Last year the handsome Matthew Modine graced our runway and he was back again this year, ready to model the very latest in Velo couture. Strutting alongside him will be former Critical Shopper Mike Albo, showing off glamorous bicycles, bags, jeans and coats perfect for the New Yorker who wants to ride in style. Perennial fashion-plate Hamish Bowles has even donated a custom made vest and knickers set designed by B Spoke Tailor.

Former Critical Shopper, Mike Albo will be showing off the latest in Velo couture as a guest model and everyone’s favorite fashion purveyor Hamish Bowles has donated a custom made vest and knickers made by B. Spoke Tailors. Other exciting items that will be making their way down the catwalk include The Brooks of England Criterion Jacket, which retails for $1,500 and items from the ultra-chic Beta Brand, perfect for biking to work while still looking fresh and stylish.

The show was co-produced by Hudson Urban Bicycles and Momentum Magazine. While the festivities might have ended you can always learn more about the 2012 New Amsterdam Bicycle Show by visiting their website newambikeshow.com.

Black Sabbath.

By George Denison

Cycling through the five boroughs is like being followed around by an amazing orchestra with a huge horn section. The noise from some intersections could knock you down. But a weekday breeze through the park can give you the closest thing to silence in this city. After riding a while, you’d be surprised how many times you find yourself stopping to ask drivers, “Who sings that?” It worked once maybe. So while searching for your air pump this spring, throw these songs on your smartphone for the ride.

War Pigs - Black Sabbath (Paranoid)

A regular first song of my morning commute. The intro makes the groggy first turn a little more tolerable. Then it picks up just as you make it through and guides your body to your groove and adrenaline to your veins. Try not to thrash too hard in traffic though.

Still D.R.E. – Dr. Dre (The Chronic 2001)

Sun is out. And you’re back! Chances are if you’ve been off the saddle all winter, you need some encouragement on that halfway there hill. Let them know you still got it, try to reach a 93.4 rpm cadence sync’d to the beat in Dre’s comeback middle finger. You might want to stretch first. Of course, you’d better turn this up if you’re hittin’ corners in a recumbent.

Cocoo Butter – Action Bronson ft. Nina Simone (Well-Done)

Last year, the Queens born rapper/chef dropped this collaboration with Statik Selektah, and I haven’t been able to put it down since. This whole album is the freshest soundtrack you can find for moving through the city. Whether cruising through your hood or digging in on the bridge, you’re covered. Best line: “Ill prosciutto. Legend, Phil Rizzuto.”

Bicycle Race – Queen (Jazz)

This cliche will not be avoided. A sweeping chord progression. A chanted anthem. If you don’t want to ride your bicycle after hearing this, you have no soul. But it’s best that this remain warm-up music that you and your concerned roommate don’t talk about. That being said, it’s also recommended for you to concede the road to anyone that rides up blasting this song. They could be dangerously happy or a fat bottomed girl. Either way I think it’s a good idea to let them get ahead.

The Motto – Drake (Take Care)

This one is for your own good. Those fleeting moments you ride doubles with a cool cab driver can leave you with a verse severely stuck in your head. Chances are, right now you’re riding through clouds of “The Motto.” Take the proper precautions, finish the song, and repeat it. YOLO!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t discourage the use of headphones while cycling. Phones have speakers and clothes have pockets. They were made for exactly this. See you in the bike lane!

What happens upstairs to make the wheels go round?

By Bob Nelson, P.T.

If you read any of the thousands books and articles about cycling technique, what you read about is body position, biomechanical efficiency, aerodynamic resistance and muscle activation, among other imponderables.  Nobody talks about how the brain controls movement.  But the brain is where movement gets started, and there’s plenty to learn about cycling if you just think about the brain.

Neurologists are the folks who think about the brain, and the field of neurology has been abuzz with news of a Dutch man in his late 50s who checked in to a clinic for Parkinson’s disease in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.  Parkinson’s is one of several movement disorders directly traceable to the brain, and patients typically have trouble initiating movement.  A common symptom is freezing in place, at inopportune moments like crossing a busy city street.  Patients also display what’s called postural instability, meaning they fall easily. They also have tremors in the arms and legs and sometimes the face.

