Strange Days: What Might Have Been

Call me Ishmael. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and as Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. I enjoy the sleek locomotion of my fixed-gear like I enjoy a smooth, frictionless fuck, but if you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

Having undoubtedly captured your attention with that artisanal steel-jaw leghold trap of an opening paragraph (inhumane traps are certain to replace axes as the must-have "North American backwoods revival" accessory for 2011), you now have some understanding of how I felt when I read the following gripping email this morning:

I'm writing this with tears in my eyes,my family and I came down here
to Scotland,United Kindom for a short vacation unfortunately we were
mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed,all cash,credit card
and cell were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our
passports with us.

We've been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping
issues at all and our flight leaves in less than hours from now but
having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't
let us leave until we settle the bills,I'm freaked out at the moment.

A less considerate and/or more savvy blogger might have dismissed this as the overture to a scam, but I never shirk my responsibilities when it comes to helping others--even if they're in a faraway land of manskirt-wearing haggis eaters. So, keeping my composure, I replied as follows:

Dear Freaked Out At the Moment,

I'm very sorry to hear about your predicament. I know you're very afraid, but never fear. Help is on the way, for I have summoned the World's Most Agile Scotsman!

Sincerely,

--BSNYC/RTMS

PS: Tell the hotel manager to keep his skirt on.

PPS: You came down to Scotland? Where are you from, the North Pole?

Moments later, Danny MacAskill jumped out of a helicopter on his bike and disarmed and incapacitated the muggers in a blindingly fast series of wheelies, endos, tailwhips, bunny-hops, and other jumpy-spinny-type moves:

It was a lot like this:



Except it was much more graceful, and with bagpipes. I only wish I had been there to see it--and I would have, if only I wasn't such a coward. Anyway, I'm pleased to announce that Freaked Out At The Moment and family did manage to catch their flight--though it turns out they're not only Internet scam artists but also terrorists, so it looks like the World's Most Agile Scotsman is going to have to pull off one of his signature 39,000 foot bunny-hops and give that exploding printer cartridge the old backwheel "Whap!" treatment.

Meanwhile, closer to (my) home, Staten Island is being stripped of bike lanes faster than the World's Most Agile Scotsman divests a mugger of his revolver:

Sure, I know what you're thinking: "Whatever, it's only Staten Island. That will never happen here on the planet Earth." Won't it, though? Remember that "First they came..." poem:

They came first for the "hipsters" in Williamsburg,

and I didn't speak up because I didn't have a muffin top.

Then they came for the smug-mongers of Park Slope,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't the King of Park Slope.

Then they came for the Lone Wolves of Staten Island,

and I didn't speak up because I didn't ride a Huffy with unhooked V-brakes and an enormous pie plate, and because who even goes to Staten Island anyway?

Then I just said "Fuck it," sold my "fixie" on Craigslist, and moved to Portland.

Soon, however, there will be nobody left to complain when the rest of the bike lanes get the "Whap!"

Incidentally, I should point out that "Whap!" is an innocent reference to the comic book hitting sound, and not a perverse reference to the now-defunct periodical Women Who Administer Punishment:

Though as cyclists, it's hard not to feel as though we're masochists without "a safe word." In fact, you don't even need to get on a bike to feel that way--or even leave the sidewalk, for that matter--since here in New York with simply leaving your house makes you fair game:

Yes, if you've ever longed to run somebody down in your car you'll be pleased to know that here in New York City "brake failure" and other similarly cartoonish mechanical explanations are a sufficient excuse. I once watched a car service driver speed through an intersection in reverse, pass within two feet of me, and finally came to a stop after destroying two parked cars. Naturally I stuck around to watch the aftermath, and I'm pleased to report that the officer accepted his explanation of a sticky accelerator pedal and let him go without so much as a summons. So if you have any arch-nemeses, adversaries, "frenemies," rich relatives who have already written you into their wills, or you simply see someone walking down the street and you don't like their pants, feel free to run them down. Then, when the police come, just tell them you had a sticky accelerator or your brakes didn't work or your satellite radio lost its signal and you were busy trying to fix it. It's the perfect crime--and if your car is made by Toyota (as the above-referenced Lexus is), it's positively iron-clad.

