It Looks Like A Lane Now

It looks like a real bike lane now.


Last week, I mentioned the construction I saw on the Queens side of the Edward Koch/Queensborough/59th Street Bridge.  (At the rate it's going, the bridge'll have more names than God has in the Old Testament!)  Well, I don't know whether they've finished it.  But at least now the path is useful, and takes you to a practical destination.


More important, it doesn't force cyclists into this:

This is where the lane from the bridge used to end.  Just beyond the orange barrels, 27th Street dead-ends under the elevated tracks of the #7 and N lines of the New York subways.  Most of the traffic on 27th (which is one-way in the direction of the truck in the rear of the photo) merges onto the bridge ramp; a few vehicles turn right onto Queens Plaza North, where you see the black sedan.  Sometimes those streets are completely full of vehicles, and their drivers aren't known for patience.


So, when a cyclist coming off the bridge can turn left onto the lane, which intersects with 23rd, 22nd and 21st Streets. All of them continue underneath the tracks.  Or one can take 23rd in the other direction to go to Astoria.  That street passes through an industrial area and the traffic on it is usually light.   Twenty-Second is one-way in the opposite direction from 23rd, and 21st is a major artery that serves as part of the route for several bus lines.  


I would love it if the path were extended to Vernon Boulevard, which skirts the Queens bank of the East River.   That would offer cyclists relatively easy and safe access to PS 1, Socrates Sculpture Park and the Noguchi Museum, among other things. 


One can always hope.  For now, I'll suspend my cynicism and be grateful for something that's better than what we had.

They Need A Few Good Bikes. The Women, Too.

A counselor at my second job is a volunteer with Neighbors Link, an organization that helps recent immigrants. He is asking people to donate bicycles and sturdy clothing and footwear (such as jeans, overalls, T-shirts and work boots) to that organization, which will give them to recent immigrants.


The idea intrigued me for several reasons.  For one, I notice that more and more immigrants--mainly from Latin America and Asia, and mainly men--are using bicycles for transportation. I'm not talking only about the guys who make deliveries for various restaurants, cafes and diners.  Others are riding their bikes to work at construction sites, warehouses and other places where native-born degree-holders fear to tread.  Some, I suspect, are also riding to classes at the community colleges, language institutes, trade schools and GED centers in the area.  


As you can imagine, they're not always riding the best of bikes.  Sometimes they're on cheap department-store bikes, most of which are not assembled properly (in addition to being of poor quality).  Others are used bikes of just about every genre.  These days mountain bikes from the early and mid-90's seem to be the most common pre-owned bikes to find their way into the immigrant communities, and there are large numbers of "vintage" ten- and twelve-speed bikes, in addition to some English (or English-style) three-speeds.  (Do you know what makes me feel old? Knowing that I rode "vintage" bikes when they weren't vintage!)  All of these bikes, even the best of them, are in various states of disrepair.  

Image from "The Urban Country"

I think the counselor who's coordinating the collections is doing a great thing. If you're in the NYC area and have anything to donate, I can refer you to him, and he will arrange a pick-up.


But now that I've undergone changes, I've become a radical feminist.  (Ha, ha!) So I notice that these immigrant bike riders are invariably male.  That is not a stereotype or sweeping generalization; I can't recall the last time I saw a Latina or female Asian immigrant riding a bike for any reason.  Every female cyclist I've met here has been native- or European-born.  


So now I'm thinking about why that is.  It seems to me that bicycling, like education, can make such women less dependent on men and less isolated.  I have had many female immigrant students, some of whom were single mothers and others who were married to abusive men.  Even those who seemed to be in happy marriages and families were living in a kind of isolation I can just barely imagine.  I mean, I've lived in a culture different from my own, and I've traveled to others. But I realize now that, when I was living abroad, and in my travels until recently, I had a great deal of freedom simply from being a single American, and from living as a guy named Nick.  But even when I went to Turkey five years ago--as Justine, but still three years before my surgery--I was able to move about in ways that I never could had I been a Turkish woman.

Oh, and I didn't see a single woman on a bike when I was there.  And I wasn't riding, either.


Anyway...Let me know if you want to make, or know anyone who wants to make, a donation to the program I described.  I'm also interested in hearing any thoughts you might have about the situation of immigrant women I've just described.

The Birth Of A Sophisticated Cycler

Back in the dot-com boom, the young, hip and on-the-make talked about "getting in on the ground."  That meant investing in a company or trend as it was about to become popular and highly profitable.   Everyone, it seemed, spoke of wanting to be in on "the next new big thing."  


Of course, some of those "next new big things" have become mainstays of today's world: Think of Google,as an example.  On the other hand, some were comets that flared brightly and briefly before crashing.  Do you remember Pet.com?


Well, I don't think very many of us are going to get rich, even for a moment (as so many of those former dot-com millionaires were), by finding the next hot new blog as it's starting its run.  I missed the start of "Lovely Bicycle!" by about five months and "Bike Snob NYC," "DFW Point-to-Point," "Girls and Bicycles," "Urban Adventure League," "1410 OakWooD" and a few other great blogs by a couple of years.   (Sorry to all of the ones I haven't mentioned:  Simply listing them would be a post unto itself!)


However, I think I might have witnessed the birth (well, OK, I caught it on its second day) of an interesting new cycling blog.  I'm talking about The Sophisticated Cycler.

In it, TSC is documenting the building--or, rather, making--of a bike that suits his particular needs and tastes.  It's fascinating to follow his process, from his research and decision about what type of bike to buy to the ways he's customizing it.


He's only on his fourth post, so you can still be there for the "birth," as it were.