Honestly, I think the most exciting part of my bike ride across Iowa was when John and I spotted two tweens we suspect were Juggalos. Dig.
Took a road trip with some UD folks this past weekend up to Maine to shoot some footy for production of our Documenting Mythologies piece. Got very little sleep and ate some really salty lobster, but it was a good time. We ended our trip at the Harvard Film Archive to present an iteration of the piece to about 40 people on a Sunday afternoon. The archive is evidently the only building by Le Corbusier in the U.S., but that still wasn’t enough to impress me. Still not really a fan of Boston.
You see things on a bicycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through the car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.
Paco Pomet gets it done.
I started commuting to work again via bike earlier this week, on a used whip that I picked up a couple of weeks ago from a guy I met off of Craigslist. Some kind of weird bike karma was working its way toward me; I managed to snag a Lotus Excelle, the same model of bike that was stolen from me in late August. But the one I copped is a Sport Series, instead of the standard model I had originally. I’m not really sure what the designation means, but everything on this bike is a little bit nicer than the old whip. It’s got 4130 cromoly Ishiwata tubing, a step up from the Tange stuff on the old bike. The Shimano gruppo is likely an upgrade too, but I can’t remember what my other bike had on it. The guy I bought it off of said he picked it up at an estate auction somewhere in Jersey. I think it’s a pretty good bet that it’s been in storage for the last 20+ years. Everything on the bike is in amazing shape, other than the tires, which looked like they had some dry rot.
I took the drops off, instead opting for some riser bars and cross levers, and recabled the brakes. I did manage to salvage the old cable guides, which are this weird semi-translucent pink, in keeping with the paint scheme of the bike. I also upgraded the tires to some Continental Gatorskins, and swapped out the platform pedals for some MKS track pedals I had lying around. I’m already deathly in love with the ride the bike gives–a nice combo of smooth and twitchy responsiveness that’s helpful to riding in the city. The geometry is a maybe a little tight for me, I think the combination of the short top tube and the riser bars keeps me more upright than I’m used to.
I had kept the bike on ice in my storage space for a few weeks after I bought it while I rounded up some replacement parts I needed and waited for the Gatorskins to get mailed in. I did most of the rehabbing over the course of a few hours one Wednesday night, and discovered that Brooklyn Bike & Board, the bike shop that replaced Bicycle Station on Vanderbilt Ave. in Prospect Heights, is trying to stay open until 9 pm on weeknights to cater to the commuter crowd. I had been reluctant to support the new shop as I was a huge fan of the wrenching and general attitude of Mike, the owner of Bicycle Station. Going to its replacement somehow felt like a betrayal of the unspoken oath of fealty I had made to the shop. (It’s hard to explain to a non-bicyclist the loyalty engendered by a solid shop owner; it’s unbelievably hard to find a decent local bike shop in Brooklyn, or NYC for that matter.) But I was forced into going into BB&B a couple of weeks ago, when I caught a flat on my way to UnionDocs on Sunday afternoon a couple of blocks away from the shop. The guys there were friendly, non-condescending, and had me on my way in a few short minutes. They also kept copies of the print version of Urban Velo on hand, which I had never seen before.
I had been waiting for a new Bell Variant helmet to come in from Nashbar, but when it finally got here I realized I had bought one that was too large. Instead I went to City Bikes on my lunch break and tried on about 5 different Uvex helmets before leaving with the XP100, with which I am now totally in love. I also managed to rationalize the purchase of some 4Season OG Pants from Outlier. It took me a while to come around to the idea that it’s just better to pay more money for decent bike-related gear. I had to learn the hard way that it generally saves you both grief and money to just pony up for the good shit from jump. I haven’t gotten the pants yet, they’re on preorder, but I’ve read nothing but good things about them. One of the owners of Outlier, Abe, seems to know his shit down cold and is always dropping science on the nyc fixed gear forum, where I like to lurk. I also copped a softshell from The North Face, the Apex Bionic Hoodie, for the ever-approaching winter cold. I’ll see if the breathability rep lives up to the hype after it gets here. I’m not holding my breath though.
The morning of Saturday, Oct. 3 I dusted off my weathered Panasonic DVX100 out and headed out for Prospect Heights for my second round of shooting for the City Symphony assignment, again adhering to the rules set out for me: stick to Prospect Heights during the hours of 10 am to 1 pm. I stayed with my initial idea of documenting stoop sales occurring in the neighborhood, but in riding around the area I quickly found that threatening storms and gray skies seemed to have scared off both shoppers and sellers alike. The next morning I had much greater success. Strong sunshine and 75 degree weather had sent both stoopers and bargain hunters to the streets in droves.
