{"id":87,"date":"2026-05-20T13:07:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=87"},"modified":"2026-05-20T13:07:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:07:37","slug":"biking-outside-the-lines-in-new-york-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=87","title":{"rendered":"Biking Outside the Lines in New York City"},"content":{"rendered":"
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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 \u201cthe safety of any New Yorker who is not blessed with eyes in the back of his or her head.\u201d 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\u2019s modus operandi: \u201cOur stately pace, perhaps five mph, was slow enough that passersby could look past our bikes and see our bodies and faces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Chaya Czernowin Gives Voice to a Wounded World<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019s new book, \u201cBike Life.\u201d 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\u2019s 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\u2014and they are almost always in the way<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On a recent spring morning, I biked over to Fort Greene Park to meet Finke, who lives nearby. Finke is fifty, and has a short bushy beard and a friendly smile. A longtime New York City cyclist, he first started taking the pictures that appear in \u201cBike Life\u201d in 2020, after the onset of the COVID<\/em>-19 pandemic. Amid social distancing, Finke would find out about group rides on Instagram and cycle out on a vintage Italian road bike, with his camera dangling around his neck. In the first few months of the pandemic, as people grew wary of public transportation, bicycling exploded in New York. By the summer, several bike stores around the city had sold out their inventories; in 2020, the city\u2019s Department of Transportation tracked almost two million more bike rides than the year before. The fact that so many city dwellers fled New York for less densely populated areas also created new space on the road.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cBefore the pandemic, the N.Y.P.D. would crack down on big group rides. But, during COVID<\/em>, I feel like the cops were just kind of, like, Let the kids blow off steam,\u201d Finke said. \u201cIt was a time period where the city just let the riders do their thing.\u201d Finke\u2019s book features people (of all ages) riding in large groups\u2014middle schoolers are routinely at the front of the packs. In one photo, a preteen girl is riding on just one wheel, her tongue hanging out in concentration, while several older kids wearing balaclavas follow her lead. \u201cShe\u2019s hot stuff,\u201d Finke told me. \u201cA lot of the riders, they\u2019re city kids. The streets are their back yards.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a peacocking element to Finke\u2019s subjects. Some of their bikes showcase ostentatious parts, like neon-pink top load stems and oversized klunker bars\u2014wide, sweeping handlebars that are used for motorcycles and were co-opted by mountain-bike racers and B.M.X.-ers. Another rider performs an extreme wheelie\u2014riding around without a front wheel. \u201cSay someone\u2019s riding down Broadway and surfing on their bike, or popping a wheelie for multiple blocks, it\u2019s like they\u2019re there to be seen. People are clapping, cheering them on,\u201d Finke said. He mentioned to me a specific photo, taken in Central Park, of a shirtless man doing tricks on an electric-blue bike with matching blue grips and anodized blue rims. Riders like him, he said, \u201ckind of reminded me of voguing in the eighties. Everyone has their own personal style.\u201d Although Finke sometimes shoots his subjects from behind, simulating the feeling of being on a bicycle and pedalling hard to keep up, more of his shots are taken from the side, firmly casting the viewer in the role of bystander. As tourists wandering through midtown or commuters trying to jaywalk through traffic might, we admire the riders as they whiz past.<\/p>\n

Read more The Redemption of \u201cVanessa,\u201d a Neglected Operatic Masterpiece<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Of course, the thrill of performing speedy and reckless tricks can end abruptly; Finke\u2019s book is dotted with crashes. \u201cIt happened a lot. Once a friend crashed and broke his collarbone,\u201d Finke said. \u201cIt was during the ride, and I had to take him to the emergency room.\u201d One memorable shot, taken near Union Square on a sunny day, shows a rider splayed out on the ground, the group he had been biking with parting around him. A few bikers stop to check if he\u2019s O.K. as pedestrians rubberneck from sidewalks. There is not a car in sight\u2014the riders have taken the street over through sheer numbers, ignoring the bike path right next to them.<\/p>\n

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Finke has shot in all five boroughs, and \u201cBike Life\u201d takes you on a tour of all the different types of riding that the city offers. There are the obvious landmarks\u2014a group ride taking over the West Side Highway by the Freedom Tower, or kids zooming past Broadway theatres\u2014but these give way to peaceful stretches of the outer boroughs. The bikers in Finke\u2019s photographs visit empty alleys in the Bronx, beaches in South Brooklyn, and hazy green parks in far-flung Staten Island. Finke told me that riding during the pandemic reminded him of Koch\u2019s New York, when the city was grittier, and its micro-mobility infrastructure less developed. \u201cThe landscape and the shop storefronts became a character in the photos themselves. And, during that time, a lot of them were closed and spray-painted. It looked like the eighties,\u201d Finke said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Finke\u2019s photos of the outer boroughs are among his best. In one shot, taken in the Bronx, five teens stand over their bikes on a grassy highway median, surrounded by lush trees. It\u2019s late on a May evening, and there are no cars in sight, but the boys are still boxed in by a highway; they look in all different directions, as though strategizing the best way to cross it. Koch\u2019s bike ban sought to make New York more sanitized and orderly by constraining it. The cyclists who prevented its enactment interpreted the ban differently. For them, placing limits on where bicycles were allowed to go would have shrunk the city, not geographically but experientially. Finke\u2019s book, and its depictions of riders pushing the limits of rideable space, into its busy streets and outer boroughs, is a reminder that there is still room for the city to grow.<\/p>\n

Read more Why the Best Writing Advice Is Often the Weirdest<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Diego Lasarte on Brian Finke\u2019s photography book \u201cBike Life,\u201d documenting riders breaking through the constraints of the city\u2019s crowded landscape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":86,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photo-booth"],"yoast_head":"\nBiking Outside the Lines in New York City - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=87\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Biking Outside the Lines in New York City - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Diego Lasarte on Brian Finke\u2019s photography book \u201cBike Life,\u201d documenting riders breaking through the constraints of the city\u2019s crowded landscape.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=87\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-05-20T13:07:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/761fc0b06c8d936187a612f9213a100a.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=87#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=87\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"headline\":\"Biking Outside the Lines in New York City\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-20T13:07:37+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=87\"},\"wordCount\":1257,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=87#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/761fc0b06c8d936187a612f9213a100a.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Photo Booth\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=87#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=87\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=87\",\"name\":\"Biking Outside the Lines in New York City - 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