There's Hope--Really!

While pedaling up a hill, I saw this:

Now, the hill wasn’t particularly steep or long, and I was riding Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear.  But right now she has a gear of 47x17, which isn’t high but isn’t exactly a climbing gear.  Still, I managed to get up that hill without getting out of my seat or breaking a sweat.  But I have to admit that I liked seeing “There’s Hope”—which is all I saw as I started the climb.  It was only about halfway up when I realized that the place was a barber- and beauty-shop.  Until I saw the subtitle, I thought it might be a storefront church or one of those centers where twelve-step programs meet—neither of which would have surprised me in that neighborhood.

I think it’s kind of funny that a barber- and beauty-shop would have such a name.  Perhaps I should have gone in and asked whether they’d make the same claim for someone who’s as completely un-photogenic as I am.

Anyway, after ascending that hill, I came to a garden.  Well, all right, the name of one—sort of:

Somehow I never associated Eden with mountains.  In any event, I’m glad the city created that green mall along Mount Eden Avenue, which traverses a low-income neighborhood that immigrants from the Caribbean, Latin America and West Africa call home.

A bit further up in the Bronx, I felt a bit like an urban archaeologist when I came upon this, across from the WoodlawnCemetery:

Here in New York, one occasionally sees advertisements that were painted on the sides of buildings decades, or even generations, ago.  Although almost nobody would consider them Fine Art (at least, not with a capital “F” and a capital “A”), some show a level of illustrative vividness—and pure-and-simple imagination and craft—one rarely finds today.  That is why I have respect both for whoever created, and whoever actually painted, those ads. I am sure those people are, unfortunately, long dead.

On the other hand, the graffiti “taggers” who painted their "signatures" on the building next door (which I wasn't able to photograph)  may be alive and well.  Perhaps they have become “legitimate” artists; perhaps they are doing things entirely unrelated to art.  Or—this being the Bronx—they also might be long dead.  Somehow it’s strange to see graffiti (at least here in New York) that seems almost as much an ancient artifact as a grotto unearthed by some construction crew building a hotel or office tower or parking lot in some city along the Mediterranean.

Speaking of history:  Believe it or not, in the Bronx, there’s a still-standing house that’s even older than this country.  This house was built sixteen years before the Declaration of Independence—and two centuries before I was born:

The Valentine-Varian  House is now home to the Museum of Bronx History.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t open when I got there.  But I’m going to make it a point to go there again soon, when it is open.

If that house is still standing—and I climbed some hills (by choice)—I feel that I can say, after all, There’s Hope!

P.S. Can you guess what this building is?

 

Not For Women--Or Anybody

When I was writing for a newspaper, a police precinct commander sold me something I haven't forgotten:  "Lucky for us that most criminals are stupid."

For many perps, their folly begins in thinking that they'll actually get away with what their misdeeds.  But for others, their foolishness shows in the ways they execute--or don't execute their offenses. 

I got to thinking about all of that because I think there's a parallel principle in making works of "art".  We are lucky, I believe, that most of the truly offensive stuff--you know, things that are racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise show contempt for some group of people that did nothing to deserve it--is purely and simply bad.  And that is the reason why it is usually forgotten.


So why am I pontificating about virtue and virtu on a bike blog?, you ask. Great question.

Yesterday "The Retrogrouch" wrote about a bicycle displayed at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show (NAHBS).  Its builder, Allan Abbott, dubbed it "The Signorina."

With a name like that, you might expect a nicely-made women's city or commuter bike with some Italian pizzazz.  Instead, it's a not particularly well-made (for a handbuilt bike, anyway) machine that's supposedly built in the likeness of a naked woman.



So far it sounds like a silly novelty item, right?  But it doesn't seem like anything to get worked up about. Or does it?  

Now, I'm sure there are places where such a bike could not be ridden because it would offend the sensibilites of some people.  I'm not one of them:  I have no aversion to nudity, although I have to wonder whether anyone in his or her right mind would want to see me naked.