This Dutch man had severe Parkinson’s and was unable to take more than a few steps without falling over.  The case was reported in 2010 in the New England Journal of Medicine, which has a video on its website (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMicm0810287) that shows both his heartbreaking physical condition walking down a hospital corridor – and his amazing ability to ride a bicycle with no trace whatever of a movement disorder.

Neurologists, not least among them at the Dutch clinic, have been stunned at this news.  How could a man with advanced degenerative brain disease be able to ride a bicycle, which does, after all, require balance and some degree of motor coordination?

Bastiaan Bloem, the Dutch neurologist who wrote up the case for NEJM, asked 20 more of his Parkinson’s patients to ride bicycles, and every one of them could.  (Remember, this is the Netherlands, where everyone, but everyone, rides a bike.)  He suggests that the rotary motion of the pedals may provide an external pacing cue that keeps the Parkinson’s patients on track.  Or, he writes, maybe bicycling doesn’t require very much input from the part of the brain that’s diseased in Parkinson’s patients.

There’s a famous cartoon of Homer Simpson’s brain that shows major partitions for sleep, doughnuts, sex and beer.  It’s tough to argue with this insight, but brain anatomists divvy the gray matter up into regions for consciousness, movement, sensation and emotion.  Movement circuits start in a slice across the midbrain called the motor cortex.  Those motor neurons take several detours before they reach the spinal cord and the neurons, or nerve cells, that will carry the brain’s movement orders to the muscles.  (Homer’s brain is the same, but smaller.)

One of the brain organs that our brains and Homer’s share is called the basal ganglia.  They look like two lumps with ram’s horns on the underside (“basal” side) of the brain.  The brain’s orders to move go through the basal ganglia, which are essentially signal processing units that help figure out motor strategies.  Given a voice, the basal ganglia would say:  So you’re going to ride a bike?  Better know where to put your foot!  And then what are you going to do?

In patients with Parkinson’s, it’s precisely this region, the basal ganglia, that is impaired, and it’s the reason why Parkinson’s patients freeze, because the part of the brain that tells them what to do next isn’t functioning.  It’s certainly possible that one of the reasons the Dutch patient wasn’t showing any sign of Parkinson’s while riding a bike is that riding a bike doesn’t require a lot of signal processing in the basal ganglia.  Nurses helped the patient onto the bike and got him going, and once he was going, he could keep doing the same thing without much thought about motor strategies.

It’s thought that different kinds of guidance use different parts of the brain.  For example, if you’re learning to ride a bike without anyone’s help, you have to figure things out on your own, which requires a lot of conscious attention to the task.  That uses the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex.  If you’ve got someone telling you where to put your foot and what to do next, you don’t need much conscious effect, but you do need balance and coordination, which reside mostly in the cerebellum, a lobe at the back of the brain.  And if you’ve got things figured out but you’re playing with muscle activation (push with the foot?  lift the toes?  flex then extend the hip?), you’re refining a motor strategy, and the basal ganglia are doing it.

Australian researchers in 2005 did electromyographic studies of novice and experienced cyclists, in which they stuck electrodes into thigh muscles to determine which muscles were getting the most juice and therefore which were being used and how often.  Experienced cyclists had less variability in muscle recruitment than novices, presumably the result of their long practice.  Working on bicycling – practicing on different bikes, riding on varied terrain, thinking of different ways of pulling up on the pedals and pushing down – creates new nerve connections and reinforces old ones among the different parts of the brain and with the spinal cord and with muscles.  Scientists think that those connections, once made, persist, which is why you never forget how to ride a bike.

Bob Nelson is a physical therapist at H&D Physical Therapy (http://www.hdphysicaltherapy.com/) and founded the LGBT bicycle club Fast and Fabulous (http://fastnfab.org/).  He’ll be delivering a presentation on this topic at Bike Expo New York at Basketball City on the East River on May 3, 4 and 5.  (http://www.bikenewyork.org/bike-expo-new-york/expo-programing/).

