June 22, 2009
An alleycat in Austin that was more of a party with a little bike riding
The free race started at Fast Folks on East 6th Street, The one and only checkpoint was No Comply Skate Shop and then back to Fast Folks for the finish. It was a very short race.
It was the typical sort of race beginning where we lay our bikes down and have to run up to them at the sound of a yell or siren glass braking.
The race passed through an intersection with access to Interstate 35. For some reason, I stopped for the red light … when I came to my senses I resumed racing and had to catch all of the people who passed me. Oops.
A band played before and people milled about. It was more of a party than anything.
Then the race happened. I managed to dehydrate myself rather well before and I really couldn’t remember the last thing I ate. The past two weeks I didn’t take care of myself very well and I felt it during the 6 or 7 miles of racing.
Oh well, so what? I finished and wasn’t last.
After the race, people talked, drank beer and just had a good time. Some of the hipsters did their fixed-gear tricks while others just enjoyed the nice afternoon.
They announced the top 5 finishers, who all won something. The first place finisher won a pair of wheels with green Velocity rims and Formula hubs – black, I think. One of the kids with the bull horn walked around with it for a while yelling things to people and being obnoxious. It was hilarious.
I think he had conversations with it. The police siren definitely got some use as well.
After the race and some time relaxing with yet another rock band, it was time for the trackstand competition. I wanted to borrow a fixed gear for the contest to redeem my awful performance earlier.
But I didn’t. I didn’t even ask anyone. I took photos instead.
Although I really stood out – or at least I felt like I did – it was still fun. I may complain about hipsters in Austin like I did in Brooklyn but overall, Austin is always a good time. The bike people are a hoot, the weather is good and the girls are hot.
I go to Austin whenever I can. I always have a camera or two with me and I’m always up to shoot photos at a bike-related event of some sort. Hell, even a non bike elated event …
A cursory glance at some previous posts here shows some vastly different views of the greater cycling community. Some of the riders are “cyclists” while others are “bike people”. Many are both, some are neither.
OK, Austin, au revoir.
June 4, 2009
Austin has a thriving bike community and a pretty good infrastructure to support it. The community isn’t just “cyclists” and it really isn’t “bike people”, it’s a mix. In one weekend, without riding very far, I shot bike polo, BMX dirt jumps, a triathlon. After all of that, there was a cancelled group ride starting at midnight. And that wasn’t all of it, either.
Bike Polo!
Bike polo has its own followers and fans. My first time seeing the game played in all of its wonderful chaos was at Eastwoods Park in Austin.
Basically, if I have it right (please correct me if I don’t), there are two teams of three who try to get the ball between the cones or the goal of the other team.
To start off the game, someone needs to yell “polo!” If a player/rider puts a foot down, they have to ride away from the play and tap a post nearby. I think bike polo is generally played on tennis courts so the posts holding the net are tapped.
The game goes until one of the teams reaches a certain score, then it’s done.
(more photos on Flickr and more to come)
West 9th Street
This time the riders were hitting everything but the big doubles, at least while I was there. This place, simply known as West 9th Street, started in the 80’s or earlier and is free and open to the public – as long as they’re on BMX bikes. I knew about it when I raced BMX in the early 90’s and it wasn’t new. It’s always good to see younger kids here as well as old farts my age. I was surprised with the number of girls riding and the big stuff they were hitting. Awesome.
At one point a small Red Bull truck/car showed up. Out sprang two cute, young girls handing out free cans of Red Bull. You know your spot is on the map when this happens.
Capitol of Texas Triathlon
I knew about the triathlon but I thought it was over by the time I rode away from the BMX kids on W9th toward Congress Avenue. Lo and behold, the triathlon was in the end of the cycling portion. Awesome.
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure
The night before some of this happened, Alamo Draft House screened a 35-mm print of “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” to a loving outdoor audience in a clearing across from Progress coffee on San Marcos Street and East 5th Street. That first scene when Pee-Wee brought out his bike, the place erupted in applause. One of the guys working the ticket tent was dressed in a grey suit just like Pee-Wee. I have a photo of him in Progress, which is a fantastic place by the way. I plan to go back regularly and you should as well.
I don’t have very many photos of this – I mean, it’s a movie.
Light Tower Ride
After the movie, at around midnight, the Light Tower Ride was scheduled to roll away from the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge but it never happened. The ride was postponed due to lightning. No big deal although it would have been a pretty good way to end a weekend of two wheeled chaos.
Sunday I head back to the Defense Information School in Fort George G. Meade, MD (between DC and Baltimore) for a week. I’m attending the 17th Annual Department of Defense Military Photography Workshop as one of 25 selected to go. I’m stoked.