Clearly then, the way to solve the problem of dangerous driving is the same way you solve any municipal problem, and that's by coming at it head-on with a rap PSA sure to galvanize the youth into action:

New Rap, "Drive Safe New York," Targets Speeding on City Streets
November 17, 2010

Hip hop artist and physician, Dr. John Clarke, has composed a rap to promote slower automobile speeds in NYC and will present his recording Friday, at a traffic safety conference at NYU hosted by Transportation Alternatives and NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Clarke produced an award-winning rap about the H1N1 Flu for the U.S. Department of Health & Humans Services last year and has written other rhyming public health messages, including songs aimed at stopping HIV and watching "the gap" on commuter rail platforms.

While hip hop artist and physician Dr. John Clarke doesn't address the problem of speeding on city sidewalks, at least this is a start. By the way, if you can't wait until tomorrow and want to hear the "leak," you can do so here. I particularly enjoy the way Dr. Clarke manages to "flow" while citing statistics, much in the way that the Wu Tang Clan incorporated that Five Percenter math into their songs. It's also worth noting that Dr. Clarke's "Drive Safe New York" has a decidedly harder edge than his previous song, "Gap Rap," which dealt with teaching young people how to enter and exit Long Island Railroad trains safely:

At the time, critics were hard on Dr. Clarke--unfairly so, in my opinion--for failing to either incorporate or come up with suitable rhymes for stations such as "Speonk," "Patchogue," and "Ronkonkoma." Also, subsequent to "Gap Rap," the LIRR was subject to problems with its antiquated switching system that virtually crippled the nation's largest commuter rail and resulted in considerable fan backlash. Still, I think "Gap Rap" is a solid if not seminal work in the rap PSA genre, though to this day nothing rivals the TARC Bike Rack Rap for sheer danceability:



In any case, despite the best efforts of well-meaning people like Dr. Clarke, I think our worst days may be ahead of us--unlike recumbent riders, whose darkest day is well behind them. I was sifting through the comments on that New York Times recumbent article I mentioned on Monday when I found this:

April 1, 1934. Recumbents Banned from all UCI Sanctioned Racing:
Recumbents' Darkest Day.

The history of the recumbent bicycle is filled with intrigue. Only a few people today realize that the current surge in interest and ownership of recumbents is a "renaissance" of what occurred at the end of the previous century and in the early years of this one. The banning of recumbents from bicycle racing in 1934 had the effect of putting the recumbent bicycle design in the closet for fifty years, until it was re-discovered there primarily by MIT professor David Gordon Wilson and his students. To him, I and thousands of other laid-back cyclists will be eternally grateful.

Based on what I could gather from the article and from the comments, recumbent apologists apparently believe that, had it not been for that dark day on which the UCI banned them from competition, recumbents would have gone on to become the predominant form of racing bicycle. This in turn would mean that, today, recumbent riders would in fact be recognized as the "norm" instead of being simultaneously gawked at and feared as the freaks that they are. Presumably then, all recumbent riders are now tortured by this future that should have come to pass but never did, which to me lends them a completely new dimension and makes them all the more interesting, layered, and freakish. Indeed, Cormac McCarthy himself could not have "curated" a more complex and nuanced character than the recumbent rider. They even have their own mythology, centered around a tragic hero, "Francis Faure, brother of the famous cyclist Benoit Faure," otherwise known as the "King of the Nerds:"

At the start this event the other riders laughed at him and said: "Faure, you must be tired and want to go to take a nap on that thing. Why don't you sit up upright and pedal like a man?" They quit laughing when Faure poured his annoyance into the pedals and left them all behind. They couldn't even get close to him. Afterwards they were upset that they couldn't even draft his funny bike. One after the other Francis Faure defeated every first-class track cyclist in Europe, taking advantage of recumbents' clear aerodynamic superiority.. The following year Faure was practically unbeatable in 5000 meter distance events. Even in races against three or four top riders, who would alternate pacing a leader, Faure would leave the Velodrome in the yellow jersey.

This is why April 1st (April 1st being, appropriately enough, a day of mockery for the rest of the world) is observed as a day of mourning among recumbent riders, who gather their low-slung vehicles around a monument to Francis Faure, rend their garments, and fluff their beards in grief. To witness this ritual is to grieve, but even moreso to laugh--but try not to let them hear you, for they will impale you upon their safety flags.

And to think, we could have all been rolling doorstops:

There but for the grace of Lob, and so forth.

Posted in: cycling in nyc,recumbent