By Adam Garrett-Clark

You don’t know me, and you don’t know my bike, but the story of my bike and me is too beautiful not to be told. It’s a story of defying expert advice, of loyalty to inanimate steel and of creating my own personal mythology.

It was probably once blood was drawn and the emergency room bill was in the mail that I realized that my bike and me have an unhealthy yet mystical attachment to each other.

I met my bike on the edge of a curb on W.178^th Street. I had just moved to the city with little more than a duffle bag and a $1,000 loan from dad. At that point the exploitative sales job for peanuts and sketchy roach apartment were scratched off the list and all that was left was a cheap dependable ride. There it was, one morning, strewn like a piece of trash, dusty, a bent wheel, kinda Schwinny but not, with a thin grass green road frame and yellowing white taped handle bars. It was perfect. The two people on my stoop, agreed it was probably trash, but I thought it was good enough for me. Before someone else realized what a steal it was, I rushed it up four flights to my apartment.

With the exception of the roaches that kept me up at night, my bike became my pet. And despite my better judgment I would do or pay anything to keep it alive. Most mechanics hated us because the bike was so old and obscure. “You’re better off buying a new bike with the money you’re going to pay me to fix this,” was typically what I’d hear from them. “Its trash.” But trashing my bike never crossed my mind. That is, until the night of the missing tooth, but we’ve put that behind us now.

After hundreds of dollars and hours arguing with mechanics in broken Spanish my bike developed a problem in the bottom bracket that could not be fixed with money and insistence. Not taking “no” for an answer I yelled, and pleaded with the only mechanic in Washington Heights who could stand me, until somehow I managed to convince him to think creatively and find a way. He ended up welding parts together that normally wouldn’t fit which resulted in a working bike that could never be disassembled without a saw.

A few months later the crank completely seized and would no longer rotate. Every mechanic I talked too said the same thing, the bike was too old and the parts weren’t made any more. It’s over. Say goodbye. Time to get a new bike. Depressed and riding the subway now, I gave up.

I started shopping Craigslist and eventually found a guy who sold and repaired used bikes out of his garage deep in Brooklyn. He claimed he could fix it. I told him about the weld, sent him pictures, told him about all the other mechanics that said it couldn’t be done, he said no problem. Come on down. So I did.

It was an ominously cold Saturday in February, Valentines Say. I remember because I was hoping to get my bike fixed in time to make a 6 o’clock Valentine’s Day ride from Union Square that I saw on FreeNYC.

We sawed through the crank arm, he took it apart and inspected the hub. The bike was much older and rarer than he thought. It would be impossible to find replacement parts, he said. No hope. I bought a bike from him and left my bike in his back yard, strewn on the ground again, naked and exposed, like a piece of trash.

No time to mourn my loss, I was late for the ride. I raced to the subway. The train was pulling in on the elevated rail above me as I get there. I raced up the stairs as fast as I could. Fantasies were swirling in mind of meeting a pretty cycling girl on the ride, falling in love and spending our free time gliding through Jackson Heights, occasionally stopping for curry, in love with each other and our bikes. But none of that would happen if I missed the train.

I trip. My new bike jams against the stairs as I fall forward. My face lands directly into the sharp angle of the handlebar stem. One tooth is sheered off, another chipped, as I stand dazed, lips bursting with blood; just another Crazy on the subway to the indifferent New Yorkers rushing past me on the stairs.

Later I went back for a refund. This foreign bike isn’t for me, I thought. Out of pure stubbornness I decided to take the corpse of my best friend along with me, maybe I could get something for the salvaged parts I figured.