But I digress.  If you're going to use a human form, au naturel, in one of your creations, at least show it in all of its imperfect glory--the way, say, any number of painters, sculptors, photographers and writers have done.  Whatever its gender, size, colors, shape, age or state of alertness or weariness, make it a reflection of what we are, and aspire to.  Above all, make it living, human and organic.

The supposedly female form in Abbot's frame is none of those things.  If anything, it's plain creepy:  The "signorina" is on her "hands" and "knees"--and headless.  I'm sure there are people--a few of whom are cyclists or collectors--who are turned on by such degradation.  I guess I'm philistine and reactionary:  I'm not one of them.

But, to be fair, if "Retrogrouch" hadn't described it, I might have needed time and an extra look or two to discern the nude female form straddling the wheels.  Call me slow or un-hip if you must.  Even after reading about it on Adventure Journal  as well as Retrogrouch's blog, I'm still not convinced that the bike in any way--realist or abstract, linear or Cubist, Classical or Impressionist--evokes a female, or any other human, form.

In other words, it doesn't work as art.  Perhaps we should be thankful for that.  

Somehow I get the impression it's not such a great bike, either. 

Backdrops

As much as I love Shakespeare, I have to tell you this:  The man never had an original idea in his life.  At least, not an original idea for a story.  Every one of The Bard's plays was written, in one version or another, by somebody else.  The reason we read, perform, watch and beat them to death today is that he imbued his characters with a depth never before seen in drama, at least in English:  Until his time, most dramas were "morality plays" or other kinds of vehicles to impart lessons or accepted wisdom.

Likewise, Alfred Hitchcock's most iconic scene is no more original than any murder story has been since Cain and Abel.  Even if you've never watched the whole movie, you know that scene:  Marion, played by Janet Leigh, is taking a shower when a female figure stabs her.


 


I am not saying the scene--or the film--does not deserve to be as famous as it is.  Rather, I am just pointing out that Hitchcock probably paid a visit to the Louvre, or at least looked at an art book or two, some time before he started making Psycho.

Please don't ask me how it took so long for me to come to such a realization.  But I might be the only visitor in the history of the world's most famous art museum to laugh while looking at Jacques Louis David's The Death of Marat.

Like Marion Bates, Marat was stabbed by a woman.  He met his fate in his bathtub, where he spent much of his time (and, in fact, did much of his writing) because of a skin condition.  It's extremely unlikely that Marat could have taken a shower, even if he had known they existed:  Even though the first indoor shower was invented two decades before he was murdered, it would be another six decades before modern indoor plumbing would make them workable. The originals were operated by hand pumps.

Anyway, for a time in my youth, Jacques Louis David was my favorite painter.  His combination of revolutionary fervor (He, as a deputy from the city of Paris, voted for the execution of the king.) and painting technique--dark backgrounds that made for vivid, dramatic colors and forms, a technique often called "chiaroscuro"--appealed to my sensibilities in those days, almost precisely because I could not see it as another side of the sentimentality I thought I was rejecting.

But one lesson I learned from Marat and David is that backgrounds or backdrops matter.  Why do you think I came to Paris again?  Why do you think my favorite muesums in Paris are the Rodin, Cognaq-Jay, Picasso and d'Orsay?  I mean, I love much of what Rodin, Picasso and the Impressionists did.  But there's nothing like going to the museums devoted to them (especially Rodin, in my opinion).  On the other hand, I can't say I was a fan of much of the work that's in the Cognaq-Jay.  But it's become a "new favorite" precisely because of the environment it creates and the way those works are presented.  Plus, it has some of the friendliest staff I've encountered in a museum.  (Oh, and it's free!)

Anyway...A great backdrop can make for a great ride.  That's why I can put up with the insanity of Paris traffic (Then again, I'm a New Yorker): What's not to like about riding among beautiful buildings and gardens?  

