A Ride Before Earth Day

 Today is Earth Day.

This day was first designated in 1970, a year after the Santa Barbara oil spill.  I remember growing up with a great awareness of the environmental movement.  Because of that and the Jacques Cousteau television series that aired at the time, for a time I wanted to become a marine ecologist. They also watered, if you'll pardon the metaphor, the seed that had already been planted for my cycling enthusiasm.

I remembered that yesterday, during a late-afternoon ride.  I had no particular destination:  I zigzagged along Queens and Brooklyn streets, past bridges and brownstones, parks and pre-schools, international neighborhoods and industrial colonies. And this:

It's hard to believe, but this was once the most fertile oyster bed in the world.  Lenape natives literally picked them up from the banks and roasted them with the corn, beans and squash they grew nearby.  Now a sign admonishes visitors not to eat anything from that water, or even to enter it.  Every year for as long as I've been paying attention, the Environmental Agency has rated Newtown Creek, which separates the metal fabricators, cement plants and truck depots of Maspeth, Queens from East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as one of the most polluted bodies of water in the United States.  Sometimes it takes the "top" spot. 

Cycling has helped me to appreciate the beauty of landscapes, natural and manmade.  It also reminds me of. not only the need to preserve such places, but to use what we've built wisely and resposibly.

It's A Toxic Waste Dump. Keep It Clean!

The last part of yesterday's ride took me, before Greenpoint, through the industrial necropoli along Newtown Creek.  Actually, there is still a lot of manufacturing and trucking in the area, but the corroding concrete carcasses and brick buildings bubbling with the anger of acid in the rain and sunshine echo and mirror deaths past and future.

Among those of the past are the Lenni-Lenape who lived along the shores and lived on what they picked from it and fished from the creek.  In their day--two centuries ago--the creek, and other New York waterways, were the world's richest oyster beds.  Charles Dickens and Alexis de Tocqueville remarked on the ubiquity of those bivalves: even day laborers ate them for lunch!  (According to some histories I've read, the oyster bar was invented here in New York.)

Pilings from a bridge built in 1836 and decommissioned in 1875 over Newtown Creek.   It  connected Williamsburg, Brooklyn (on the oposite shore) with Maspeth, Queens

Today no sane person would eat anything from that water.  In fact, most people wouldn't even touch it, as a century and a half of dumping all sorts of petroleum by-products and other chemicals have rendered Newtown Creek--as I mentioned in an earlier post--one of the nation's most polluted waterways.

But at least there are attempts to make the waterway and its shores, if not pristine, at least something other than a toxic tragedy.  Could the day come when we'll ride on a green path and stop to pick berries or flowers along the way?

Until then, we can only heed the warnings on the signs posted near the creek.

What, exactly, is this one saying?  "Due to poor water quality and contamination of sediments, within Newtown Creek," it explains, "it is NOT advisable to swim, wade or consume fish or shellfish at this location."  OK, that makes sense. But in the next sentence:  "Please help keep this site clean (italics mine) by not littering or dumping debris."

Hmm...I wonder whether anyone actually reads signs before they're posted.

As The Sun Sets On Newtown Creek, A Ross From The Land Of The Rising Sun

In Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Manhattan Avenue--one of the neighborhood's main throughfares--dead-ends at Newtown Creek.  One recent year, the Environmental Protection Agency declared it the nation's most polluted body of water. (In other years, the Gowanus Canal has garnered that distinction.)  But when it doesn't win "the Prize", the Creek is almost always listed among the most polluted bodies of water in the nation.

Of course, I don't think about that when a late day ride takes me there and I take in the views.

There's a nature walk along the creek.  By its side, at the end of Manhattan Avenue, there's a green patch with a fence around it that's a popular place to lock--and, it seems, abandon--bicycles.

Sometimes the bikes left there are rather interesting in their own ways.  For instance, there was this Ross 3-speed:

Ross was known mainly for making "muscle" bikes like the Barracuda (which was intended to compete with the likes of the Schwinn Krate and Raleigh Chopper) and some of the early production mountain bikes.   Their factories were located in Rockaway Beach, NY and Allentown, PA, before production moved to Taiwan.

However, during the 1960s--on the eve of the North American Bike Boom--Ross imported three-speed bikes from Japan.  At that time, few Americans owned or rode bikes with derailleurs.  Thus, most adults who rode--and kids who wanted something lighter than the baloon-tired "bombers" made by Schwinn and other American companies--preferred three-speed bikes, which were called "English racers".

Most of those bikes were made by the likes of Dunelt, Sunbeam, Robin Hood and other companies--and, of course, Raleigh, which would later acquire most of those marques and all but monopolize the remaining market for that type of bicycle.

However, as demand grew, those old English manufacturers couldn't keep up.  Thus, bikes were imported from Japan. One of my first bikes--a Royce-Union--was one of those English-style Japanese three-speeds.   As you can see in the photos, bike-makers in the Land of the Rising Sun did everything they could to emulate, if only visually, the "English Racers" that were so popular in the US and elsewhere.

