someone asked about this the other day, so I thought I'd share the write-up I did for rocbike.com
pics are by my buddy Killmore
and I made a video
On a Saturday afternoon in late October, in a ghetto area of Brooklyn, on a dead-end street blocked off by barricades, there was an unprecedented scene of madness and mayhem. The kind of thing you’d expect to see in some sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland (think Bartertown), a wild untamed wilderness of bikes, beer, and giant foam skulls. This has happened every year for the past 5 years, amazingly without intervention from the NYPD.
Imagine a street filled with hundreds of people and their bikes, mostly mutant bikes formed from the discarded pieces of other bikes. Bikes that are almost un-rideable, therefore more fun to ride, tallbikes, longbikes, choppers, bikes with shoes for wheels. And there is non-stop activity of bikes moving, people throwing stuff at the bikes, olympic style events such as chariot races, six-pack relays, and the ultimate event, tallbike jousting.
It’s hard to judge whether this event is pro-bike or anti-bike with all the abuse they put some of the bikes through. And by the end of the day it was almost impossible to safely ride a bike down the street as it was completely covered in shards of glass from smashed 40oz bottles. One thing is for sure, everyone there is having a heck of a time. There are moments when the entire street just turns into a giant dance party and everyone is moving in unison to the beat coming from the live DJ. There are other times when you can’t even tell what is going on where because there are just too many people and too much noise around to process it all, then the crowd instantly parts and there is a surfbike coming your way with someone”hanging 10″ on the board mounted to the front, and you have to dive out of the way or get a gut full of plywood.
The best part for me was trying out some of the crazy contraptions lying around, such as a bouncy bike made out of two different full suspension mountain bikes welded together, or a crazy chopper with a 5 foot fork, or the shopping cart bike. I didn’t even attempt to ride a tall bike, but maybe next year.
Killmore has some pics, I’ve got video. Enjoy!
pics are by my buddy Killmore
and I made a video
On a Saturday afternoon in late October, in a ghetto area of Brooklyn, on a dead-end street blocked off by barricades, there was an unprecedented scene of madness and mayhem. The kind of thing you’d expect to see in some sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland (think Bartertown), a wild untamed wilderness of bikes, beer, and giant foam skulls. This has happened every year for the past 5 years, amazingly without intervention from the NYPD.
Imagine a street filled with hundreds of people and their bikes, mostly mutant bikes formed from the discarded pieces of other bikes. Bikes that are almost un-rideable, therefore more fun to ride, tallbikes, longbikes, choppers, bikes with shoes for wheels. And there is non-stop activity of bikes moving, people throwing stuff at the bikes, olympic style events such as chariot races, six-pack relays, and the ultimate event, tallbike jousting.
It’s hard to judge whether this event is pro-bike or anti-bike with all the abuse they put some of the bikes through. And by the end of the day it was almost impossible to safely ride a bike down the street as it was completely covered in shards of glass from smashed 40oz bottles. One thing is for sure, everyone there is having a heck of a time. There are moments when the entire street just turns into a giant dance party and everyone is moving in unison to the beat coming from the live DJ. There are other times when you can’t even tell what is going on where because there are just too many people and too much noise around to process it all, then the crowd instantly parts and there is a surfbike coming your way with someone”hanging 10″ on the board mounted to the front, and you have to dive out of the way or get a gut full of plywood.
The best part for me was trying out some of the crazy contraptions lying around, such as a bouncy bike made out of two different full suspension mountain bikes welded together, or a crazy chopper with a 5 foot fork, or the shopping cart bike. I didn’t even attempt to ride a tall bike, but maybe next year.
Killmore has some pics, I’ve got video. Enjoy!