Over the course of several hours, I managed to interview nine sellers, some of whom were individuals, and others who were in pairs or larger groups. I again limited myself to two questions: why are you having a stoop sale, and what are you selling? One thing I noticed immediately was that people’s motivations for having a sale had changed dramatically in the space of a week. The first day I shot my initial Vidster footage used in my pitch, Saturday Sept. 26, many people had cited an impending move as the impetus for their sale. A week later, with no shift in the calendar month approaching, most sellers seemed motivated by a simple intent on making the most of the good weather, with many assuming it was the last warm Sunday of the year. Again, I found that the best stuff happened after I turned the camera off and engaged my subjects in conversation.
At the intersection of Sterling and Butler, I met Alfredo Ceibal, a self-described “painter of the painterly tradition” who had come to New York decades ago as a struggling artist, only to find success and return to Guatemala, his birth country, in an effort to give something back to the motherland. I had a great conversation on the death of the American newspaper and shared a fascination with Maori culture with one-half of a couple who had lived on Park Place, near the intersection of Washington Avenue, for close to 30 years. There was something so satisfying about witnessing stoop salers’ interactions with their neighbors and friends; it was almost like watching the social fabric being woven firsthand. Conversations were not limited to the simple mathematics of buying or selling–people were having conversations about history, politics, art, and culture, among many other things. The experience immediately brought to mind descriptions I have read of the Agora, the common public markets of ancient Greek city-states that also functioned as a space for public political and philosophical discourse. Though, of course, stoops sales are decentralized in a way that the Agora was not.
During the editing of my rough draft, I was sometimes torn between including small gems that I had captured, and trying to remain somewhat true to the City Symphony genre. In the end, I decide to sacrifice my sentimental attachment to some of the footage in favor of a stricter presentation of information I had gathered in response to my questions. I ended up cutting out four of the interviews–sometimes because of poor production values, but in other cases because of an arbitrary gut feeling. Here is the result:
I got a wealth of helpful criticism from my co-collaborators during last Sunday’s critique session. Aside from suggestions on cleaning up some portions of distracting audio, the overwhelming consensus seemed to be that I should attempt to focus more on the relationship of seller to good. What are the stories behind some of the more unusual items for sale? What sort of attachments might stoop salers still have to some of their wares? How did the items come to be in their possession? These are all useful interview questions to pose. I was also interested to learn that my peers were largely uninterested in footage of the sellers interacting with buyers and browsers. I also got some good ideas on incorporating better transitions between the stoop sale sites, some of which would attempt to incorporate motion to give the viewer a sense of traveling within the neighborhood. (I agree with the critique that the transitions between sale spaces are jarring, but was left at a loss for how to connect the interviews.)
The next step, of course, is going back to get more interviews. It remains to be seen if I will have repeated success in being blessed with weather conducive to stoop sales.
[This entry was also posted at the UnionDocs Collaborative Project blog.]
I was riding to work yesterday morning, enjoying the city’s natural perfume of diesel fumes, hot garbage and urine, when I passed between a stopped taxi on my left, and a row of parked cars on my right. Just as I was passing the taxi the passenger, a middle-aged woman, opened the door, clipping my handlebars and sending me flying headfirst into the rear corner of the parked car on my right. I drew this helpful diagram to help you, the reader, visualize the carnage. (My photoshop skills suck. I think this would have taken me half the time on MS Paint.)
I was going at a pretty good clip, and endoed head-first into the parked car pretty hard, with my helmet taking most of the brunt of the impact. The worst part was actually how I landed, with my thigh caught between my wheel and my frame, and most of my weight coming down on top of my bike. It’s kind of hard to explain this, but because of the awkwardness of my landing, I was unable to extricate myself from the entanglement to alleviate the pressure on my thigh. I was essentially trapped with most of my weight coming down on my frame, which was pushing into my thigh, which was stuck against my wheel. I was probably trapped for no more than 30 seconds, but felt like an eternity. The pain was excruciating. I remember yelling, begging people to help me, but I finally realized that I could probably get myself up by pulling on the rear of the car, which I did.
