Bike Snob Read online

  Once the safety bicycle “dropped,” cycling absolutely exploded. It was the thing to do. Most cyclists, and even many non-cyclists, are aware that professional cycling was once an extremely popular sport in the United States. In fact, at the turn of the previous century, if you went to Madison Square Garden in New York City, you didn’t go to watch a basketball game—you went to watch the bike races. That’s because Madison Square Garden was a velodrome, and it was a hot ticket. You’d probably put on your best tweed knickers, wax up your mustache, and have yourself a gay old time. But not a lot of people realize just how popular cycling was with people as an activity as well as a spectator sport. They were all over it. I’m sure that before the bicycle came along people didn’t have much to do except walk around in parks with parasols or maybe play croquet. Sure, there was equestrianism, but that took a lot of money. It also took land, and if you lived in the city and didn’t have a country estate you couldn’t exactly keep a horse in your living room. So once the safety bike came on the scene and gave people a chance to explore the countryside in speed and comfort, people jumped on cycling faster than a cat jumps on a counter when you open a can of tuna.

  Cycling went from being a novelty and a craze for society folk to a lifestyle. By the latter part of the 1890s, people were riding fast and far. In fact, there were cycling clubs, rides, and races everywhere. “Runs” and “centuries,” organized by the local “wheelmen” in whatever town you lived in, happened every weekend. The New York Times regularly published “Gossip of the Cyclers,” which announced rides and race results as well as reported on general cycling matters.

  GOSSIP OF THE CYCLERS

  Brooklyn Bridge Trustees Are Considering Plans

  for a Cycle Path Over That Structure.

  NONE WHOLLY SATISFACTORY

  The English Aristocracy Is Fond of Cycling, and Women of Rank Ride—Prince of Wales Set the Fashion—A Naughty Donkey Suppressed.

  In looking forward to the time when wheeling across the Brooklyn Bridge will be difficult, if not dangerous, because of the trolley lines now being laid upon the two driveways, it is gratifying to know that President Berri and Chief Engineer and Superintendent Martin are contemplating the erection of a cycle path for the exclusive use of wheelmen and wheelwomen. They acknowledge that it may not be constructed immediately, but until recently cyclists were in doubt if their convenience and safety would ever receive recognition from the Bridge Trustees.

  Superintendent Martin is a wheelman himself, and on a recent morning trip had the perils of a cycle trip across the bridge quite emphatically illustrated. When the driveways were moderately occupied with traffic under former conditions, the wheelman pursued his journey in imminent danger of life and limb, but now that considerable of the space has been taken by the car rails, his embarrassment has increased tenfold. During the present condition of upheaval, however, Mr. Martin says, nothing can be done. When the driveways are restored to order, the bridge authorities will select some plan for the cyclists’ accommodation. Mr. Martin has advised the clubs and organizations of wheelmen to continue agitating and urging for the cycle path, which will probably be the better, the more pressure is brought to bear.

  Already a number of plans sent in and others devised by himself and his assistants are in Mr. Martin’s office, awaiting a selection. The plan that at present meets the Superintendent’s approval provides for the construction of a narrow roadway on the trestle through which the bridge cars pass. This is a little over twelve feet wide, ample room for wheelmen. When the trestle ends the path will be continued on the same level to a point near the terminal structures, to be joined at each end. At the junctions elevators will be put in to afford communication with the street level. Another plan of considerable merit, but which has also points of disadvantage, provides for a strip, say four or six feet wide, built out from the bridge structure proper, where the cable and trestle work ends. By this plan the cyclist must take to the roadway, and thus it will be seen that the plan is not wholly satisfactory.

  And cyclists were demanding better conditions, as they still are today. The Brooklyn Bridge had only been opened in 1883 and was still the longest suspension bridge in the world; already, cyclists were demanding a bike lane on it.

  As a cyclist it’s surprising to me that a paper like the New York Times would publish the results of club races, but that’s how popular it was. After all, I’m a club racer, and unless one of my teammates wins I don’t even know the results of the races I’m in—I just roll across the line towards the back of the pack and use the last of my strength to propel myself to the nearest coffee shop. If I happen to get curious about who won, I just ask around later. But back then they covered cycling obsessively, and “Gossip of the Cyclers” was like a hybrid of the sports pages and the wedding announcements. Cycling was important to people.

  So many people were riding that cycling soon began to influence the urban environment. In order to ride, cyclists needed good roads. And back then, there just weren’t that many of them. Cars still looked like motorized apple carts (what few there were—Carl Benz sold something like twenty-five cars between 1880 and 1893), and people still used horses to get around. So the best roads riders could hope for were “macadam” roads (a type of road construction pioneered by the Scotsman John Loudon McAdam around 1820). In those days, macadamized roads were to cyclists what gold was to the frontiersmen—cyclists would literally go to the ends of the earth to get their hands (or, more accurately, tires) on them. Once word of a new macadam road was out, cyclists would organize a “run” or a “century” and hit it in the same way the skateboarders of the 1970s in Southern California used to converge on empty pools.

  Rocking a “Run” to Rockaway

  In Search of My Two-Wheeled Ancestors

  It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.

  —Ernest Hemingway

  It’s one thing to learn that something you love was big over a hundred years ago. It’s something else entirely to actually see that for yourself, and to learn what cycling and cyclists were like back then. Until some big bike company like Trek starts building time machines in addition to time trial bikes, the only way to do that is to read about it, and to visit the roads that they traversed in the hopes that some trace of what it was like to be a cyclist back in the early days remains.

  Well, it turns out that the roads they rode are still there, in addition to a bunch of newer roads. Not only that, but there are also a bunch of new buildings and people and cars there as well. As such, it would seem to be that the history of our cycling ancestors is buried under all this new development—until you learn that this development is actually cycling’s legacy and as much a part of its history as the penny-farthing.

  In the late 1800s, where there were macadam roads there were cyclists. And where there were enough cyclists businesses would spring up, and soon there were new towns. Eventually, these towns became the suburbs. For example, everybody’s heard of Queens and Long Island. Queens is a borough of New York City, and it sits on the Long Island landmass, which has a population of 7.5 million people and in many ways is the prototypical modern suburb. But in 1895 Queens hadn’t yet become incorporated into New York City, and most of Long Island was farmland. One thing they did have, though, was a macadam road. It was called Merrick Road. In fact, it’s still called Merrick Road (or Merrick Boulevard, or West Merrick Road, depending on where you are). Various expressways have superseded it in terms of importance, but it’s still a major artery in eastern Queens and Long Island.

  In search of cycling’s past, I put on my tweed reading suit and immersed myself in the “Gossip of the Cyclers,” and learned that back in the 1890s, Merrick Road was the place to be on a bicycle. It had
a national reputation. Riders used it for pleasure and for competition. Century rides followed it to eastern Long Island. Races took place there, and records were set. One of cycling’s earliest sporting heroes was Charles “Mile a Minute” Murphy, so named not because he talked a lot, but because he was the first person to ride a bicycle for a mile in under a minute. He accomplished this feat not far from Merrick Road, and he set his record on a specially constructed board track while drafting behind a Long Island Rail Road train on June 30, 1899.

  So for cycling, Long Island’s Merrick Road was like the Bonneville Salt Flats and Daytona Beach combined. It was so popular that people built hotels and businesses for all the cyclists who would visit from the city. It turns out that the town of Valley Stream in Nassau County on the border of Queens was built to service the throngs of cyclists that would come to Merrick Road every weekend. Cycling actually created Valley Stream in the same way that gambling created Las Vegas. Granted, Valley Stream ain’t exactly Vegas (though that’s probably a good thing), nor is it even remotely a cycling paradise today, but it’s still a big deal. Anything that creates a whole town is culturally significant. Bikes built towns like cars, trains, rivers, and mills did. You’re not going to find any towns that were created by Rollerblades.

  Not only had I discovered a town that was built by bicycles, but it just so happens that I grew up pretty much right next-door to that town, on what is now the New York City line, in the eastern end of the Rockaway peninsula, which, it turns out, was itself a cycling hotbed back in the Mauve Decade. See, for New Yorkers back then, Far Rockaway was what the Hamptons are now; it was the hot beach spot, and Valley Stream was the hot cycling spot. I never would have guessed that the streets of my youth, trod by Jews walking to shul on Saturday and strafed by jetliners landing at nearby Kennedy Airport, were actually in the middle of a Malachi Crunch of hipness and cultural relevance back in the 1890s. In a way this is like being fascinated with Mark Twain, devoting your life to him, and then discovering that, by pure coincidence, you grew up across the street from the house in which he was born.

  Armed with my new knowledge of my old neighborhood and my favorite activity, I realized that I needed to visit Merrick Road—cycling’s erstwhile Great White Way—on my bicycle to see if it retained any trace of its heritage. Perhaps by retracing some old-timey popular route I could push aside the curtain of time and actually catch a glimpse of the scantily-clad pin-up girl that was cycling in the 1890s.

  ROAD RUN TO FAR ROCKAWAY.

  Best Way for Cyclers to Reach the Seaside Resort

  If I was going to retrace an old-timey route from the glory days of cycling, I could think of no better way to do so than by doing an authentic 1895 “run” to Far Rockaway. My planned ride would take me to my childhood home and the place where I learned to ride a bicycle. Not only that, but the ride would take me along Merrick Road and through Valley Stream, our cycling Bethlehem, along the way. So I took off my tweed reading suit, donned my tweed cycling suit, lubed up my safety bicycle, and off I went.

  To reach the beach at Far Rockaway, all routes pass through Jamaica. The various ways of reaching Jamaica were fully given in the article describing “A Favorite Century Run to Patchogue.”

  Jamaica is in Queens. According to the article, to get to Jamaica, I should start in Central Park, leave it at Ninety-sixth Street, head to the ferry house at the foot of East Ninety-ninth Street, and take a ferry to College Point, which is also in Queens. Also according to the article, “The boats do not run at frequent intervals.” Well, I’ll say. I’d guess the last ferry from East Ninety-ninth Street to College Point was sometime during the McKinley administration, and if I went there and waited I’d probably just find a bunch of skeletons in top hats and monocles, their empty eye sockets trained on their open pocket watches. So I figured I’d start in College Point and pretend I’d just taken a ferry.

  From College Point the electric car tracks are followed to Thirteenth Street, where a turn to the right is taken and the road followed to Flushing, a matter of only about three miles from the ferry.

  Well, I couldn’t find any electric car tracks in College Point, nor could I find a Thirteenth Street. There is, however, a College Point Boulevard, and it does indeed head towards Flushing, so I figured this was an adequate substitute. Emboldened, I mounted my bicycle and was now awheel! I was doing my best to remain in the mind-set of a nineteenth-century cyclist, but I admit that with the heavy motor vehicle traffic and airplane traffic (I was just west of the Van Wyck Expressway and directly under the LaGuardia Airport flight path) it was quite difficult. Disoriented, I arrived in Flushing, which the New York Times had failed to mention was choking with motor vehicle traffic. It had also omitted the fact that Flushing now has New York City’s second-largest Chinatown. And where there are Chinatowns, there are crowds. And where there are crowds, there are pedestrians who leap in front of you like suicidal lizards on a hot stretch of highway.

  My twenty-first-century self had expected this, but my nineteenth-century self certainly had not. In the 114 years since the Times article had been written, the city had had the impertinence to subsume what had then been a small town. As such, I desperately needed some old-timey landmarks in order to find my footing in history. The article had mentioned a fountain in the middle of town, but there was none to be found. There was, however, still a town square of sorts complete with a sign that said “welcome” in at least six languages and pointed out some of the nearby historical buildings. Comforted, I resolved to resume my journey and once again consulted the article. It directed me to Main Street, which fortunately still exists. Main Street, it told me, would take me to Jamaica Avenue, which also still exists, and the article assured me that this particular road is “of splendid macadam, and it is really a pleasure to climb the few hills which are encountered.”

  Macadam! I practically salivated on my tweed vest at the mere thought of it. Oh, to finally feel macadam beneath my pneumatic Dunlops! (Actually, Dunlop stopped making bicycle tires like forty years ago. I think I was “rocking” Continentals.) Awheel once again, I headed onto Main Street, where I barely escaped being run over by a city bus. Main Street in Flushing, even on a Saturday, is easily as congested and chaotic as any urban center in the Western world, so at this point I thought it wise to allow my twenty-first-century self to take over. I weaved through the traffic without incident, but ironically I was almost hit by a car on the sidewalk when I stopped briefly to consult the Times article once again. Shaken, I immediately returned to the middle of the street, where I was “safe.”

  Thankfully it wasn’t long before I found myself in the residential neighborhood of Kew Gardens, which has a good-sized Orthodox Jewish community. Here Main Street was as quiet as you please, due mostly to the fact that it was Shabbat and nobody was driving. A historical sign confirmed that until the early twentieth century most of this area was still farmland, so between that and the fact that piety had temporarily rendered the area car-free I was almost able to delude myself into thinking it was the nineteenth century. For the first time since leaving College Point I also saw another cyclist. Exceedingly pleased, I bid him an enthusiastic “Ahoy!” but he clearly thought I was disturbed and did his best to ignore me. Also for the first time on my ride I saw one of those “Share the Road” signs with a picture of a bicycle on it. While over a century ago this was a popular enough cycling route to warrant a Times article, this was the first indication I’d seen all day that I was in any way welcome.

  Before Main Street eventually connects with Jamaica Avenue, it is bisected by Queens Boulevard, otherwise known in the local media as the “Boulevard of Death” due to the frequency with which pedestrians are killed by motor vehicle traffic while attempting to cross it. Had there been a more benign street available (an “Avenue of Cheese,” perhaps) I might have opted for that, but if you’re going to ride across Queens it’s pretty much impossible to avoid its eponymous boulevard. Fortunately, I survived the Boulevard of Death and
made a left onto Jamaica Avenue. I wouldn’t say it was particularly “splendid” (unless “splendid” means “riddled with potholes”) but it did lead me to Jamaica, Queens, as both its name and the Times article suggested it would.

  About eight miles from College Point the road takes a sudden descent, and you are in Jamaica, the road ending abruptly at the main street of town. Here a short stop is usually taken at Pettitt’s Hotel.

  Well, there were no descents, sudden or otherwise, nor was there a Pettitt’s Hotel. There was also little to suggest this had ever been a cycling paradise. There was, however, an abundance of 99-cent stores as well as an old house called “King Manor.” Apparently this had been the home of Rufus King, who was a Founding Father and was one of the drafters of the Constitution, and it was the probably the first thing I’d seen since Flushing that would have existed back when the Times article was written. Emboldened by this hot link to history, I continued with renewed vigor.

  Continuing, the main street is followed riding toward the east to Canal Street, and then turning to the left through Canal, which merges into the Merrick Road.