Bruised and dejected, we headed to the Village where I remembered seeing a vintage bike shop near the Nuyorican, maybe they’ll give me something for this. They didn’t. But the mechanic gave me a small drop of hope and rough directions to another shop that might, maybe, possibly have some parts for the bike. It was a tiny shop near the Brooklyn Bridge, or was it the Manhattan Bridge? I couldn’t tell you how to get there now and I’m not even sure if it was the one he was talking about, but they knew their bikes and they had the parts.

For the first time in years, there will be three cyclist shows in four weeks. It’s all happening during Bike Month NYC (May), and the shows will celebrate all types of bikes, all kinds of riders, and the activity that brings them together.

Bike Month NYC will kick off with the New Amsterdam Bike Show, set to serenade New Yorkers with two days of bikes galore on April 28 and 29. The event, which is being organized by Manhattan Media, aims to establish New York as North America’s premiere Cycling Capitol. With sponsorship straight from the “Mecca” (KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, who fly out of Amsterdam, widely regarded as the “Biking Capitol of the World”) and an eye for a wide range of consumer tastes in bikes, The New Amsterdam Bike Show looks to lead the way for cyclists this spring.

But Manhattan Media’s darling child isn’t the only pony in this show. It’s all about the bikes, and for that reason, cycling fans should rejoice at the fact that the festivities will continue when TD Bank’s Five Borough Bike Tour’s “Bike Expo” returns – this time with 80 booths and scores of additional activities. The Bike Expo hopes to bring “cycling to the center stage” on May 3 through 5, the days preceding the TD Bank Five Borough Bike Tour.

And while the grueling Five Borough circuit will claim the day for thousands of New Yorkers on May 6, there will still be more to do in the big bad city for those who just can’t get enough of the cycle-centric craze. And so, New Yorkers get one last reprieve in the form of the Gran Fondo Bike Expo – a homage to the road cycling and Italian-style bike racing, which will run on May 18 and 19 out of Penn Plaza Pavilion.

So if you haven’t already, switch gears! Forget running sneakers and costly cars. Just locate your old bike – or better yet, buy a new one! It’s time to ride, and it’s time to join the rest of the city in a month of cycling-centered initiatives.

After all, cyclists are more than the individuals who pedal: they are a community, as vibrant and vital to the city’s character as any activity. And this year, the New York cycling community is putting the rest of us on notice. This year, the city that never sleeps is becoming the city whose wheels never stop spinning.

• Overhauled with Care
• Books on Bikes
• Biking Pair Says ‘All Aboard’ on Group Commutes
• Asking the Bike Experts
• For the Love of Cycling and Riders
• Blogger Tries to Put More Women on a Pedal (Actually, Two)
• The Man Behind Red Hook’s Criterium Race
• Four Bike Adventures Just Outside New York City
• BIKELANDIA! Event Schedule

Photos & Text by Veronica Hoglund

As the weather continues to get warmer, there is no question that most of us will be spending our free time outdoors soon. With that in mind, now might be the perfect time to invest in the bicycle you know you’ve been wanting. I decided to check out the wares at Recycle-A-Bike (75 Ave. C, betw. 5th & 6th Sts.), located in the East Village. The cycle technicians at the shop take old, worn bicycles and give them a facelift, providing you with a beautiful, fully functional refurbished bike while creating no new waste in the process—a process that takes only four hours to complete.

The bike first comes to the shop as a donation, usually bikes that have been sitting in basements or have been left behind by former building tenants. “The bikes just need a little love,” manager Patrick Tomeny told me. Recycle-A-Bike has been providing a vast variety of New Yorkers with recycled bicycles since 1994, in addition to facilitating youth programs in and around New York City.

From the moment you walk into the shop, it is clear how meticulous the process of refurbishing a bicycle can be. The tiny shop is packed with tools, parts and various pieces of equipment. As the Recycle-A-Bicycle team prepares to tackle their latest project, a vintage Schwinn World Tourist, they begin by taking apart the bicycle and wiping down the various parts. As staff member Brendon Brogan explains, the team does an “overhaul” of the bike, completely disassembling it to “guarantee the quality of the bike.” Bear in mind though, about 85 percent of the refurbishing process is simply cleaning, which mainly consists of wiping it down with a concentrate of water and Simple Green.