I expect it to be a good time and maybe I’ll learn something.
Hopefully I can make blog posts of the adventure, we’ll see what happens.
May 8, 2009
Last Sunday I happened by something odd-looking in Republic Square Park on 4th Street and Guadeloupe in Austin. Further inspection revealed a large monarch butterfly-shaped contraption with fabric wings in yellows and oranges, lit by the low, warm sun of the spring evening. It sat on a perch on a hill in the southern part of the park, the nearly-taught fabric wings moved with the breeze. At the bottom of the structure was a platform where two diamond-plate truck bed boxes sat. If one were to look down on the butterfly, it would look like a triangle pointing forward.
The platform was wood in a steel (aluminum?) frame on wheels – a trailer. It was pulled by a bike.
Then I saw the large praying mantis and the larger still worm or centipede creation. Both were mobile and bike-powered.
The latter creation had large, white ribs maybe 7 feet high. Each or almost each had a bike seat and handlebars. Looking down I saw pedals and joints and wheels. The entire thing was bike-powered and flexible.
And there were the two 1980’s BMX bikes with matching Mongoose Motomags attached side-by-side with steel rods. The forks of the bikes were connected with tie rods similar to what one finds in a car.
Two guys dressed in all black were juggling white canes while women in strange costumes applied finishing touches on their stage make up while looking into a mirror leaned against the shaded side of a tree.
To my right, someone rode up on a unicycle. He explained this was a production based on works by Lewis Carroll called “Wheels of Wonderland”. The production was presented free of charge to the public by Austin Bike Zoo and was directed by Rudy Ramirez. The unicycle-riding guy balanced near me heading in the direction of what became the stage. He was juggling knives and I told him his act was pretty sharp.
After the show ended, a medium-sized child in good spirits walked over to me. She asked if I saw her pink, sparkly shoes. After a careful study of the immediate area’s grass and warm beige gravel sidewalk, I told her I didn’t see them.
“When you step they light up,” she explained. Her tone turned a little more serious. “They have Hello Kitty on them and they’re pink,” she said.
I told her if I find her fancy shoes I might wear them, since they sound pretty cool.
At the time, I had my bike shoes on which seem to make my small-ish feet look smaller.
“I have small feet, your fancy shoes might fit,” I joked.
The child studied the size 41 Sidi Dominator 5 shoes I had on while taking occasional looks to the ground.
“Yea, you do have small feet,” she confirmed with the usual innocent profundity one hears from kids.
I really wouldn’t steal shoes from a kid or anyone, especially pink Hello Kitty shoes that light up as one walks.
It was still pretty funny.
I love Austin.
Wow, and all I was doing was riding around on a nice day
March 26, 2009
SAN ANTONIO – While I was in basic military training for the U.S. Air Force Reserve (I went through BMT with other Reservists, Guardsmen and active-duty), I had a Moleskine notebook with me. Sometimes I had it in my pocket, which was a big time no-no while most of the time it was locked away in my security drawer. Many nights I wrote notes of what I was thinking and some general goings-on. Sometimes it was frantic writing late at night sitting in the “drying room” adjacent to the shower while other nights it was at the lighted, wall-mounted podium or lectern or desk the Entry Control monitor used. The other trainees started to know me as the guy with the notebook in addition to other things like being “old” or working as a bike messenger in NYC or a photojournalist. Keep reading →
March 21, 2009
The places I love the most have a promontory.
I used to sit on the vacant lifeguard chairs in the night time fog of the late summer night of Narragansset, RI. The fishing boats would pass in the channel close to my perch.
I would sleep in my car and awaken a few hours later to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean. These times, these mornings there by myself I knew everything would be right.
Maybe our thoughts were echoing with each other, maybe they passed each other like the training exercises of the F-16 fighter pilots who roar from the runway close to my office; rattling windows, engines growling with anger and fury as they punctuate the Texas sky. (I forget about the purpose and environmental issues of such planes and remember to be in awe of the speed and grace at which they fly.)
Here I have no promontory. Well, maybe I do now that I think of it. I watch the sun rise over the runways of an Air Force base where the insanely huge C-5’s are parked.
Do you ever think your thoughts and mumbled questions into the quiet of the cold night ever reach listening ears? I wonder about that sometimes. I wonder if maybe a discarded idea of mine finds its way into a mind that uses it better making it into a good plan or delicate prose of poignant delivery and noble ideals.
What’s in your mind, muttered from your lips upon this perch from which you survey hither and yon?
