Dirt Rag has a surprisingly long and in-depth article about the NYC FG scene. Not a bad rundown, considering the article could easily descend into cliche and purple prose. Well, maybe it's a little purple at the end.
It got me thinking. When I was 16, I did a summer session at NYU, which quickly devolved into me hanging out in Washington Square park, where I discovered I could live on $5/day, in some combination of Marlboro Reds and Nathan's hot dogs. Killing time with the local teen riffraff, I ran into a messenger type, a tall skinny black guy from Brooklyn, who in retrospect, was looking the part, but not delivering any packages, and maybe just a bit too old to be scamming on the girls in the Square. Anyway, he was old skool track ten years before it was a site, and he rode an italian handmade bike with a suite of campy goodness. It may actually have been Lawrence Fishburne method acting for his role in Quicksilver (not really).
Most of which isn't noteworthy...but I asked him if I could take it for a ride, and he actually let me. Let me repeat that. A messenger-type from Brooklyn let some random 16-year-old kid take his rare italian track bike for a spin around the park in NYC. I am sure he considered me less dangerous than a mosquito (I still have a student ID from that summer, and I looked about 13) but still...I don't even know if I'd let my wife ride my fast bike, nevermind some kid in the park.
So this one's for you, old skool track dude. If you ever knew how many miles that jaunt kicked off.
No comments:
Post a Comment