Though much more complicated than the guys make it appear, the bike is pulled apart piece by piece, screw by screw. In what seems like an instant, all that is remaining is the bicycle frame.

Once everything has been disassembled, it’s time to rebuild the bike. First, each part is given all the way from the bicycle chain to the handlebars—is given a good clean. When able, parts used are taken from the original bicycle and are replaced only when necessary. Then, the many parts are reassembled, using fresh grease to get the bicycle moving the way it should.

After a long four hours, a once-exhausted bike has been transformed into one ready for the streets. A set of refurbished Recycle-A-Bike wheels will set you back $250-$350 dollars, but considering the care and love put into these pieces, it is well worth the price.

By Mike Vidafar

A tweedster during a winter jaunt. Photo by Ben Broomfield

Ted Young-Ing was just an ordinary British cyclist in 2009, when he became the new owner of a pair of plus fours (pants that extend four inches beyond the knee). He had no idea that by the end of that year, he would have changed the landscape of “period cycling” faster than he managed to change into his new threads.

The recipe, Young-Ing discovered, was that he found a way to merge his two loves: turn-of-the-century British garments and bicycles. His brainchild is called Tweed Run, and the enthusiasm surrounding it is hard to deny. To onlookers, it’s the equivalent of a social time capsule, each event expelling a generation hardened (or lost) to two world wars onto a modern landscape for an afternoon reprieve.

While it does stand as tribute to England’s past, Tweed Run’s success is also a product of the personal atmosphere event organizer Jacqui Shannon has instituted in the three years since that inaugural circuit.

With a 500-person limit (any more would make tea-time impractical), Tweed Run maintains a measure of exclusivity traditionally reserved for a turn-of-the-century golf clubhouse. Events have the feel of a members-only gathering, with like-minded cyclists chosen at random via lottery. There’s also an understood adherence to the now-famous line first addressed to the original 2009 participants:

“Now look here: proper attire is expected, bowties, cravats, vintage race jerseys and plus fours!”

Supplementing their fashionable joyrides, Tweed Runners are catered to with afternoon tea and a soiree at the end of the circuit. Adding to the festivities are good-humored awards and enthusiastic onlookers.

As for their adventures across the pond, on Oct. 15, 2011, Young-Ing and Shannon gave New Yorkers their first opportunity to take a trip back in time. The tweedsters, who regularly garnish their passports and take to riding abroad, were met by hundreds of participants eager to take a refined ride through Lower Manhattan, with afternoon tea to be served in Foley Square. However, the inaugural NYC event (sponsored by Rugby Ralph Lauren) was forced to amend its cycling circuit, as circumstance had its way.

“It was a very unfortunate coincidence that the protests on Wall Street [Occupy Wall Street] were occurring and that the city had given us Foley Square for the tea stop. We really wanted to do the full ride, but with everything going on, we were advised not to,” said Shannon. “We ended up doing a shorter version…but we’d like the chance to come back and show New Yorkers how London does Tweed Run.”

With authentic British resolve, New Yorkers didn’t let the circumstantial abbreviation put a damper on their day. Instead, Tweed Run transformed into a day-long outdoor festival in the area surrounding the Ralph Lauren Rugby Store at 99 University Place in Noho. With featured events and prizes, (including awards for Best Dressed and Best Moustache) Young-Ing and Shannon managed to hold a strikingly memorable first go in the Big Apple.

“New York City has a strong bike scene and I’m lucky enough to know Brendt Barbur, the founder of The Bicycle Film Festival. [Barbur] and his team were super helpful at every step of our planning for New York,” said Shannon. Looking ahead, Young-Ing has revealed plans for another New York City Tweed Run, tentatively scheduled for spring 2013. As usual, they hope to rally nearly 500 participants to take to the streets, decked in tweed—just in time for the Big Apple’s annual ripening.

