8/26/03 Brian's Bike has Flat Tire; Beautiful Harlem; Bikes in Subway at 145h; Columbus Circle Rises; Custard for Aaron, Brian, Seng Yeung, Richard at Cards and Gab:

Uh oh. Brian and I had just finished the journey from our apartments all the way downtown, to "Ices" at 138th street, when, about 20 feet from the ices lady, Brian hears a pop come from his tire. It doesn't feel quite right a moment later, and so he walks his bike over to mine, as I dismount a prepare for refreshment.

Lo and behold, an afternoon of exercise and recreation quickly becomes one of total disaster, as it becomes apparent that there is no air left in Brian's tire, whatsoever. It's busted. And we do not have a "repair kit" on us, though having one suddenly sounded like a much better idea than it had ever been.

The enjoyment of the ices, which were wonderful as usual, was tainted by the looming uncertainty, as you can see. We had a few options.

  1. Find a bike store in the neighborhood, get the tire fixed or replaced, bike downtown.
  2. Find a subway station (137th and Broadway being about 4 blocks away and up a hill) and subway home in defeat.
  3. Panic. We're on 138th street and Brian's bike doesn't work! Ahhhh!
  
  

We ended up looking for a bike store. Relatives of the ices lady, who often loiter near the ices cart told us of a bike shop on 140th and Broadway. We walked to it, only to find it shut down for the evening. It was rapidly becoming 6:00pm. Nearby, two gentlemen with bikes and a car, seemed to be loading their bikes into their car. We asked them if they knew where another bike shop might be found, and they were pretty sure there weren't any anywhere else in the neighborhood (Harlem). So, having walked almost all the way to the 145th street station on the IND (A, B, C, D trains), we decided to head for St. Nicholas Avenue.

On the way, we discovered a little slice of why Harlem is gentrifying so rapidly. The turn-of-the-century high-end architecture was more than obvious everywhere we turned, and is not only untouched, but, often, in good repair. It was like walking through a museum of an old New York neighborhood.... but prettier. I happen to know the history explaining our culturally-biased surprise: Harlem was originally built as a high-end speculative apartment neighborhood. The housing market quickly crashed thereafter, paving the way for the African Americans to afford these luxury apartments, and preserving the old architecture through almost a century of neglect... not enough money or investment occurred in the neighborhood between then and now to pay for tearing down beautiful old buildings to make way for "modern" 50's, 60's', 70's, 80's, or even 90's structures, which would have broken the total set of old row houses still standing in Harlem. So there.

Amazing.

Brian was nervous about bikes in subway. That's a lot to deal with. I was a little less nervous, because I often carry a lot of crap (videography equipment package for example) via the subway, but this was still a first for me as well.

145th is an express stop on the "Central Park West" line. On the Express A and D trains, its 2 stops to 59th street!

Brian on the platform waiting for the train and wishing I'd die from his embarrassment at this moment.

Me. Bike. Subway. What more could you want?

Behind this smile is the curse of death. Of course, it was bad enough that people were looking at us for having bikes on a semi-rush hour train... but when I started taking pictures, heads turned. I had us purposefully using the front car, which I knew, on this line, would be less crowded. Crowded and bikes don't work.

I was to have evening plans with Louie, and I realized, while on the train, that I would not have enough time to get all the way downtown, drop off the bike, and get back uptown to Louie's on 83rd street. So, I got off the train at 59th street, having drilled Brian with specific instructions on how to get home via the West 4th street station, and sent him on his way. The first thing you notice, nowadays, when at Columbus Circle (59th and Broadway and 8th avenue) is the gigantic new angular glassy twin towers hanging above. They're new and they're almost done, and I think they're gorgeous!

The bottom of the building curves, hugs if you will, one portion of the circle that is Columbus Circle.

Here, across from the new AOL-Time Warner building.... the old standard landmark of the intersection.

I got to Louie's, where my American Flag snapped off the back of my bike.

Louie works at the Kaufman Center.

Cute. Or hard-core. Or both. Or neither.

Louie shared with me this oddity from Canada. Read the bottom: "It still tastes like soap!" What? Well, I tried a piece, and it really does taste like you're chewing on edible gum-like soap. Louie loves it. And perhaps loving the novelty has led him to acquire a similar taste for the flavor... or perhaps just the memories he probably gets when he chews this canada-only product.

After my dinner with Louie, I had another set of plans. I biked back down from Louie's place, and met up with Brian, Aaron, Seng Yeung, and Richard, for cards.

After the game, Richard broke out the custard he made a few days ago, for all to try.

He also had been making dinner for himself before we arrived. Nice presentation!

Everyone watches as Richard makes the sugar topping for the custard using his torch.

I used the flash to get a shot of the smoke coming from the torch.

No flash reveals the light of the torch itself.

Captive audience.

Finished product.

Seng Yeung modeling the final dessert.

Aaron tries it.

Finally, Aaron and I spent a good 45 minutes at the very end of the evening, observing, as Richard and Seng Yeung, two fellas who like to know a lot about a lot, and who like to share how much they know, faced off, in a conversation about something they both like to know a lot about: Music. This conversation took off like a rocket and there was no end in sight. Musicians. