Kurt Mc Robert's New York Cyclists

Sometimes it seems that--here in NYC, anyway--there are two kinds of cyclists:  the ones everyone hates and the ones other cyclists hate.

In the first category are, of course, hipsters with fixies and delivery cyclists riding against the traffic on city streets--and, worse, in bike lanes.  The second group consists of tourists on rented bikes and hedge-fund managers on bikes that cost more than their secretaries make in a year, with lycra outfits to match.

Back in the '80's, the cyclists everybody loved to hate were the messengers.  (I know: I was one.) And the ones who ticked off other cyclists were the Chinese (and, later, Mexican) delivery guys, who invariably were riding the wrong way just when you were flying down the street and couldn't steer out of their path. 

And there was another category, of which I was a part:  The ones fishermen hated.  Now you might be wondering why a fisherman would hate a cyclist.  Well, it has nothing to do with, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."  Instead, it had to do with the fact that very often, as we rode across the narrow pedestrian lanes like the ones on the Marine Park-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge, men (almost always men) were casting their lines off, or had propped their fishing rods on, it. Sometimes they came close to snagging us, or we got a little too close to them (as if there were any choice!) and they claimed we were scaring fish away. 

Perhaps the hate stemmed from resentment:  Most of the anglers were poor or working-class, many of whom were immigrants.  They saw us, on our expensive bikes, much as those who participated in Occupy Wall Street see bankers and the like.

Anyway, there are categories of cyclist--and haters--that didn't exist back then.  Illustrator Kurt McRobert has catalogued them on his site.


(All images are from Kurt McRobert's site.)

The BMX Ballerina

One of the few genres of cycling I have never tried is BMX.  Part of the reason for that, I think, is that when it was first becoming popular--in the late 1970's-- I was a bit older than most of its participants, who were in their mid-teens.  Also, by that time  I had become so accustomed to riding 27 inch--and, a little later, 700C--wheels that I simply couldn't see how I could ride the smaller-wheeled BMX bike.  Moreover, I became more interested in speed and distance--and, later, longevity--than in fancy maneuvers.  (That's one of the reasons I was a mountain biker for only a few years.)  Finally, I'll admit that by that time I was on the cusp of early adulthood and thought of anything with small wheels as a kid's bike.

I probably won't ever be a BMXer because, at my age, I don't think I any longer have the reflexes or flexibility for the kinds of maneuvers BMX riders routinely do.  But that doesn't mean I don't admire the really skilled riders:  In fact, their feats are among the few things I watch on TV or video anymore.  Even the less-skilled riders interest me in much the same way skaters and dancers do:  As something of a performer, athlete and artist myself, I can appreciate their intricate moves--and, most important, the talents those riders possess, and the drive and discipline it takes for them to turn their visions of themselves into reality.

Funny that I should mention skaters and dancers: Some of the earliest--and, even today, best--BMX moves were done by someone who never claimed to be a BMX rider.  In fact, this person was, by training and profession, a ballerina.  And she didn't cut her teeth (or gears) in the sandlots of Southern California.  Rather, she got her training on the other side of the United States--in New York, where she was born to parents who came from Japan, on the other side of the Pacific from California.

And, because there wasn't a BMX circuit in her time, she performed most of her acrobatics in circuses or on other stages of one kind or another.  She once even performed on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Who is this amazing performer to whom I am referring?  She is none other than Lilly Yokoi, who was dubbed "the world's greatest bicycle acrobat" during the 1960's and '70's.

Look at some of the moves she was doing years before Dave Mirra and Ryan Nyquist were even born:




The show was The Hollywood Palace.  That particular episode aired on 9 October 1965.  And, yes, that was Joan Crawford hosting.

I can't find any current information about Ms. Yokoi.  In 2009, her daughter let it be known that Lilly, then in her eighties, was retired and living in Japan.

 

The Mysterious Syntax Of A Road Sign

Some people seem to believe that writing or speaking grammatically is elitist or simply fussy.  Then there are those who are convinced that those of us who do are conspiring against them in some way or another.

Now, I don't pretend to speak (or write) with perfect grammar all of the time. I think I do it often enough to be understood, at least most of the time. If nothing else, I know how poorly constructed sentences with unclear phrasing can lead to misunderstandings--and keep lawyers busy.

Hey, proper punctuation can save a person's life. If you don't believe me, look at this:

Rescind order to execute prisoner.

Now, tell me:  Does the prisoner live or die in that sentence?

If we add a comma, the intent is clearer:

Rescind order, to execute prisoner.

If that sentence was in the governor's memo, the inmate in question would be choosing his or her last meal.  However, another kind of punctuation, placed in another part of the sentence, gives us an entirely different outcome:

Rescind:  Order to execute prisoner.

Now, there aren't such drastic examples (to my knowledge, anyway) in the world of cycling. However, in an earlier post, I showed how a poorly-phrased sign can say something different from--even the exact opposite of--what was intended.

Today I saw another sign--on the RFK/Triborough Bridge--that doesn't convey what I believe the Department of Transportation is trying to tell us:

So, the graphic part of the sign is saying that graffiti isn't allowed.  Then the first four words of the text say it's a crime.  So far, it makes sense.

But what does "camera enforced" mean?  Is crime "camera enforced"?  Perhaps the person who wrote the sign speaks another language and, while composing the sign, his or her brain flipped from English to whatever, causing a change in syntax. A "camera enforced crime" would be a "crime camera enforced" in French, Spanish, Italian or a lot of other languages.

Hmm...Maybe the city didn't want to spend the money to print the sign in both English and Spanish.  

Or is the sign trying to tell us that graffiti is camera enforced?  Now that would be interesting, if in an Orwellian sort of way.