For now, Young-Ing and Shannon have returned to London. Their impending cruise, scheduled for May 6, 2012, continues to draw the attention of a wide cross-section; history buffs, vintage cycling enthusiasts and Britophiles all vie for a chance to ride.

And for Tweed Run, there’s no international bias—Americans are welcome to put their names in the hat in the hope of joining the tweedsters wherever they ride. Indeed, Shannon notes on Tweed Run’s website that lottery spots are chosen well in advance to give international participants ample time to plan ahead.

For the cycling community, it’s time to take notice: where there’s tea, vintage one-speeders and hundreds of cyclists who look like they’ve pedaled straight out of a Sherlock Holmes story, there cannot be any doubt as to who’s behind it. It’s Tweed Run—those dapper dames and proper gents who have perfected the art of cycling transposition.

For more information on Tweed Run, visit tweedrun.com or follow them on twitter
@tweedrun. 

By Grace Lichtenstein

A SIG Graduation ride 2011 at Bear Mountain Park. Photo by Bob Cowin.

The most significant contribution made by the 75-year-old New York Cycle Club (NYCC) to local bike riding and to thousands of riders is our annual spring series, called the SIGs. Each one consists of a series of weekly progressive training rides that increase in speed and distance. An acronym for special interest groups, the SIGs are perhaps the most valuable free benefit available to club members.

They are led by experienced volunteers, who teach their peers the skills they need to ride well in groups. Conducted from March through May, the SIGs offers cyclists an ideal way to build speed and endurance and to jumpstart their season. The first SIG, back in the 1980s, was the brainchild of Christy Guzzetta, an A-level rider and club activist, and it was truly an act of love.

At the time, hardcore male club riders—the ones with shaved legs, tight wool shorts, bikes with snazzy Camponolo components and shoes with cleats nailed to their soles—would zoom out of Central Park on A rides and those who could not keep up with the pack were dropped.

There were almost no women. Guzzetta, who was a bachelor, was eager to encourage, rather than intimidate, women who might be willing to give these difficult rides a shot. One particular woman was recovering from a bad knee injury. How could she ever ride with the guys?

Guzzetta came up with an idea. Why not invite Jody to start out early in March with a short, slow ride and continue the following week with a few more miles and a bit more speed? This would allow her to grow stronger little by little, so that after three months or so, she would have a rehabbed knee and be a faster rider.

She agreed; Guzzetta invited along several strong B riders who also wanted ride skills help. He put a notice in the club bulletin, and the first SIG was born. Forty riders turned up that first Saturday in March 1986. Seventeen weeks later, there were eight new pace-line-riding, speedy A riders, including the formerly bum-kneed Jody Saylor. To cap its success, Guzzetta and Jody had become a couple and they eventually got married.

The SIG series was so inspirational that it was repeated the following year and the year after that. Soon, so many club members wanted to participate that two additional levels were added: one for beginners and one for those aiming to go from the beginning C level to B.

By March 2012, the SIGs were the club’s signature series, with four levels: A-classic, for the fastest riders, plus A-19, B and C levels. There is such anticipation that sublevels have been devised within the B and C categories to accommodate as many riders as volunteers can handle while keeping groups at a reasonable size. Thousands of members have enhanced their skills and enjoyed the camaraderie of a SIG.

What’s more, scores of SIG graduates have repaid the club by becoming volunteer SIG ride leaders. A second series, dubbed the STS (Spring Training Series), with no education element but with the emphasis on simply building endurance, is now part of the club’s schedule.

Over the years, SIG graduates have become officers, leaders of regular club rides 8racers. Several have attended ride camps at the Olympic Training Center and others have added to their recreational activities by entering duathlons and triathlons. And more than a few SIGGies, as we call them, have followed the original model by meeting a mate and marrying one another.

As cycling’s popularity in the city mushrooms, the NYCC continues to refine what has become its most important tradition, the SIGs, a program that rewards members with better and safer riding skills while providing a benefit that’s priceless: lifelong friendships, on the road and off.

Grace Lichtenstein is the NY Cycle Club’s public relations director.