December 20, 2008
FORT GEORGE MEADE, Md. — Living the dream here in the Army barracks. I stole that line – or at least part of it, from Flint, the soldier of mysterious origin whom I see in the DFAC every day.
Flint has a strange accent and point of view that’s difficult to pin down on a specific source. He told me he grew up in Korea on some sort of military establishment but that doesn’t explain the accent.
Flint is one of the many interesting charachters here enrolled in DINFOS, including Johnson and Smith, who live across from me in the dorm. Although those names sound fake, they’re real. Probably. Keep reading →
November 22, 2008
03 November 2008
San Antonio International Airport
SAN ANTONIO — Four a.m. ticks slowly closer as we wait in line for the ticket agent from American Airlines to arrive. We’re from a few flights in a few training squadrons in the 737th Training Wing from Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX. We’re all en route to the next leg of our training adventure, tech school. We graduated Basic Military Training Friday and were gone from Lackland in the unmentioned hours of the morning Sunday. The weekend was spent either packing or with families or discovering parts of the base previously off limits, such as the bowling alley. As we walked around, the Blue Angels practiced in the skies above San Antonio for their performance in the big air show on Sunday. That weekend we became officially airmen — no longer “trainees”.
The last night in basic Military Training was spent in the quiet calm of anticipation of where this journey will take us. Those who were able to sleep in flight 665 did so on the grey, hard linoleum floor of the dayroom in dormitory B-10 — our home for the past 6 and a half weeks. Some in the flight decided to stay awake talking or watching movies on laptop computers set on a desk or the floor. I remember seeing parts of a movie as I slipped in and out of consciousness, worrying about oversleeping and missing the bus.
Keep reading →
September 14, 2008
14 September 2008
26th Annual Moonlight Cruze,
AUSTIN, Tx., — Several hundred cyclists and “bike people” of all stripes and badges met on the Lamar Street pedestrian bridge at 2:00 this morning and rode through the damp and darkened streets of Austin until just before dawn. The ride ended at a parking garage near the capital at about 5:30 am. If the ride went on from there, it was in small splinter groups. At that point, the showing was much smaller than a few hours before over the Colorado River as not every rider went all the way. I saw three guys playing music in the initial group on the bridge. Two of them had acoustic guitars and the last had a violin. Some people handed out flyers, a few people rode some wheelies, flexible chem sticks (the plastic things that glow in neon colors) were given out, music was consumed with beer. Friends met, people talked, bikes compared, fun ensued.
Fireworks were launched from the bridge at the beginning and at the rest stops along the way. The displays were impressive – probably just for the sake of someone riding a bike carrying fireworks. And alcohol … lots of it.
One bike had fire spewing from it, just over the rear tire. Keep reading →
Filed under Uncategorized
Tags: 50mm f1.4, Austin, available darkness, bikes, Brian McGloin, chaos, dark, film, fireworks, fun, group rides, Lamar Street, Moonlight Cruze, night, Nikon, nudity, predawn, taking photos while riding, tall bike, Texas
September 5, 2008
Ire and thorns in the Alamo City. Something about this decaying metropolis carries a dark and gloomy energy, a permanent, foul hue of abandonment and despair.
I know I’m not the only one who sees this … it’s evident in the dour faces creeping darkly along the trash strewn, urine soaked sidewalks. The only people on the streets are the tourists near the Riverwalk and the derelict wanderers, both of whom are just passing through on their way elsewhere. For good or ill.
Haunted broken souls congregate silently under the cloud of the strange green lights of the late night bus, hurtling darkly away from the center of the city, through the ghetto of forgotten dwellings where those who are lost and gave up searching rest for the evening. Their dreams awash in a haze of cheap whiskey and unforgiving spouses.
In this city, the late night bus isn’t as late as other cities – especially the 24 hour cities – but I assure you it’s darker here and the heavy betting in the back of the bus is on the dawn never rising.
June 10, 2008
SAN ANTONIO — The wind was crazy at this years San Antonio Summer Art & Jazz Festival. It blew some tents over and proved to be a real problem at times. The five minutes of rain was a problem as well since just before the wind blew the canopy off of the stage – or maybe gave the organizers an urgent reason to remove the canopy. I have a photo of one of the musicians, Bett Butler, hanging onto the canopy while playing a piano and singing.
The canopy was removed. Then as I was walking around facing away from the stage, I heard her say in the middle of a song: “we’re being rained on up here”.
The music stopped.
Immediately the amplifiers, speakers, equalizers, limiters and other sound gear, electric pianos and microphones were covered. Black and silver tarpaulins were on the ground next to the stage to be pressed into service with no delay. The musicians took their horns and guitars Keep reading →
