Biking Outside the Lines in New York City

Thirty-nine years ago this summer, Ed Koch, the mayor of New York City, held a press conference on the steps of City Hall, where he declared a bicycle ban in midtown Manhattan. Beginning that August, cycling during weekday working hours on Fifth, Madison, and Park Avenues from Thirty-first to Fifty-ninth Streets would be prohibited. The law targeted cyclists who rode outside of bike lanes, weaved through traffic, and darted upstream, going the wrong way on one-way streets, as well as bike messengers, whose habits, Koch complained, threatened “the safety of any New Yorker who is not blessed with eyes in the back of his or her head.” The response from city cyclists and activists was swift. Koch had cited bicycle-related deaths of pedestrians. What about car-related deaths of cyclists? Packs of bikers formed roving protest pelotons, cycling down avenues and stymieing traffic. Years later, one of the protest organizers, Charles Komanoff, described the movement’s modus operandi: “Our stately pace, perhaps five mph, was slow enough that passersby could look past our bikes and see our bodies and faces.”

Less than two months after Koch announced the midtown bike ban, a judge ruled that it had been issued illegally, and several months later the city dropped it. I thought of Koch’s ill-fated proposal when I came across a picture of five bikers riding down Seventh Avenue, popping wheelies in the middle of traffic, in Brian Finke’s new book, “Bike Life.” The riders, who are in their early teens, are flying toward the hazy mirage of a neon-lit Times Square. On the left side of the image, plainly visible, is a bike lane that the bikers have, conspicuously, avoided. Finke’s book is full of scenes like this: riders in the middle of streets, bridges, and even highways. They are calm and focussed, often doing tricks, sometimes carrying passengers perched on their rear axles—and they are almost always in the way.