A "Duck" Bicycle Rack And Two Interesting Shops

This might be the very first "duck" bike rack I've ever seen:

So what does this bike rack have to do with ducks?, you ask. Well, as you'll notice, the rack is made of bike frames--or, at least that's what they appear to be.


On seeing it, I couldn't help to think of the "Duck" building on Long Island:

Built during the 1930's, it was located on the site of a onetime duck ranch. (That seems almost oxymoronic,doesn't it?) For decades, duck and other poultry were sold from it.  After the owners of the duck farm retired during the early 1980's, the state bought the building and moved it a few miles from its original location.


As corny as the building might be, I daresay that it's aged better than almost any piece of Brutalist architecture ever has. 

But I digress.  Mark, the owner of Zukkie's Bicycle Shop, told me that a nearby metalworking shop made the rack for him. It's apt for his store which, until recently, was a vintage/thrift shop.  He still has some of those interesting, old and odd items he had in his emporium's earlier incarnation, but he is expanding his bike line.   The main emphasis seems to be on repairs and used bikes, though I did see a new Raleigh single speed there.  


The store is on Bushwick Avenue, near the point where the eponymous neighborhood borders on hipster haven Williamsburg.   It's still an ungentrified area; housing projects stand only three blocks away.  His emphasis on used bikes and repairs, and the shop's lack of "bling"--along with its reasonable prices--show,if nothing else, an attempt to fill the divergent demands and needs of the neighborhood.


Lakythia and I went there after the rear tire of her GT mountain bike flatted twice.  I didn't have a spare tube in the size she needed and, as it turned out, even if I'd had one, she'd have gotten another flat because the rubber rim strip wouldn't stay in place.  Mark fixed that problem and, while we waited, Lakythia took a quick spin on Tosca.  It was her first experience of riding a fixed gear; she seemed to see it as a challenge.  I've a feeling she's going to try it again, if for no other reason that she was amazed at how responsive the bike is, especially after riding a mountain bike.


Anyway, after she and I parted, I stopped in another bike shop on my way home.  I had an excuse:  It opened only recently, and my curiosity got the best of me, as it often does.  

Silk Road Cycles is found just past the end of the Kent Avenue bike lane in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  An unprepossesing sign that reads "New Bicycle Shop at Calyer and Franklin" is the only indication of its existence.  However, the space, though small, is clean, uncluttered and very inviting.  The last quality has, in part, to do with Eric, the manager and Brendon, the owner.  They are very good about answering questions and can discuss bike-related (and non-bike-related) subjects intelligently.  And, in their interactions with other customers that I observed, they are not condescending and have none of the wannabe-racer or hipster attitude one finds in many other shops.


What I liked best, though, is that their emphases seem to be on quality and practicality.  While they had a couple of racing bikes, most of what I saw on the floor were bikes and accessories meant for transportation, day-tripping and touring.  There weren't any 'hipster fixies." Most of the bikes were steel, and they stock a number of parts and accessories from Nitto and Velo Orange.  I have been looking for a front rack for Vera; given their selection, I think I'll give them some business.  (Don't worry, Bicycle Habitat, I'm not abandoning you!)

Hopefully, Not Only On Sundays

On Sunday, I took Tosca out for a ride with Lakythia her friend Mildred.  It's the first time I've seen Lakythia since I got back from Prague, so of course there was lots to talk about.  One of the things I like about Lakythia is that she's a great social rider:  I never feel as if I'm sacrificing the "social" part of riding with her, and I also don't feel as if I'm sacrificing the quality of my ride to be social.  And I felt the same way about Mildred.  In some ways, she's my opposite:  She's petite, wiry and very athletic-looking, yet she has one of those gamine oval-shaped faces that allows her to wear her hair close-cropped and look absolutely great.


I can't help but to wonder what kind of a cyclist, and person, I might be if I had ridden with them, or people like them, earlier in my life.


I've had too much time to wonder a lot of things, in spite of all of the work I've had to do. It's rained, torrentially, almost nonstop since my most recent ride.  The weather we've had during the last few days actually feels more like what I expected when everyone was warning us that Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene was going to level, inundate and otherwise annihilate this city.  


You know you're not riding enough when...You plan on making an equipment change on one of your bikes and start to think maybe you won't do it after all, even though you've bought the parts you need for it.  I've tweaked the levers on Helene a bit, and the brakes feel a little better.   I'll need to test-ride them a bit more.  On one hand, I like the idea of keeping the bike as it is because, well, that would  be easier.  Plus, the dual-pivot sidepull brakes are simply easier to adjust and maintain than centerpulls, and have a "cleaner" look to them.  They also are chunkier, and I get the feeling the centerpulls might actually look classier, in a retro sort of way (especially if I install the mini-rack on the front) on the mixte frame.  Finally, they just might give me better modulation, and they will almost certainly fit better around the fenders.