But cycling also transmutes, if not transforms, backgrounds.  A bleak, apocalyptic necropolis becomes bearable, and an interesting--and in its own way, even beautiful--image when it's the setting of a good bike ride, even if it is just from work to home, or vice versa. I used to pedal through such a setting every day when I was a student and worked in a factory; that ride might be what kept me (relatively) sane.

I have been able to ride through far more beautiful vistas.  Some were natural, whether in mountains or along seashores.   But for the past few days, I've rolled through some of the most beautiful urban scenes in the world.  It's made for some great riding--and a great trip!

Brooklyn Heights: Another Reason I Am Not A Racer

Yesterday, I wrote about the things that caused me to realize that I am not, at heart, a racer, even though I pretended to be one for a few years.  In brief, I care more about the feelings and memories I have, or associate with, my rides than I do with how fast or how far I rode.

Well, today, I had another insight as to why, even after a third-place finish in a race, I couldn't have pushed myself to "the next level"--whatever that might have been--even if I'd had the talent, trained harder and simply wanted to win more.

This afternoon I spun Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear, through some Brooklyn and Queens streets.  Part of my ride took me through Brooklyn Heights, which today is--at least in the eyes of many--the very epitome of an urban "brownstone" neighborhood.

In 1965, the City's newly-formed Landmarks Commission--created in the wake of the outrage generated by the destruction of the original Penn Station--designated much of the Heights as the city's first Historic District.  Good thing, too:  During the two decades following World War II, Americans set their sights on modern houses in the suburbs, not historic buildings in the inner city.  As a result, those beautiful old houses began to decay, and Robert Moses thought they--and similar houses in nearby Park Slope--were simply obstacles to building the expressway he wanted to carve through Brooklyn.

I stopped to read the plaque on one of the houses that would have been razed--a Federal-style building on Middagh Street. No racer, I think, would have interrupted his or her ride in that way--or to look at other houses.  The fact that I had just a crappy cell phone with me--and, therefore, couldn't take good pictures--would have been enough of an excuse for a racer (or the racer wannabe that I was) not to stop and look at buildings.

And if I were training for the next Tour or Giro or whatever, I probably wouldn't have noticed that in a neighborhood full of Federal and Greek and Italianite Revival-style buildings--which brought the neighborhood its landmark designation--there was something that stood out:

The Cranlyn Building is beautiful, but it's not what people normally associate with the Heights.  If anything, it's practically a textbook example of Art Deco.  It would fit seamlessly on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx (though the Cranlyn is in be tter condition than most Bronx buildings) or even in Miami's South Beach.   But it's not just the visual contrast between it and the houses (and the Church of the Assumption) on Cranberry Street that's so interesting. 

To me, the Cranlyn has a different kind of energy to it. Yes, it is an apartment (condo) building with a chrome-zinc-and-glass Italian cafe on the ground floor on a street mainly of single-family homes.  More important, though, the building feels like jazz--just look at the pattern of those lines!--in a neighborhood that is, perhaps, more Mozartian.

The way those lines unite Art Deco with jazz reminds me of the relationship betwen graffiti, break-dancing and hip-hop. Just watch "Beat Street" (corny, I admit, but with great music from early hip-hip artists!).  Pay attention to the dancers and to the graffiti-covered subway trains as they rumble along Bronx viaducts:  Look at the way those lines of graffiti move, look at the dancers' movements and pay attention to the beat.  That relationship is, I think, something the movie captured brilliantly.

The funny thing is that, even though I was riding at a slow speed (for me, anyway!), I was still going about five times as fast as anyone walking the street.  Yet no one seems to notice the building, or its contrast with the rest of the neighborhood.  Even more ironically, as a pedestrian, I never noticed what I'm describing:  I first noticed it from the saddle of my bicycle.  

And, in the strangest twist of all, during my racing days, I had experienced the Heights only as a pedestrian:  I never rode through the neighborhood!

One More Day In Greece

On Monday, my last full day in Greece, my toe was still hurting.  And if I were to rent a bike, whether from Athens by Bike or anyone else, I'd have to worry about returning it before closing time. (Athens doesn't have a bike-sharing program, and dockless services like Lime and Ofo don't seem to be available in Athens.  So I decided, reluctantly, to skip cycling.

All was not lost, though.  I figured that in a few days, I'll feel better and start riding again, on my own bikes.  Also, exploring Athens for one more day would be fun, however I did it.

So, from my apartment (Funny, how I started to think of it that way), I crossed the street to the path to Filopappou Hill and the Hills of the Nymphs, just to look at the views and imagine.  Then I descended to the Odeon of Herodes Attiicus

and sauntered along a stone path to the cafe-lined streets of Thissio, near the Agora, where I stopped for some coffee and yogurt.  Then I took the Metro to the Cycladic Art Museum to--look at more of the statues and pottery I saw on Milos!

Actually, I am glad to have come to the museum when I did, just as I was glad to visit the Acropolis Museum after spending time in the Acropolis itself.  For one thing, those museums contain artifacts that can't be left on the sites where they were found.  Also, the museums, in the ways they exhibit their collections, help to contextualize what you see in the Acropolis or archaeological sites on the islands.

Yesterday, I mentioned that some images in the Byzantine and Christian Art Museum made me think of early photography. Well, in looking at some of the very early female figures from the Cycladic islands (which include Milos and Santorini), I found myself thinking of Pablo Picasso and artists who were influenced by him (OK, who wasn't between 1910 and 1950?) like Joan Miro.  

Even some of the pottery made me think of those early 20th Century sculptors and painters.  Seeing those almost-geometric representations of female bodies made me re-think something I'd always been told (or had read) about Picasso:  He is seen as a "visionary," or a "trailblazer."  Now I can't help but to wonder whether he was trying to "get back to basics."  After all, some of what you see in those female representations could also be seen, more or less, in the African masks Picasso collected.

Now, as a woman, and especially as a trans woman, I have problems with objectifying or abstracting a female body.  Then again, such work was being done by male artists and artisans.  Would female artists see male bodies in terms of their elemental forms?  (For all I or anybody knows, some of those sculptures may have been done by women.)  

And, really, how different is any of that from the way I experienced my body in the sea at Milos?  I felt myself as waves; my arms and legs were no longer the taut, straight lines I had always assumed they were.  And, if that's all we were--sinews and flesh in straight lines--we would be nothing more than machines pumping other machines (e.g., our bicycles).  We pedal (or swim or walk) our best when our bodies are flowing, when we are in a state of grace, which is to say in balance with our essential selves. 

Now, I have a confession:  After spending time in the museum and learning all of those wonderful lessons, however inelegantly I have expressed them, I headed to the flea market.  Please don't hold that against me!

Should The Pedaling Picasso Become A Planner?

Who is an artist?

More specifically, what makes an artist an artist?

OK, I know that you (some of you, anyway) don't come to this blog for answers to questions like those.  Greater minds than mine can't come up with them, so I won't try to formulate any on this blog, let alone in this post.

There are, however, cyclists who make, if not objets d'art, then at least conceptual creations when they ride.  

Anthony Hoyte, a.k.a. The Pedaling Picasso, created this Strava image of Pere Noel in and around Paris.  While pedaling 109.7 miles over 13 hours and 19 minutes does not yield an impressive average speed, you have to remember that works of art, great or not, take time.  In Hoyte's case, he probably spent much of that time simply navigating his route.

Likewise, his GPS must have worked overtime as he pedaled sketches of Frosty the Snowman, a reindeer, Santa's head and the words "Merry Christmas in and around London and Birmingham.

If he could make street-level route maps of those images, they would be more useful than some of the "bicycle infrastructure" built lately:

I mean, what is the point of a "roundabout" in a bike lane? An intersection with signal lights synchronized so that cyclists cross before the traffic would be infinitely  more practical--and safer. 

