In the middle of the journey of my life, I am--as always--a woman on a bike. Although I do not know where this road will lead, the way is not lost, for I have arrived here. And I am on my bicycle, again.
That was today’s ride, down the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront and back.
I lingered a bit at the Long Island City promenades op and piers. I started riding there long before it sprouted glass towers, trendy cafes and young people who might be a little too self-consciously hip for their own good.
Back then, it was an industrial area where each block, it seemed, showed a different stage of post-industrial decay. But it felt comfortable, to me anyway, like a sweater that might look a bit tattered but feels right. One thing that hasn’t changed is that it offers some nice harbor vistas and the best views of my two favorite Manhattan skyscrapers—the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. I wonder, though, whether we’ll be able to enjoy those views for much longer: It seems that developers are building more and more, as tall and as close as possible to those edifices, as possible.
I mean, if they continue to hem it in, nobody will be able to see this, from Long Island City or anywhere else.
Still, the ride was a nice ending to a day and a year, at the beginning of winter.
I wanted to ride this afternoon, but I wasn’t feeling adventurous. Perhaps it has to do with the year ending: Starting new journeys seems more appropriate for a new year.
So I rode to the Flushing Bay Promenade, recently renamed the Malcolm X Promenade. He lived in nearby East Elmhurst, along with other luminaries like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald.
The ride is pleasant enough, sort of like comfort food for me and my bikes. I rode up and down the promenade a few times, in part to get into a physical and mental “groove,” but also because of two men.
Short and squat but broad-shouldered and thick-fingered, they looked like the sort of Central American immigrants who wait at strategic but discreet intersections in residential neighborhoods where contractors, landscapers and other small business people hire people like them as day laborers.
Such people work and sleep hard, wherever they can. So it’s unusual to see men like them dozing on park benches.
But were they sleeping ?
Their faces, which probably would have been colored like terra cota or the earth from which they came, instead looked as if they’d been worn to reflect the gray sky and water. One man’s hand drooped in front of him, his fingers frozen in a grip of something no longer there.
The other man’s head was cocked to his side, as if he stopped himself from resting it on the other man’s shoulders—or a pillow he realized wasn’t there.
A mobile phone propped between them played bouncy conga drum and stringed music. But it could just as well have emitted “elevator music,” for all of the effect it had on them.
Finally, when I rode by them for the sixth time, I think, the man with the cocked head stirred.
“¿Estás bien?” I shouted. He nodded.
“¿Necesitas algo?” He moved his head slowly from side to side.
“¿Estás seguro?” Another nod.
“OK. Feliz año nuevo.” Even if they’re OK, I hope the path ahead is easier and clearer for them in the coming year.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, some bike shop owners and employees, it seemed, regarded robberies as a rite of passage. I knew, and was known in, most Manhattan and Brooklyn shops and I don't think a single one escaped having expensive bikes, parts or money stolen. Some even prepared themselves for what seemed an inevitability: One employee was able to free herself, two fellow employees and the shop's owner after a perp tied them up and fled with cash and merchandise.
Later in the 1990s, as overall crime dropped, such events became less common. Theft in bike shops, by that time, was more likely to be a matter of some sticky-fingered opportunist absconding with a bike computer or expensive accessory or part--or low-paid employees taking "samples" of stuff they couldn't afford on their salaries.
If you live long enough (as someone with a blog called "Midlife Cycling" has), you realize that almost no condition, good or bad, lasts forever--and that the good usually has at least one bad consequence,and vice versa.
Case in point: the COVID 19-induced Bike Boom. Anyone selling or repairing bikes, or anything related to them, was doing more business than they've done in years, or ever. Then, lockdowns and workforce attrition throughout supply chains--from factories in the Far East to docks on the East and West coasts--led to scarcity that caused the prosperity that burned so brightly to consume the very shops that enjoyed it, however briefly.
Those shortages--and the overall increase in crime--led to something that now seems all but inevitable: an increase in theft, of bikes parked on streets, stored in warehouses or displayed on showroom floors, and of parts and accessories. So, the number of bike shops incurring theft--whether of small items or bikes with five-figure price tags--has risen for the first time in decades.
Worse, bike shop robberies and other crimes have been "taken to another level," in the words Gillian Forsyth. She owns BFF Bikes in Chicago, which was hit when "people were going to work and cars about" on a weekday morning. The robbers "crashed through one of my windows" and "targeted five very high-end bikes," she said. "They just kind of rushed in, grabbed the bikes and left very quickly."
Although she has security footage of the incident, Forsyth says that identifying the perps will be difficult because they were masked--an ironic consequence of a measure taken to deal with the COVID pandemic.
In an ideal world, everyone will have a good bike and will ride it without worrying about their safety while riding or the bike's safety when parked. In the meantime, we'll have to settle for part of the utopia, I guess: More people are riding bikes.