I managed to limp over to the curb where I lay down. I remember someone saying the cops were on their way; they showed up in a few minutes and began interviewing the exiting passenger and cab driver for a report. I don’t remember them saying too much to me. A couple of minutes later some EMTs from a FDNY ambulance showed up and started examining me. When I told them I hit my head and was experiencing some neck pain, they immobilized my neck, then loaded me onto a backboard and then the ambulance for a trip to Bellevue Hospital. I briefly thought about protesting, concerned about the resulting medical bills, but then thought better of it when I realized the potential alternative was a serious spinal/neck injury that remained untreated.
It’s a weird thing to experience life flat on your back. You lose all context of your surroundings other than what is directly above you. I remember thinking how beautifully New York’s buildings angled into the sky, and was reminded of some footage that my UnionDocs co-collaborator Andre had shot of the city by inverting a camera, holding it at knee height, and aiming it up toward the clouds. Also, I don’t think people ever give much thought to ceilings. For good reason.
I was kind of impressed by how quickly I was processed at the hospital. I was given what I considered a pretty cursory examination by a nurse who was on an iPhone, and a similarly brief examination by a doctor. I guess they didn’t consider me to have sustained any serious injuries since my complaints about pain had essentially dwindled to none. They decided my scrapes warranted a tetanus shot though. Some time after leaving the hospital I discovered that my pinky was not bending properly, and my gait remains pretty gimpy as a result of my thigh injury.
That might look bad, but you should see the other guy. (The other guy is a car. It didn’t have a scratch on it.)
Anyway, after getting a questionably clean bill of health, I limped out of Bellevue to head back to 3rd Avenue and 22nd Street, the scene of the accident, to retrieve my bike. The most amazing part of the whole experience was that a cop offered to lock up my bike while I was getting loaded into the ambo. I couldn’t see what he was doing because my neck was already immobilized, and was just praying he would at least thread my chain through the frame and not just the front wheel or something. After I made it back to the accident scene, I was stunned to see that he ran the lock through my frame AND rear wheel. The first time in my life I’ve ever thought, “Good lookin’ out NYPD.”
The other interesting experience to come out of my ordeal was a phone call I later got from a researcher from NYU who works out of Bellevue. She’s part of a pilot program doing a study gathering data about victims of bike accidents that end up at the hospital. Evidently they pass the data on to the DOT to help them identify accident hotspots and shape policy about where bike lanes and other accident mitigation efforts should be focused. I thought it was pretty cool.
I was somewhat sobered by my accident, and decided to take the day off to go home and order the lumberjack breakfast at Daisy’s. I haven’t really looked over my Mark V that closely, but I don’t think it suffered any serious damage other than a broken spoke. That thing is a fucking rock! This is the second time I’ve crashed it into a car. (I am not that smart.) I guess I’m going to have to stay off the bike for at least a couple of days while my leg heals up and I wait for my new helmet to come in the mail. I cannot even express how happy I am that I was wearing my old one, that thing probably saved my life. Or at least saved me from a life of eating my pancakes through a tube.
I finally screened New Shoes for the first time this past Sunday at Bike Shorts, hosted at Public Assembly in Wburg. I hadn’t been to the space since Galapagos vacated the premises, and was pretty disappointed to see that they had removed the pool, which always looked like the inky depths of hell to me. I thought it was so cool that someone thought to dedicate that much space at an art venue to their aesthetic vision; you could easily have crammed at least another 80 bodies into the area it used to occupy. In a place like New York City, where real estate is at such a premium, there seemed no greater expression of disdain for a rational economic model than that.
Anyway, a handful of friends came out for the show, but all left before the audience applause vote was taken. Of course Rick came out to lend support and stuck around for the whole thing. Even though he attempted to disguise himself in a vain effort to insulate himself from the wrath of the crowd.
I tried to capture the voting for New Shoes, but I didn’t really get to turn the camera on in time. This brief clip should give you an idea of the response it generated though.
I think the one guy generously sharing a pity clap with the crowd was the A/V dude. It was pretty funny (to me and Rick at least). Anyway, here is the film. Things learned:
1. Prep work is key. If you want to shoot a location, you should probably check to make sure that that particular location is actually open during your scheduled production period.
2. Degenerate gamblers DO NOT enjoy having their picture taken outside of the OTB on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.
3. Rick is gully. No one I’d rather have at my back if I had to throw down with a group of overbearing Park Slope helicopter rents.
