flâneur

Biking Outside the Lines in New York City | The New Yorker

newyorker.com · 1,197 words · saved by 1 readers

Brian Finke’s photographs document riders breaking through the constraints of the city’s crowded landscape—and showing off while they do.

Save this story Save this story 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 N

saved by

related reading