Bike Kill ’08 – “Its like Christmas and the Apacolypse Rolled into One”

The NYC halloween season is in full swing by the time Bike Kill rears its ugly head.

Whats a bike kill? no one really knows. but every year, the Black Label Bike Club digs through their piles of abandoned frames and spare parts and welds them together into mutant steeds of steel and glory. bike kill takes all the danger of a high speed alleycat and crams it into a one block cul de sac behind the home depot.

Ben, my former roommate with an advanced degree in festivals, dropped into Brooklyn to “study” bike kill.

we arrived early, to find the black label wielding power tools, building some kind of ramp system. they appeared sober, and possibly dangerous. One gave me the look of a mother grizzly protecting her cubs, so ben and I locked up our bikes and took a stroll down the block to Tiny Cup for a quick coffee. We killed an hour chatting, then walked across clifton to grab two flasks of whiskey.

since we would be drinking in public, we needed some kind of concealment device. Ben, always a quick thinker, picked up some duct tape at the bodega and we wrapped our bottles.

By the time we got back to the bike kill, the festivities were in full swing. The street was full of smiles and crashes. There was public urination with old friends and sharing tacos with new ones.

Ben and Kels rock the SurfBike - photo by nick james

Kelsey rocked the surf bike like an actual surfboard. she could go from lying down to standing up… it almost seemed like she was catching a wave.

Jack Crank takes the Steamroller bike for a ride - By Ed Glazer

An epic bread fight marked the end of free play and the hour of serious business was at hand. 6 pack attack, foot down, and the usual reindeer games kind of meld together into one game thats called drink a beer while riding tall bikes and having shit thrown at you. everyone’s a winner.

As the sun went down, and bike jousting was about to begin, I herded the crew up onto the parking lot fence (aka the skybox). the view was great, and despite clinging to a fence 12 feet off the ground, i felt it was the safest area on the block

TheJake - By Nick James

“jake, you’re the marlboro man for the new millennium. you represent good times, drugs, chest hair and wide-open skies. blog readers fear your freedom. they fear your white jeans – pointing nelsonlike with every square inch of their bleached denim at the maelstrom of beer, sex, and wet pita – and heartily “hanh-hanh”ing as glass rained up upon them as you tossed another empty 40 bottle under the metal wheels of the gyrotank.” ~visitor

Luke broke his ankle before bike kill even started - By Ed Glazer

“i am not a furry” ~luke.

Kill it with Fire - By Ed Glazer

Fawn - By MaryLynne

The FakeWork Girls - by Gluten Free Andy

The fakework girls show up at everything fun in brooklyn, and set the bar one notch higher.

…and the winner of bike kill is…

DannyRocks by JamieNYC

From up on the fence i saw a dude being wheeled out on a surfbike. i had no idea what happened, but he didn’t look good. Later i found out it was Danny Rocks. Bike Kill broke his ankle. Fortunately, it will be rebuilt with titanium.

after the jousts, the rain started coming down harder. that was our cue for naked dance party. the crowd was full of all kinds of weird energy, and we were just getting warmed at 8pm when the Permit expired. Coaches turned to pumpkins and our lovely DJ’s closed up shop.

We walked down the block to the chicken hut for the afterparty. good times, as usual. Stachemaster and Dirtyfinger got everyone dancing. unfortunately, someone stole Inge and Kelsey’s bags from the party. Both had digi camera’s in them, and it was a really sad ending to a wild day.

NJS Turns 27

Friday night was Nick’s birthday. he threw a killer party at his apartment, full of all my favorite bike people.

Heidi rode up to check out my new apartment before the festivities began. it was great to ride with my old roommate. Jamie rolled on over too, and then the 3 of us swooped through greenpoint to pick up Inge.

When we arrived in LIC, the first order of business was picking up beer. we headed north from nick’s place, but Jamie and I couldn’t find a bodega to save our lives. but after cruising up and down the streets for 15 minutes we discovered that all the bodegas were south of nick’s apartment, near the pulaski.
For a bike party, nick’s apartment was more than half female. probably due to his legendary smoothness. there was drinking and dancing and talking and yelling, and unicycling on the back porch. everything you need for a good friday night.

Catfish, Asteroid, K-Tel, Fajita

around 2:30 i rolled on south with niki. i was a little tipsy for riding, but felt safer with a sober riding partner.

great night… but i wasn’t sure how i would handle getting up early for zombiecon on saturday.

Bike Shorts

I didn’t have much going on sunday, so i took my serotta out to Prospect for a few laps. I ran into Ben5, ID and Valvesteem at GAP. as usual they were exchanging high grade cycling componentry for hard currency. I did a few laps with Ben, then a few laps with my ipod before i pooped myself out and got some ice cream.

after real dinner, i set out for bike shorts at Solar1. I met kelsey and inge at the foot of the WBB, then Mary-lynne at the other side. we had a quick and dirty ride up to 23rd and C, arriving a few minutes early.