Hey how’s it going? Sorry I haven’t talked to you in so long. You look good. Did you get a haircut? No? Oh. Well your hair looks nice. Or maybe it’s because you look thinner, I don’t know.
Anyway, just wanted to let you know that a short film I made, “New Shoes,” is getting screened this Sunday at Bike Short Films in Williamsburg. No big deal. The entry fee is $5, but I have to warn you that I would characterize the quality of most films I have seen there as “poor.” Which is only, like, one better than “very poor.” I know, I know. That makes me an asshole or whatever. But I wouldn’t say my film is the cat’s pajamas or anything either. So whatever.
See, the thing is, they’ll take a film from anyone. So, you know, it’s kind of like doing a YouTube search on the word “bike” and then watching that shit in a bar. Really, the only reason that I’m even telling you about this is because they give out a $100 prize to the “winner.” Okay so the reason I put that in quotes is because the “winner” is chosen by crowd applause at the end of the screening. I know you’re really into quantifiable metrics, so I put the quotes in out of respect for that, dude. But hey–if by some miracle I do win, I will refund you your five dollars from the prize money. No bro, I’m being dead serious. Because it means that much to me that you came out to, you know, help grow the scene or whatever. Okay dude, catch you later.
-rah
What: Screening of film “New Shoes” at Bike Shorts
Where: Public Assembly, 70 N. 6th Street, Williamsburg –map here
When: Sunday, September 27 at 8 pm
Cost: $5
Info: www.bikeshortfilms.com
[This essay is set to "af607105" by Charlotte Gainsbourg]
I flew to Seattle once, when my sister was still living there. It was a strangely planned trip. While I was flying out west, she was heading to my parents home in Maryland, where I lived at the time. I can’t remember why it worked out that way. All I remember is that I wanted to go to Seattle, then eventually make my way up to British Columbia to snowboard at Whistler/Blackcomb. I had an old magazine with pictures of the mountains there that I used to study. In it, the boughs of tall pines had been piled with powder that seemed unreal, as if it were made of meringue and styled with a spatula.
On the flight out I was seated next to a young woman, probably a few years older than me. I took in her appearance quickly then settled into whatever novel I had been reading at the time without saying a word; I found her pretty, and my attraction to her had made me feel bashful. She had pale skin and straight, long brown hair. Several minutes after take off she began crying, very quietly at first. I could not believe what was happening. I made a sort of abortive attempt to see what was going on without directly turning my head. But I could not clearly see her in my peripheral vision, she was seated too close to me. She held the window seat and had angled her body outwards, toward the sky. But I could hear her crying quite clearly, there was no mistaking that. It was a tranquil sort of cry I guess. There were no histrionics. No sobs. No gasping for air. It did not seem to be a cry born of grief or calamity or shock or disbelief. Thinking back on it now, it seemed to have been poured out of a still sadness that lived inside her, or at least that she had been living with for some time.
This was wholly unexpected. What was I, the awkwardly positioned bystander, supposed to do? Ask her what was wrong? And then—if she had confided in me—attempted to comfort her? My body was frozen with fear. I felt my face grow hot and my hands clammy with perspiration. I locked my gaze directly in front of me and studied the words on the page of my novel more intensely than before, as though the story was so compelling that I had become immune to any external stimulus. After some time she stopped crying. I had not realized it, but I had been holding my muscles taught from the stress. Finally, I let go, allowing my rigid body to relax and sag back into my seat. She seemed now to be settling into sleep, but my impression of her actions was bounded by my inability to turn in her direction. Everything she did seem removed from me, as though she were wrapped in a gauze that confounded by ability to discern her actions or emotional state.
I pretended to read my novel until I was somewhat certain that she had actually fallen asleep, though I could not concentrate on anything but her. I don’t remember the rest of the flight, but I am sure it passed uncomfortably for me, maybe in fitful attempts at sleep or distraction. But I could not bring myself to simply turn and look at the woman seated next to me. When we finally arrived in Seattle I quickly grabbed my bag and deplaned. After we entered the airport’s sterile terminal I casually slowed my gait to allow the woman to catch up. I managed to gather my courage, stealing a quick glance at her she passed by. She was beautiful. She had clear blue eyes and smiled when I looked at her, though not at me. I don’t think she even noticed me. Her eyes were unfocused, staring at something in the distance. She seemed to be smiling to herself.
[Originally published April 4, 2007]
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