On Learning to Ride a Bike (In Brooklyn of Course)

We learned to ride bikes on the sidewalk, with our fathers running alongside, their hands extended, keys jangling in pockets, “Keep going Butch, pedal faster. You got it! Keep pedaling! Faster.”  Back then I was Jimmy Spinner Jr, but my father’s nickname for me was Butch. Don’t ask, I never knew why. There was risk in learning to ride a bike on East 4th St. Scraped knees, elbows, hands, and pain. City sidewalks are unforgiving, I guess all sidewalks are unforgiving. Our block had little pebbles mixed into a lot of the squares of sidewalk concrete to give it some texture? Because it was really painful, you HAD to pick it up quickly. 

For the first few months, most of us started with training wheels, but even at that young age, training wheels were embarrassing. Big boys and girls didn’t use training wheels. We all knew you had to start somewhere, so we knew in order to not get all scraped up every time we fell, training wheels were a necessary evil. The one cool thing about training wheels, after you swallowed your pride and understood that you needed the help, was if you positioned the training wheels correctly, on a spot of the sidewalk that was raised by a tree root let’s say, you would have one training wheel higher than the other. That would suspend the real back tire in mid-air and you could pedal furiously, faster and faster, spinning the tire and going nowhere. We’d do that and sometimes feed fallen leaves into the space between the tire and the fender, if the bike had one. We’d put sticks on the tire to watch them shoot out. In the ways of little boys, this was fun.

Our first real bikes had just one speed, metallic paint, banana seat, maybe some streamers flowing from the grips on the handle bars. These bikes only had rear brakes that you engaged by pedaling backwards to stop. After a few weeks, we lost our training wheels, and gained a few rules, but of course we wore no helmet, not in the 70’s.  Our parents told us that we had to stay on our block, as first or second graders we were not allowed to cross the street by ourselves. With this limited universe, our block, there were still plenty of adventures awaiting. Speed being held in high esteem on East 4^th St, as in most places, we raced each other. Short races, 50 yard dash. Long races, down half the block. Longer races. Up and down the whole block. Eventually we tried relay races. After that got boring, we were creative little guys, we’d create a steeplechase with wooden boards and milk-crate jumps and other obstacles.

One thing we prized was the ability to skid on your back tire. You’d head down the block, three or four houses down, maybe to Tommy Brennan’s house or even Bobby Wilson’s house and turn around. You’d wait until the coast was clear, we had a decent amount of pedestrian traffic on East Fourth, then pedal like crazy, standing up to go really fast, pumping, pumping, pumping, 30-40-50 yards, at maximum speed, choosing a primo spot, slamming on your brakes. Schhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, skidding, leaving a black rubber parentheses on the sidewalk. If you were really good, you could fish-tail the bike, something fancy to impress your friends.

We quickly discovered the parts of our slice of East 4^th Street sidewalk that had some character, where there were dips and bulges and maybe even something akin to a “hill.”  As soon as we were competent at riding bikes, we rode faster and we tried to jump stuff and pop wheelies. Some guys could pop a wheelie and keep going for a while, that was really cool. I never could get the wheelie thing down. A few doors down towards Avenue C, Toni-Ann Chiarello’s driveway had a bit of an incline. We could race down the block, and turn right, up her driveway and ride all the way into the back as there was never a car in the driveway. Then we’d turn around and race down the “hill.” Just an aside, Toni-Ann had the best, the absolute best, Matchbox Car collection on our block. We were all envious. Her father was a Milk-Man, he delivered milk and other necessities to families on his route. Mr. Chiarello and his daughter collected Matchbox cars, and it was a massive collection, in pristine collection, they even kept the boxes! Toni-Ann had a bunch of carry cases, these little light blue suitcases, with plastic separators in them, to hold ALL of her cars. It didn’t seem fair, to have that kind of a collection and not really enjoy it, she never even played with the cars! She just collected them. Left them in the boxes like little trophies. None of us had a "collection." Our cars were played with, that's what you were supposed to do with Matchboxes. My cars were scratched up, dirty from all the dirt tracks we made, and all the jumps and crashes we created. I know I seriously thought about befriending Toni-Ann just to play with her Matchboxes but decided it wouldn't be worth it. I bet you a few gallons of milk that collection is still intact somewhere.

