With most of its efforts concentrated on moving people and money, and the waste products of those interactions around so the cycle could repeat the following day, NYC was normally so crowded you had no choice but to operate in survival mode. Courtesy was a luxury only fools (and some tourists) could afford. The default location for anything fun was indoors, because it normally looked bad, felt bad and even smelled bad outside.

So…..like millions before me, I made a few dollars and escaped to Long Island – a land where grass meant lawns and crack was something you repaired with cement. Truth be told, “the island” lifestyle is nothing to complain about – as long as your not allergic to real estate taxes that feel more like the GNP of some 3rd world countries.

Recently, a fellow enthusiast of an offbeat fitness product – who lives in New Joisy no less – alerted me to NYC;s “Summer Streets”, when parts of 3 Saturdays would be free of cars on certain streets and turned over to civilians for their walking / running / biking / skating / Trikking pleasure. How utterly insane. Had my life sunk to such a low that I would consider the equivalent of drinking water from my toilet just for fun ? Apparently – yes – as I made the commitment to meet our group at 0800, Saturday Aug. 16, at City Hall Park.

As the date approached there seemed little likelihood of my needing my old set of concealed weapons and make the decent into what I remember as Hades. For days there were horrific storms, floods, even rumors of tornadoes. Talk about omens.

Then – a Deity intervened. Saturday broke into the most beautiful of days since Creation and NYC into nothing less than …….. Oz.

Saturday was just one of those surrealistic days. The torrential rains earlier had scrubbed the air of its pollutants and the streets of their thick coating of odiferous fast food debris. There are no words to describe how impossibly blue the sky was, dotted only occasionally by just enough light fluffy clouds to keep it from being monotonous. The air was fresh and clean, with a constant cool breeze. It was almost impossible to perspire.

Cops behaved more like Munchkins, cheering you on while protecting you from your worst enemy – vehicles and their cell-phone addicted pilots. Volunteers and vendors were everywhere, offering assistance or freebies.

There were waves of schvitzing fitness freaks that built to tidal proportions by 10:00. Its truly amazing how massive this market is that a fraction of a percent turnout can amount to what surely must have become a hundred thousand kindred souls hell-bent on having a coronary by noon.

While there might be routes that could compare, none could surpass starting at the steps of the City Hall of the capitol of the world, up the Yellow Brick Road of Park Avenue, over Grand Central Station, around Central Park - the most beautiful Enchanted Forest ever created - back downtown past street fairs and concerts of all kinds, under Brooklyn Bridge – the unlikely home to hundreds of skateboarders and thousands of spectators - to South Street Seaport – so alive with activity it overwhelmed your senses. Tourists so thick, you couldn’t fit a credit card between them. The Brooklyn and Williamsburg Bridges and Lady Liberty as a backdrop. Ferries arriving 2 per minute. Helicopters hovering. 2 Giant Waterfalls as performance art. More sights than your eyes could see. More sounds than your ears could hear. A day to remember that humans and the things they do can be pretty cool.

I was born in Brooklyn. Worked and played in Manhattan for 30 years. Seen many leaders come and go. While the perfect weather certainly had something to do with it, I was still shocked at how much the city had improved during my long absence. From the Park to the Greenway to the Piers, all the new construction, the way it’s been cleaned up. Maybe $ 1 million for what would pass for a Long Island walk-in closet is supposed to make sense.
I actually heard myself say out loud “NYC now seems like a place you’d WANT to live in”.

They give Nobel prizes to the wrong people for the wrong things.

“Summer Streets” is unquestionably the best idea any leader ever had.

To all those Trikkers who attended – my sincere thanks for the pleasure of your company, the sharing of such an extraordinary day.

To those who couldn’t or wouldn’t – you missed one for the record books.

Only problem with a day like Saturday is – how do we top it ?

Maybe we Trikke the Champs de Lysee ? Or do a couple laps around Vatican Square ?

You could of course get one of those handbikes that paraplegics use, but I don't think they exercise your core very much. Maybe aikido?

There were a bunch of people (looked like a club) on some three-wheeled things that I found out are called Trikkes. They looked interesting, but they took up a whole lane of traffic and had a hard time going up hills. Definitely not for sidewalks or anyplace too crowded.

Can't wait for next week....

The only thing I'm not looking forward to is the early start!

Just wear your bathing suit, and pretend you are at the beach.

by the way, if you are riding from Harlem or the Upper West Side, please join us.

Ride to Summer Streets

with Paul White (Transportation Alternatives) and Curtis Archer (Harlem Community Development Corporation

Saturday, August 16
Two meeting places:
7:30am
Marcus Garvey Park
(one block east of Malcolm X Boulevard, at 121st Street & Mount Morris Park West, inside the park by the baseball field.)

7:50am
Soldiers and Sailors Monument
(89th and Riverside Drive)

Rain or Shine!