(When Centurion ten-speeds first came to these shores in 1969, they could very easily be mistaken for Raleigh Grand Prix machines of the same year--unless, of course, one noticed the SunTour or Shimano derailleurs, as well as a few other details.  At that time, most Raleighs came with Simplex or Huret derailleurs.)

Some Japanese bikes came with leather saddles, also made in Japan, that resembled the offerings of Brooks, Ideale and other British and European makers.  I don't know whether the bikes made for Ross came with them (I can find practically no information about the bikes), but somehow I doubt it.  Even if it came with a leather saddle, I doubt it would have been this one:

You probably think it's a beat-up Brooks B72:  the saddle that came with many British three-speeds.  It does indeed have the same looped under-carriage rails and saddlebag slots built into the saddle.  And the top is the same size, and has the same shape as the B72, with a couple of exceptions:

It is indeed a B18. The embossed floral pattern at the top is wearing down.  I don't know whether it's from use or abandonment.  Somehow I don't think it's an original-production B18 from the 1930s, worn as it is.  The design was resurrected about a decade ago, as classic-style ladies' city bikes became popular.  The curled front is designed to prevent a skirt from getting caught on the saddle.

Whatever the story, the saddle is a nice addition to the bike, though I think it deserves better than to have bird poop on it.  I have to wonder, though, how the bike rides with this bar and stem combination:

That extension of that stem must be about 120mm.  That makes the steering more sensitive.  And, of course, the bars increase leverage.  I would be curious to ride the bike just to see how a bike that's not made for quick cornering rides with touchy steering.  Maybe it's a good combination for riding in traffic.

Anyway, I hope the bike isn't abandoned.  It may not be anyone's idea of a "great" or "classic" bike.  But it certainly is practical (except for those bars!) and I am always glad to see a bike like it in circulation.  At least, I hope, it won't become part of the detritus in Newtown Creek!

On The Dock Of Newtown Creek

So how did I spend the hottest afternoon of the year?  (High temperature:  100F or 38C)  Riding, of course.

At least I know I wasn't the only one.  At the bridge to the Rockaways, I met Hal Ruzal, Bicycle Habitat's mechanic and wheelbuilder par excellence (and a kick-ass musician).  And his girlfried, who looks a bit younger than me (and him) was also on her bike.  Was she showing true love to Hal, or to cycling? Or--well, all right, I won't ask any more unanswerable questions (not in this post, anyway!).

In any event, I sensed that they wanted to ride together, so I coasted down the Rockaway side of the bridge before them.  I stopped in Rockaway Beach, near the site of the old Playland, went for a dip in the ocean and paid tribute to the Ramones.  Somehow I think that if they were all still in this world, they'd've been there to buoy the post-Sandy spirit of the place.

Anyway, I bumped into Hal and his belle again in Riis Park, where the storm leveled the dunes.  From there, I rode down to Breezy Point, across the Bay to Brooklyn and Floyd Bennet FIeld and Coney Island.  Finally, at the end of the day, I crossed back into Queens from Greenpoint:

I'm not sure this is quite what Otis Redding had in mind when he sang, "Dock of the Bay" (one of my favorite songs of all time).  But, it was about as idyllic as one could get on Newtown Creek, which the EPA rates as the most polluted body of water in the US--except in those years when the Gowanus Canal "wins" that "honor."

Train Tracks To Bike Paths?

Today was one of those crisp, clear, early-fall (though the calendar still says "summer") days that just makes me want to follow roads just to see where they'll lead.

In this case, I found myself following railroad tracks.  Oh, I've passed by or over them hundreds of times before.  But, just for fun, I decided to see how much I could follow them.

This one starts at the East River, and, within about a mile, passes under the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge of disappearing-bike-lane infamy.  It continues through along Newtown Creek, through a heavily industrialized area of Queens.

However, it's possible to follow it only for very short stretches.  Some of the land adjacent to the tracks is private property (factories, garages and such) that is closed off to the public.  And there are other stretches where the only way to follow the tracks is to ride on them. I've ridden on railroad tracks before--with a mountain bike.  

Apparently, the track is owned by New York and Atlantic Railway, which provides freight service on current and former Long Island Rail Road (Yes, it's spelled as two words!) tracks and right-of-ways.  One stretch of it--from about 43rd to about 58th Streets--seems to be used, at least on occasion, as it seems to be connected to another series of tracks and it's near UPS and FedEx terminals (and the Thomas' bakery!).  But other parts, such as the spur along Flushing Avenue and 56th Street, seem not to have been used in decades.

If New York and Atlantic indeed owns all of the tracks I've shown, I wonder whether they plan to use them.  As industrialized as those areas around the tracks are, there's still not as much as there was, say, during World War II.  And much of the freight is carried by trucks rather than trains, as there are highways nearby.

So...If NY and A doesn't plan to use the tracks, I wonder whether they'd sell, or even give, them to the city or state. If they did, I think the tracks and the adjacent paths and roads would make some great bike lanes.   I think now of the lane built by the Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx; I think something on a greater scale could be done with those tracks.  The effect would be similar:  Bike lanes that traverse some interesting urban-industrial architecture that takes on a unique beauty in the light of autumn foliage.