Oh well.  I just want to get in a bunch of good miles before we get some snow, slush and other wintry delights.

I'm Back: Say Hello To Vera

The semester has begun and, as you probably can imagine, I've been busy.  To those of you who expressed concern for my safety:  Thank you.  I was hardly affected at all by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene, save for the fact that I had to stay indoors and miss a few days of cycling.  

Vera

But, as you've seen from my last couple of posts, I've begun to commute on Miss Mercian II--who will henceforth be known as Vera.  I could get all literary and scholarly on you and say that I named her after some character in a Restoration play, or some such thing.  Truth is, I decided on the name after listening to Pink Floyd's "The Wall."  You know the song I'm referring to. 


I'll write about her ride after I spend some more time on her saddle.  Her wheels and tires, as well as much of her other componentry, are heavier than those on Helene, my other Miss Mercian mixte.  Plus, the geometry is a bit different.  Finally, I'm still tweaking a few things on Vera.


Speaking of which:  I'm going to install a set of centerpulls on Helene.  I've always felt that they were better for bikes with long clearances.  They fit better around fenders, for one thing.  Plus, on bikes with long reaches (more than about 60 mm), traditional sidepulls feel mushy, while dual-pivot brakes (like the Tektro 556s Helene now has) seem to have an "all or nothing" feel to them.  It may well have something to do with the levers (the Tektro inverse levers that are styled like the old Mafac bar-end levers)  I'm using with them.  They seem more suited for a centerpull or cantilever brake.  


On the front centerpull,  I'm going to install one of those little TA-style front racks (made by Dia Compe and purchased from Velo Orange).  I could use a small basket or rack bag--or, of course a handlebar bag.  Perhaps I could also strap my purse or handbag to it.


There is a "casualty" in all of this.  Yes, you guessed it:  Marianela.  She went to a good home this week.  A woman who's my height and whose legs are the same length as mine is going to ride it to graduate school, which she is starting this week.  I realized that if I had simply given away or donated Marianela, she could have ended up with someone who was too short for her, or simply wouldn't have appreciated her.  By the same token, I didn't expect to get much money by selling her, and I didn't.  I asked for a low price in my Craig's List ad, and after the woman and I talked, I lowered that price and threw in a few "extras." 


I sold the bike with the Gyes Parkside saddle.  I wasn't going to part with the Brooks saddles on my Mercians, all of which are somewhat to significantly narrower than the Gyes.  And I had only one other saddle:  some cheap, hard and narrow no-name nylon thing with thin padding, which I know Marianela's new owner wouldn't have liked.  


I felt good about the transaction:  Marianela and her new rider are right for each other, I think.  And I think Vera will make my commutes more fun.

A First And Last Ride

I'm going to commit an act of defiance:  I'm not going to tell you how I braved driving horizontal rain and vertical tides dropping from the New York Bay into my apartment.  That won't be too hard to do, for those things didn't happen.  In fact, I, like everyone else in my neighborhood, got off rather easily from what was supposed to be The End of Civilization As We Know It, a.k.a. Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene.


Of course, I didn't go outside in the wind-whipped torrents. Only a fool (me in my youth, perhaps) would have done such a thing.  

Ironically enough, the other day, Friday, was about as beautiful as a day could be.  I took my first commute of the new academic year--and my first commute on the Miss Mercian I bought last month.


And, yes, I got to ride off into the sunset.  I guess it was somehow appropriate for the evening before what was supposed to be The Storm Of The Millenium.

A Bohemian Magpie Rides From Coney Island To Celetna

You know you've just been to Prague when...

you can look at the lights on the Parachute Jump and think "garnets!"

Surely, that structure won't be mistaken for anything Bohemian kings ever wore, any more than any of my helmets would.  And none of the streets I pedaled to Coney Island will never be confused with Celetna, the route of the coronation processions.

And no one I saw today will be confused with Mikhail, who guided my first ride in Prague:

A bit of a Bohemian prince, wouldn't you say?


Guys remember the pretty girls.  Me, I remember the pretty stuff.  Or the eye-catching, stuff, anyway.

I took that photo inside St. Nicholas Church on the Old Town Square in Prague.  Maybe I am, deep down, a magpie if I like to photograph things like that...or this:

A Czech Guest's Column

In a sort of response to a suggestion Steve A (of DFW Point to Point fame), today I am turning this blog over to a "guest," Milena Svoboda.  She has just recently arrived in New York from Prague, and offers some of her observations about cycling and other things in New York.

