Made For Two, Only A Mile Away

This bike was parked at West 23rd Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan:

Whoever owns and/or rides it probably doesn't realize that it was made not much more than a mile from where it was parked.

Rollfast bicycles, which I mentioned in a previous post, were manufactured literally steps from where the Liberty Tower now stands--at the site where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood until 11 September 2001.

To my knowledge, Rollfast went out of business--or simply stopped making bicycles--some time during the 1970's or early 1980's.

Chelsea Couple

People have told me that, given my history and proclivities, I really don't spend much time in Chelsea. Actually, coming from some people I know, that statement is an accusation rather than an observation!


The funny thing is, I used to spend more time there when it was still largely a working-class Irish neighborhood and, later, when art galleries that couldn't afford to stay in Soho moved to the western fringe of the neighborhood.  Those times were well before my transition.


Anyway, Chelsea is like a lot of places in that it's very different if you know people there and go into their homes.  Otherwise, it's mostly a shopping area with lots of restaurants and the Piers.  But, inside the apartment blocks, tenements and restored brownstones, there are all kinds of stories.  A few of them can be told by the bikes parked outside:

For those of you more interested in the bikes than in my scintillating social commentary or historical perspective (You know who you are! ;-) ), the bikes are of course both Dutch-style city commuters/commuters.  The one on the fence is a Raleigh, believe it or not.  The bike leaning against it was made in Belgium by Mechelen (?).


In black, they make for a rather distinguished if bourgeois couple who have their charm.  Isn't that what every couple wants to be, at the end of the day?