patron (Reindeer Games II)

Yesterday I bought the kids used bikes off of Craigslist (and of course it rained on them last night).  Now I have to get helmets and training wheels.  My bike is in the shop too.  I also had the pleasure of the second installment of Dr. Dustin Shin’s (DDS) second installment of my latest root canal.  Jheesh, not only did it hurt, a lot, but after the second shot of Novocaine I was numb from my  forehead to my throat.  You could have pierced my ear without my noticing.

Here’s the latest installment. I tried to use some dialog with an accent, not my strong suit, let me know how it sounded.  If you ride, formally, with clubs and packs check this for realism and send me a line.  And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

When they were all chatting for a few minutes, planning their next rides and strategies for upcoming races around the fountain at 90^th Street Frantz gave mike some credit “you vere vailing up de hill after the Lasker Pool the last three laps. Man, how you keep us going up hill iss great.”  Wiping the half expelled snot off of his nose on the back of his team-logo glove he continued “how do you pull so hard up a hill after leading us for two miles?”

“I guess I just got a spotted jersey in my heart,” Mike, embarrassed but proud, clipped out in his Queens accent.  “of course you know that I climb the bridge to get here every morning, and I climb it again to get back afterwards.”  Thinking, “that’s gotta be 130 feet of climbing  each way, with no traffic and it’s pretty steep, I dunno, I guess a 4% grade going back to Queens.”  Mike stared off across the lake thinking about the Spanish guy on the delivery bike who passed him with a basket like he was standing still. He thought that he must have been taking it easy, and his damaged pride probably fueled him up the hills in the park today. 

Frantz noticed his wistfulness in Mike’s stare amid the chatting, bragging and prancing of the pack there before 6 in the morning.  They had had a good ride, beaten their usual times by a lot, and the pack was feeling good, tearing apart the ride lap-by-lap, climb-by-climb and according to each transition from leader to leader.  Mike usually enjoyed this red meat and busted chops with the guys, but could only think about the knobby tires on the bouncing bike that had beaten him earlier.  It seemed impossible that someone without toe-clips, in jeans, a cheap leather jacket and on a bike built by Chinese slave labor could have passed him where he was usually strongest.

“Vhat gives Mikee?” asked Frantz.  “Vhy are you zo qviet, ve vouldn’t have broke our record iff you did not conquer zhe mountains vith uss hanging onto your vheel zhose lasst two laps.  Zhesus, ve dropped Teddy coming up to the finissh line on the lasst lap: if there vere a fork in the road he’d be drinking by himself now” the blonde German said looking slyly at Theodore as he clipped off the light stuck to the back of his jersey.  The light had, stuck between Juan Valdez and his Burro had made the bean-picker look like Diogenes looking for an honest man.

Kiko’s Patron II (Reindeer Games)

 On Sunday (two days ago) we went to Coney Island.  We had a blast, though I was grumpy at first because it took us a long time to get there from Scott’s house.  We ate, then we tried to leave but had to buy shoes since Lennox’s Crocs were too small.  So we ended up buying each of the kids a pair of new beach shoes.

 

Here’s the latest installment, though I’m getting long winded, and distracted by bike racing, my real fear is that this shows my bias towards Anglos. If you ride, formally, with clubs and packs check this for realism and send me a line.  And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

At thirty Mike had become a sort of domestique for the guys on his club because he has the strength to pull but not the stamina or speed to win sprints afterwards.  He was sad about his diminished skills, tough he trained harder than anyone else on the team.  The other guys just fell out of bed from around the park and rode a few laps to keep their pack together.  Mike was the only one who didn’t live near the Central Park, or even in Manhattan.  Three times a week he’d ride in from Rego Park before dawn as the Russians all over his neighborhood who spoke Farsi stocked their stainless steel stands for the day’s coffee, donut, egg sandwich and gyro dispersal.  They’d look at him in his lycra Café de Columbia kit in yellow, red and blue with the matching helmet cover like he’d landed from another planet.  One guy, Grisha, whose stand was in his driveway right next to the service entrance of Mike’s building had noticed that he had different bikes.  “Today you will lead the pack,” he knowingly chided every other day or so; usually when Mike took out his carbon fiber bike with the pursuit geometry that made him really look space aged.

The ride, along Queens Boulevard before dawn, was fast and dangerous.  The service road was a staging area for jaywalkers, while the six middle lanes were a highway with stop-lights that worked like the banderillas that picadors use to rile bulls before the fight: the drivers were resentful, tired and angry because there was a city going on outside of their cars.  Mike always imagined that the cars were bought with some perfect ideal of an empty California road before them, while they were driven in the rat-maze of Queens as an evil psychological experiment.  This made the ride to Manhattan a 100% focus affair, where his senses had to work overtime in the dark on the Boulevard of Death.  This hyperawareness flowed out to his body and he always rode hardest here: fast, silent, aggressive. 

So when he joined the pack of Manhattanites, in the rolling hills of park before the dawn jogger infestation, there was no stress. Though he could always beat them up a hill, and could lead most of the time, he didn’t have the interpersonal competitiveness of the Manhattan professionals with whom he rode.  His life lacked the structure that the college educated reindeer games foisted upon the officegnomes who used this as a high-cost stress reliever that could be boasted about around the water cooler: “…eighteen miles around the park before dawn.”  It impressed the coworkers, but Mike did five miles before and five miles afterwards in a state of prey-like awareness of the outer-borough traffic.

Kiko’s Patron

Here’s the latest installment, though I’m getting long winded, and distracted by bike racing, my real fear is that this shows my bias towards Anglos. If you ride, formally, with clubs and packs check this for realism and send me a line.  And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

The man on the bridge with the tight clothes who rode earnestly up the bridge before dawn, wasn’t in a hurry to tell his Manhattan club about the guy on the bouncy bike who passed him in the darkness over the East River. He rode his older bike, a classic Reynolds Raleigh with a Campagnolo grupo, a bike that a serious cyclist of the 1970s might have ridden. At 30 Mike was becoming as much a hobbyist as a bike racer, his wins becoming more and more infrequent. But, generally speaking, he was in excellent shape and was rarely passed by other bicycles.

He met the rest of this morning’s pack on the hill above the bronze cougar on Central Park Drive East where the races start and end. George, the alpha rider in their club had set this as the place to meet because Mike would always beat him up every hill and if they started atop a hill there’d be one less place for him not to shine. As they waited for the rest of the guys they made small talk about their commutes to Central Park as they unwrapped Mylar covered treats to fuel their laps this morning. Careful to fold the wrappers up and put them in their rear pockets in keeping with their idea of themselves as environmental warriors, they complained about the taste of the various nostrums of Goo, chewy power bars and crumbly Cliff Bars (because salt was, of course, the magic ingredient).

The buildings on the east side of the park had started to grow halos in the minutes before dawn as they set off in the pack. It was agreed that they would stay together for the first three laps, working on drafting and their cohesion as a “pack.” George, to try to wash the tar of primadona off his kit, led for the entire first lap, though they all knew that Mike could have taken them up the hills much more quickly. As he followed with his wheel six inches off of George’s, not passing to keep the peace in the pack, he kept thinking about the kid with the basket. George’s alpha status was contingent on beating, soundly and humiliatingly, at least once a ride each of the other men on his team. He had been riding harder on the bridge than he was here, even accounting for the fact that he was drafting off of George’s tight ass. His specialty was hills and to have been passed near the summit of the Queensboro Bridge by a guy on a dual suspension delivery bike with a basket was surprising and a little humiliating.