I simply cannot comprehend such bright sunshine.  We sometimes have days when there is barely a single cloud in the sky and you can see blue spread out above you, even brighter than the inside of the Hall of Mirrors.  But even with my darkest sunglasses, which I bought just before I left Praha, I still had to ride with my eyes almost closed.

Naturally, the sun can never be as bright in Praha.  We are exactly on the 50th parallel of latitude, as every Czech knows.  On Google, it says that the 50th passes just below Winnipeg, Canada.  For the contrast, New York just north of the 40th, which passes through Minorca, Sardinia and near Ankara.  Justine didn't know that; it is probable that most other people in America don't know that, either.  


Now I understand why Justine got so lost in Praha.  When all of your streets are straight lines, like they are in this city, it's so much easier to find out where you have to go.  Back home, the streets wind round castles and churches; Justine says that when they build a new road here, they knock down people's houses.  

How many Americans pedal on streets like this?  That is the reason why they and Justine are always getting lost.  No wonder they had the need to invent the GPS!  Justine says that is the logical result of being in a country that was "discovered" by someone who got lost.


Anyway (Since I meet Justine, I begin many of my sentences with that word .) I felt like I was riding on a magic carpet.  Where did they find all of this asphalt?  Justine let me borrow the bike she just bought.  It rides so fast and so smooth.  It would much like to ride it in Praha:

It's a pretty bike.  All of Justine's bikes are pretty.  Everyone on this blog says so, too.  I felt like I was floating above the castle when we rode along the river.


After seeing the river and the Hudson, I understand why American streets are so wide and straight.  When I saw Justine, I knew she is from Angliecky or Americky because she carried a book called "Lonely Planet."  In that book, it says that the Vlatva River winds through the heart of Praha like a question mark.  I like that; it makes me realize that the Hudson and East Rivers rush, straight as these streets, through New York like two exclamation marks!

Soon I must return to Praha.  I hope to return to New York some time soon; I was just starting to learn how to ride here.  Justine said she was just starting to understand how to ride in Praha before she had to go home, too.  She wants to come back; I hope she does.

Why Can't We Have Thai Massage And Bowling In Queens?

So...Back in the good ol' USA, my Internet connection has been out for three out of five days.  It's nice to be back in the technological leader of the world, isn't it?

OK, I'll end the gratuitous sarcasm.  I guess I'm suffering from a kind of post-partum depression about my trip.  I really want to be back in Prague--with at least one of my bikes, of course.


The weather has been a bit warmer than what I experienced in Prague, and it's been raining on and off, it seems, all of this week.  Astoria's not a bad place to be, but when the skies are gray, I want a Gothic skyline. At least, that's how I feel now that I've seen Prague.

I must confess:  I haven't been on my bike since I got back.  I'm doing now what I did after each bike tour I took abroad, I guess.  After cycling among scenery you wouldn't see in Brooklyn or Queens, and ending each ride with food they don't have here, it's kind of difficult to get used to the mundane--or, at least, what's mundane in your own life--again. I guess, though, once I start riding again, I'll appreciate seeing street signs I can read, not to mention asphalt instead of cobblestones and tram tracks.


Now, here's something you won't find in Queens:

Rainbows And A Full Moon

This has nothing to do with cycling.  Well, I guess it does, because it's about Prague and I did ride in Prague.  


All right, you're not convinced that there's a connection.  Do you care?  You really are looking at this post to see this:

I mean, how can you beat a trip to Prague that includes two rainbows and a full moon on the final night?  No wonder I enjoyed cycling there so much, even if I was riding a bike nothing like any I own over cobblestones and tram tracks, up and down hills.


After all of that, how could I not want to go back?  

Primary Post-Prague

I'm baaack!


Oh, wait:  That was an Austrian accent. Well, it's the country next door, anyway.  Just like an American talking with a Canadian accent, eh? ;-)


All right...Now that I've offended Americans, Canadians, Czechs and Austrians, what's next?  I guess I'll indulge in a cliche and say that I can't believe I'm back already.  I felt like I was just starting to get the hang of cycling on cobblestoned streets on which half of the width was taken by tram tracks.  And I was just starting to feel right on the bike I rode.  It's really not a bad bike, for its intended ridership, anyway.  