A true artist would know better, I think.

Jackie In The Jersey Theater

Today I took a ride into New Jersey for the first time, I think, since the pandemic began.  I know, that sounds odd, considering how often I’ve pedaled to Connecticut. But I finally got up the courage to board the ferry—which, much to my surprise, was nearly empty—to Jersey City.

I’d forgotten just how odd and interesting parts of the city are.  In Journal Square stands this monument to one of the icons, not only of sports, but also of racial equality and human rights:

Jackie Robinson is one athlete I wish I could have seen in his prime.  What I learned from looking at this sculpture, though, is the emotions he tried not to show, and the ones that he couldn’t help but to reveal.

Sporting events at their best are theater, or at least dramatic. So, perhaps, it’s not surprising to see this theatre across Kennedy Boulevard:

It’s long fascinated me that during the 1920s, when movies first reached mass audiences and studios built towering, cavernous shrines to them, Art Deco and a fascination for all things Egyptian defined the visual style of the time just as jazz was its soundtrack.  Looking at buildings like the Loew’s Jersey, though, shows me how congruent those things were: the lines and shapes of Art Deco building details and Egyptian carvings mirror each other as much as they echo the tempo changes of the era’s best music.

So a theater stands across from a monument to a man who played out one of this country’s real-life dramas.  To his right, across Pavonia Avenue, stands another former movie theater:

Like many other former cinematic cathedrals, it’s become a house of worship. That makes sense, as the interior dimensions of those old movie houses closely resemble theaters.  And when you come down to it, a mass or service is a kind of theatrical performance—just like a ball game or bike race.

And I got to see the theater of the street from my bike.

Why Was I Doing My Commute On Sunday?

Sometimes I joke about "going through the Gate of Hell to get to work every day."  The truth is, I ride over Hell Gate and by the Hell Gate Bridge when I cross the RFK Memorial (a.k.a. Triborough) Bridge every morning.

On Sunday I took Bill and Cindy by it.  If that was supposed to scare them into living on the straight and narrow, it wasn't very effective.  Then again, how could I scare, or persuade, anybody or anything into being straight?  


But I digress.  We were riding to Van Cortland Park.  They wanted to take the Greenway along the Hudson River (and the West Side Highway.)  While I like the views and that it's so close to the water, I knew that on a sunny Sunday, half of the cyclists, 70 percent of the skateboarders and 99 percent of the people with dogs or baby strollers would be on that path.  Pedaling through the Port Morris industrial area--deserted on Sunday--and Bronx side streets would be bucolic by comparison.

So, after taking Bill and Cindy through, or by, the Gates of Hell, we descended (literally) to Randall's Island where we rode underneath the Amtrak viaduct.  After the Gate, these arches were rather impressive.  Funny thing is, I don't normally see them that way:  They are, after all, part of my commute.

So are these houses on Alexander Avenue in the Bronx:

Not far away are these houses.   Save for the graffiti next to the "fish" building, almost nobody expects to see them in the South Bronx:

They're diagonally across from each other on the Grand Concourse.  The mansion is the Freedman House, built in the 1920s for formerly-wealthy people who had fallen on hard times. Now it contains an event space, art studio and bed-and-breakfast. It's almost jarring to see such a classically Florentine house across the Concourse from the Art Deco building with its mosaic. 

Anyway, Cindy had an appointment and had to leave us before we reached Van Cortlandt Park. Back when I lived on the Upper West Side and in Washington Heights, I used to take quick spins to the park, where I would check out whatever was on display in the Manor or watch the Irish rugby and soccer players. Time marches on, and now there are different folks playing a different game.

The clouds thickened, but never threatened rain.  But they didn't portend anything like Spring, either.  Rolling across the hills of Riverdale, they broke against the shore of Spuyten Duyvil, another place almost nobody expects to find in the Bronx: