I have been at my current job for almost three months. Most days, I have ridden my bike there and home. It seems that I have settled into a basic route with a few minor variations. But, whichever way I go, I seem to notice something new or different, if not every day, then at least very often.
It shouldn't be too surprising, I suppose to see a lot of trees growing in the Bronx, especially given that one grows in Brooklyn. (By the way, I am not endorsing the book or any movie made from it. The title is catchy, though.) Today, it seemed, I saw them in places where I never expected. Did they grow overnight?
Best of all, some of those trees--more than I expected--are cherry blossoms, just starting to bloom.
Cherry Blossoms Bloom In The Bronx. How's that for a book (or something) about bike commuting in New York?
Some cyclists always seem to ride as if the wind is at their backs.
It wouldn't surprise me if somebody tried to create a perpetual wind-at-your-back machine. (Now, honestly, isn't that the only kind of perpetual motion you would actually want?) If it could be done for a subway train, why not a bike?
I am not making up the part about the subway train. There are several predecessors to the current New York City subway system, which opened in 1904. One of them was the Broadway Underground Pneumatic Railway, which operated from 1870 until 1873.
It was a railway in the sense that it ran on rails. However, calling it a "subway system" would be a stretch, as it was only a block, or about 100 meters (300 feet long) and included only one station at each end. But it attracted notice, in part for its novelty, but also because of who created it and how he went about constructing it.
Alfred Ely Beach, an inventor and editor of Scientific American, demonstrated an air-driven tube system at the American Institute Fair of 1867. He really wanted to show that it would be viable as an underground transportation system and applied to the New York City government, under the rule of Tammany Hall for a permit to build a tunnel. He was denied--at least for a train tunnel. He did, however, receive a permit to build a pneumatic package delivery system--one of the first of its kind--consisting of two tunnels. Then he had his permit changed so he could build one large tunnel in order to "simplify" the system. Of course, you know the real purpose of that "simplification"!
While cited as an important early development in New York City's transit history, it's not clear that pneumatic tubes could have been practical for a full-scale underground rail system. Beach's line never expanded beyond the block--from City Hall to the intersection of Broadway and Murray Streets--under which it ran. Multiple-unit traction trains and electric locomotives were developed not long after Beach's experiment ended, so investors were no longer interested in pneumatic subterranean rail lines.
Reading about Beach's experiment got me to wondering about other ways of propelling trains--and bikes. Hmm...a pneumatic pedi-train? Or how about one with a coiled spring that's wound up?
If such a system were to be built, it might come from the garage of these folks:
N.B.: Beach Street in the Tribeca neighborhood of lower Manhattan is named for Alfred Ely Beach. Very few New Yorkers know that.
Today's weather was just like yesterday's, just a couple of degrees warmer. Still, I did a shorter ride: I got off to a late start.
But I enjoyed it nonetheless. I rambled through some Brooklyn and Queens streets. It's funny how I can roll through neighborhoods I know well, yet as I pedal down a particular street, I might think, "Hmm...haven't been here in a while.
So it was as I cycled down one of the major streets in a pocket of Brooklyn that no one seems to agree on whether it's in Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Bushwick or Wyckoff Heights.
("East Williamsburg" is an actual part of Brooklyn. It's not just something you say when you're trying to impress someone--a potential date, perhaps--but you don't want to say you live deep in the heart of Bushwick. For that matter, "Wyckoff Heights" actually exists, but about the only people who've heard the name are the ones who use it in reference to the area I rode through today!)
The street is bounded by the Broadway elevated train line and a cemetery. On one side of the avenue I rode are projects and a senior center; the other side is lined with old factories, warehouses and storefronts. If that doesn't sound like the sort of place in which artists live for about a decade before the neighborhood gentrifies--or becomes Hipster Hell--well, it is.
Not surprisingly, there are "vintage" and "antique" stores that charge more than most of those artists can afford for things other people threw away. I stopped in one because it had a couple of interesting-looking bikes and trombones (How often do you see them together?) outside the door, tended to by a rugged-looking woman in a long black skirt whom I took for one of the Orthodox Jews who live nearby but who, in fact, is the wife of, and co-owner with, a who looks like he could be one of the artists.
The woman was actually nice to me: She invited me to bring my bike in. The man was dealing with a haggler--actually, someone who was trying to shame him into giving her something at the price she wanted. "I just bought property in this neighborhood. I have a stake in it," she said, stridently. Yeah, you're going to price all of the artists out of this neighborhood, I said to myself.
Anyway, there was some rather interesting stuff in the store. This caught my eye:
I wish I could have better captured what I saw: The curves of the handlebars and trombones. It wasn't so surprising to see the latter. But a box full of handlebars? Even though a few bikes were for sale, that was a surprise. I asked the female co-owner. She didn't know how he came upon them. "Probably they were getting tossed out," she speculated. Perhaps, I thought, by some bike shop. Most of the bars were cheap steel and alloy dropped bars, so I'm guessing the shop had them from old ten- and twelve-speeds that were "hybrdized".
Given all of the artists in the area, I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of those handlebars ended up in a sculpture or installation. Could the next Picasso's Bull's Head be sitting, embryonic, in that box?