The usual suspects trickled and locked their bikes up to the rail. it was a crisp night for sitting outside, and we huddled under hoodies.

the films started rolling, but sometimes i feel like they are just a good excuse for hanging out with friends and family for a few hours. There was a lot of the same old clips of messenger being stupid at high speeds, and fixed gear freestyling being stupid at low speeds. The gem of the evening was “the enthusiast”…. a film that straddled the line between documentary and mockumentary, as a suburban bike nerd tried to rationalize his predilection for unilateral bicycle adoption. for being original and a little nutty, it won the bikeshorts palm d’or. i’d like to learn how to shoot and edit a film someday.

afterwards, we did a group ride over to east river bar. about 25 cats on bikes heading over the WBB devolved into a race pretty quickly. jody and gabe rocketed past me halfway up the hill and i didn’t see them again until the other end.

East river bar was pretty decent. K-Tel was spinning some fun music, but most of us just sat outside and enjoyed the last few days of spring. Gabe and I started writing our bikeshorts submission. we were going to put together a parody of dy-lan’s “get faster” where we travel the city trying to learn the secrets of success from the great bike shorts producers. it got pretty meta.

2 beers into the night we got the communal munchies and decided to roll over Vinny’s for some vegan pizza. it was the only place open at 11, but it turned out to be a pretty solid slice.

all in all, a very satisfying sunday night. thanks to ken and luke for putting it all together!

Housewarming bbbq

the extra b is for “creating a dangerous condition”

last night was brooklyn CM. we had a cozy group leaving from WBB, and rode up through Greenpoint, then back down to bed0stuy and finally met the other mass. there were about 20 police scooters and 5 or 10 cars following the GAP group. Not wanting any police trouble, I decided to go home and fire up the hibachi.

I had invested $20 in a sweet little grill earlier in the day, and was pretty stoked to get a little flame going. but just as the coals started glowing, a police van showed up. 3 officers got out and demanded our identification. I was as polite as possible, but they still gave me a summons for bbq’ing on the sidewalk. “creating a dangerous condition” they said. “you know you can’t have an open flame out on the sidewalk” they said.

they have no idea what they are talking about. NY Times says its cool to bbq on the sidewalk. hopefully this summons just gets tossed out.

Summer Slam Presents: Boogie Nights

Last night was the 4th race in the boogie nights fixed gear race series. as i don’t own a fixed gear bike, i wasn’t really planning on racing. unfortunately Mary-lynne was feeling a bit sick, and her team needed a substitute rider for the nights team time trial. i volunteered to take her place and ride 3 laps of Prospect Park with Kelsey and Inge.

Alex, who was working the stopwatches, let me borrow his bike.
Inge and Kelsey had been doing some training during the week, and i had been sitting on my ass, so i was little nervous about holding the team back. but the anxiety melted away after a few warmup laps, and the three of us were working together.

the race went well. we didn’t win, but we rode at hundreds of smiles per hour.

Afterwards, we gathered up the crew and went down to Franklin Park for some beers. as our team toasted to such a successful race, inge told kelsey that she didn’t make eye contact and therefore would have seven years bad luck. kelsey was like “whatever, i didn’t forward a chain email yesterday and got seven years bad luck from that.” Inge responded “oh yeah, when i see those i just click ‘Mark as Phishing.’”

after 2 beers, it started raining so we all went our separate ways. Gabe and Andres were riding up to queens, so the 3 of us rode up bedford together. I turned off in williamsburg, and went home.

Annual Fall Birthday Camping Trip

Hi, welcome to the first post of a blag.

Last weekend was rachael’s birthday bike camping extravaganza. Jamie took some pictures.

I had moved back to BK on the 1st in my parent’s jeep, so it was convenient to drive it up to croton to take care of our hauling needs.

On friday afternoon, I drove it up to Rachael’s school, and got in line with all the other parent’s waiting to pick up their children. 5 minutes after I picked up rach, jamie showed up at the subway stop, and we were on our way up to croton.

Ye Shoppe List

first order of business was a trip to the grocery store. we spent a few minutes getting our thoughts down on paper. We had a $300 budget, and came in at $299.46. because we are pros.

The local grocery store is next door to a salvation army, so we obviously had to go check it out.

I found some pretty interesting reading material. According to chapter one, a sexy new hat is the key. I found a good one and got ready to test out my newly acquired skills.

Saturday morning RTB shows us how breakfast is done. this man is new to camping, but he picked it up damn quickly. soon he will be leading expeditions into the arctic wilderness.

After Saturday morning breakfast, we had some time to kill while we were waiting for the rest of the crew to show up. we decided to go on a drive out to a flea market. Jamie had seen a sign near the train station, and we thought it could be fun. we found the sign, and instead of following directions, i decided to follow a random orange arrow. it turns out the arrow pointed to the high way and we were off. we got a little lost, but we ended up pretty close to a cool little farm.

Rachael and Jamie were excited to see lots of cute little pigs and cows. then they were excited to eat factory farmed pigs and cows all weekend. ick. i stuck to the veggie burgers. out of 16 total bike campers there were only 3 veggies! me, elizabeth, and leah.

Shotput

by saturday night, everyone had arrived and set up their tents. we went on a little hike down to the water to watch the sunset. since we didn’t have tv or internets, we had to invent a new game. i dont know who started it, but it caught on fast… RTB named it “throw stuff at stuff.” first it was pebbles, but pretty soon rach was shot putting boulders out into the river.

epic s'more

Gaylen makes an epic s’more. i think this is my favorite picture from the camping trip.