I haven't gotten on a bike since getting home last night in a veritable deluge.  Today it's been raining on and off, and there's no place in particular to which I must, or want to, go.   Riding in my usual settings will be a bit of a comedown--sort of like the sensation I felt after eating a really bad takeout meal the day after arriving home from a bike tour from France into Spain and back.


Yes, I miss cycling in Prague, even though it seems like less of a cyclist's city than New York now feels.  But there is definitely a cycling scene developing; it's more or less where New York's cycling community was about twenty years ago.  That is to say, for one thing, that most of the cyclists--at least the ones I saw--are young, though not children.  And, like most Big Apple cyclists of yore (i.e., my youth), those Prague cyclists are riding either mountain bikes or road bikes that have been adapted in one way or another to city commuting.  Back in the day, messengers and a few other "fringe" riders pedaled the sorts of bikes we now call "hipster fixies" (although we didn't have V-shaped rims available in colors to match our team kit!); I saw the same sorts of bikes in Prague.  


Actually, those bikes are strangely appropriate for a city and country that are  still in the process of creating and re-creating themselves from the detritus of its past and things that could scarcely have been imagined during that past.  In other words, they're exactly the sort of bike one would, and should, ride to a music club adorned with psychedelic posters inside a Soviet-era nuclear bunker.  (Yes, I saw such a place!).  And, of course, said bike would be parked in a place like this:

Bicycles And Cycling In Prague

Seeing the photos in my previous two posts, I think you can understand why I haven't been posting much.  I'm taking in as much of this city as I can.  And, now that I've been navigating it on bike, I'm coming home really tired.  It seems that in order to get anywhere in this city, you have to climb a hill.  Of course, that's one of the things that makes it so beautiful.  

I've entertained thoughts of moving here.  Talking to Spencer at City Cycles has made me think even more about it.  I've also talked to three other Americans who live here, and all are happy,  In fact, there's something about people generally that seems happier, or at least less stressed-out, than people in any American city I've seen.  The Czechs themselves are reserved, but invariably helpful and polite.  Plus, they almost seem to expect that you don't speak Czech, and if they know any English, they want to use it.  Of course, if I were to move here, I would learn Czech, and possibly German.  (I knew some of the latter at one time, but have lost it through non-use.)

What I'd have to do, of course, is get my bikes and cats over here.  From what I've heard, the former would be easier than the latter.  Then again, I guess that would be true if I moved to almost any other country.  (When I lived in Paris, I didn't have cats, or any other pets.)  But if people here could live under Hapsburgs (I've heard that people have been denied PhDs in European history because they and their professors couldn't agree on whether it should be spelled "Hapsburg," "Habsburg" or "Habsbourg.") and Nazis and Communists, I could do those things.


As far as work goes:  I hope to do more writing for pay.  And, of course, I could teach English: It seems that there's an almost insatiable demand for it here.  Also, I'm told that people--particularly business people and students--want to learn other languages as well.  


And, to top everything off, although the cycling community is still small compared to, say, German cities or New York, it's growing. 


And how can you not love a city where you see bikes like these?

This one belongs to a young male concession-stand worker near the Lapidarium.  He told me that the bike belonged to his grandmother, and he painted the fenders, brake rods and bottom bracket cups.  

This Dutch Batavus tandem was parked near the Astronomical Clock.  I don't know whether it belonged to a local resident, to some Dutch couple on vacation, or someone else.  It looked interesting:  It was lugged, and the rich brown paint looked new, as did the Sturmey Archer internally-geared hub in the rear and dynamo hub on the front.

I saw this one in a shop in Vinohrady, one of the city's loveliest residential neighborhoods.  In the same shop, I saw a bike that confirms something I've long suspected:

Tell me it isn't a Dahon for the Czech market, whatever the label says.  Down to the smallest details I could see, it sure looks like the Dahon I had.  This confirms my suspicion that there are about a half-dozen, maybe ten, factories in Taiwan and China that are making about 99 percent of the bikes in this world.  They just get sold under different names in different countries.  As an example, I could see little difference between bikes from "Author", a common brand here, and ones sold in the US and other countries under Giant's name.  


And then there was this gem in a fashion display in Stare Mesto:

It's a Czech-made Favorit.  I think it's been repainted, as I don't recall any Favorits from back in the day in that color or paint scheme.  Also,the brown Brooks saddle and bar tape are give-aways:  Favorit bicycles came with their own brand of tensioned leather saddle (which was actually quite good) and all saddles--save for "banana" seats on "Sting-Ray"-type bikes--in those days were black.


Also from Favorit is this bike:

Yes, it's the one that's taken me over cobbletones, pebbles, dirt and pavement, and beside tram tracks as well as the Vlata River!