Back to the bikes. One day, Michael Turin, one of the older guys on the block, discovered a jump.  About 5 houses down from my house, the last private house on the block, was Dr. Langsam’s house. Michael’s family rented the attic apartment. Their driveway was an anomaly, it had, what appeared to our 7 year old brains, a legit hill with a little concrete lip on the bottom, right before the sidewalk. We pedaled wildly, heading for the lip, a few final pedals and then coast into the ramp, whoop, you’d be airborne. The one fly in the ointment was the landing area was small, it was just the walkway to Dr. Langsam’s front porch, maybe 7 yards across. Pedal too hard, get too much air, and you’d be eating fence. 

After a few months of tooling around on our bikes on East 4th, we need a change of scenery. “Mom can’t we ride around the block? It’s getting soooo boring just riding up and down the block. We’re doing the same thing over and over. Please Mom? Please?”  Eventually, the reins are loosened, we are allowed to go around the block, at least some of us are. Some parents keep a tighter rein on their kids. These kids, if they didn’t want to risk the wrath of their parents, would have to stop at the corner of Avenue C. There they'd straddle their bikes and watch us pedal across the avenue, past the Longmore’s house, we'd give a glance to P.S. 179 lurking across the street, and zip out of sight down East 3^rd Street. Biking down East 3^rd, we didn’t explore as much, we knew we were interlopers on this foreign block. Whizzing past Big Mike Sylvestri’s house, we'd look to see if Mike was petting his big Collie on the porch. Our crew really liked Mike because he was one of the older guys that was nice to us. He’d even stick up for us when some of the neighborhood toughs in the P.S. 179 school yard messed with us. Past the Carpenzano’s, their house was directly behind mine, I’d glance at the rear view of my house as I raced past, that was always so cool, to see your house from a different perspective. Further down, we’d pass by the Paragallo’s house, in writing this, it certainly seems like East 3^rd Street was the home of several large, Italian families. Rolling to Beverly Road, coasting in because there’s more foot traffic on the Avenue, pedestrians from the F train station on McDonald Avenue and shoppers returning from Church Avenue, our neighborhood’s Main Street, we make a right turn.  Across Beverly Road, in front of the Glenn Briar Apartment Building, its symmetrical orange-brick mass, entrance in the center, even number of windows and floors on either side providing the backdrop, it felt like you were going really fast as the windows whizzed past. Our route almost complete, we come upon the mail box that marks the beginning of our block.

At first we were excited with this accomplishment: we had gone around the block! One thing that never entered our mind, which would definitely enter the minds of kids today, was a fear of being abducted. Don’t get me wrong, in the Brooklyn of the early 70’s we had plenty of things to fear: stray cats, neighborhood tough guys, dogs, cars, but non-descript white vans patrolling for unsuspecting victims was not on our list. Heading back up East 4^th Street, along the side of the Glenn Briar, listening in on conversations in some first floor apartments, under the fire escape, and you begin to feel at home, safe, back on our block.

Riding bikes, so much fun, so many adventures. The progression continued, next we were allowed to cross the street, and then ride our bikes in the street. Somewhere around 6^th or 7^th grade, our parents let us start exploring the neighborhood on our bikes. This opened up a whole new universe for us. New blocks, new kids, and eventually, new neighborhoods and adventures. The bicycle, our vehicle of freedom. Summer of 8th grade we were biking down to Breezy Point to go to the beach for the day. Or biking down to Sheepshead Bay to go fishing. From an early age, that movement, the speed, was an escape for us. To this day, when I get on my bike, there's a little bit of that kid still in me.