Like most people who live in urban areas, I see bicyclists every day, most of them dodging in and out of traffic on their way to make Grubhub deliveries to those too lazy, or feverishly working “remotely” to pick up their Chipotle’s or triple-caramel lattes with whipped cream and non-organic walnuts. I’m not exempt from this post-pandemic escalation of “Don’t Cook Tonight, Call Chicken Delight”-like manner of taking it easy, although it’s just a weekly convenience, such as when I want a couple of corned beef sandwiches from Attman’s in downtown Baltimore, a local institution located in a miserable part of town.
I’m not crazy about designated bike lanes here—clogs the streets—but it’s not a patch compared to the ongoing e-bike controversy in New York City, where the vitriol exchanged between motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists is overheated (dumb anger’s the order of the decade), and sometimes leads to physical confrontations. When I lived in Manhattan, mild hostility was the norm: I’d jaywalk across, say, Lexington Ave., a Mario Andretti speedster would honk up a storm, I’d give him the finger, he’d return the favor and that was that. Life in the city, just as no one batted an eye when seeing a naked “unhoused” man in the East Village.
Fortunately, helmets became standard in the 1980s for the bike “community” at large, but now, when I see a lackadaisical rider without a helmet on city streets, I think that’s one crazy dude. Live and let live—or not—but that’s a perilous way to go about it. Splattered. Decapitated. Double-amputee. Brain-dead. Paralyzed. In the early-1990s, a close friend rode a bike to work every day on a souped-up and expensive “vehicle,” and was punctilious about following safety rules: helmet, no running stop lights, braking for a swarm of pedestrians, and still one day he got nailed by an out-of-control car and wound up in the hospital for a week. If he weren’t wearing protective gear, I would’ve given a eulogy at my 38-year-old buddy’s memorial service.
What I never see is kids riding around on bikes in my neighborhood—we live in Baltimore City, but in a section with almost no traffic—and though I know that today’s youth has a set of priorities that elude me, I’m surprised there’s not a contingent of “retros,” whether kids struggling with training wheels or teenagers causing a mild ruckus and laughing like they’re aping the background sounds of Napoleon XIV’s “They’re Coming To Take Me Away.”
Before getting my driver’s license at 16 in New York, I rode a beat-up bike around town, up and down Marie Dr. and the winding streets in Halesite, daydreaming, wondering if the precocious Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher in 18th-century built-from-scratch wood-and-wheels go-cart precursors around dirt roads in Missouri, ever took time for a nooner in an abandoned shack. Mark Twain kept that licentiousness between the lines.
My sons loved riding their Razor scooters in Tribeca, but never graduated to full-on bicycle enthusiasm. Probably my fault for not pushing it—similarly, they weren’t Boy Scouts, and never went to church or summer camp; they’d have loved sledding, but it doesn’t snow anymore—or maybe not. It doesn’t make sense, at least to me, to force children to recreate your own long-ago youthful hobbies and outdoor activities. Little League was an exception: like me, the boys were average athletes, and my LL exuberance has possibly left the tiniest scar of bitterness in their hellzapoppin’ psyches. Fuck it: you do what you can.
Not dissimilar to when my parents forced—too harsh, “strongly suggested”—me to try out for the junior varsity lacrosse team in 1970. I went to one practice, sucked, and the “coach” made fun of me in the locker room, for all to hear, because I was a slow runner. What an asshole: and he could’ve been a “peeper” for all I know, but that creepiness wasn’t monitored at that time. My mom was steaming when I quit that day, saying colleges want to see athletic activity, and huffed and puffed when I refused. She got over it.
The picture above is of my Uncle Joe and Aunt Winnie, in their courting phase, riding around an undeveloped road in Manhattan one October afternoon, and though Joe’s all determination, Winnie smiled for the camera. Destination unknown: hope they didn’t get a flat on the way to their destination, but as they’re long gone, I’d need to have a smoke and slip into a electro-charged imagination session. Might do that right now!
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Charles Evan Hughes is SCOTUS Chief Justice; Look magazine publishes first issue; Frank Capra wins Best Director Oscar for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; Jack Nicholson is born and Jean Harlow dies; a gas explosion kills 295 students at a school in Texas; Amelia Earhart disappears; The Lincoln Tunnel opens in NYC; Saratoga is the highest grossing film in the U.S.; Tommy Smothers is born and H.P. Lovecraft dies; Rex Stout’s The Red Box and Walter Lippmann’s The Good Society are published; Fats Waller’s “Smarty” is a big hit; and Don Budge is the Associated Press’ “Athlete of the Year.”
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023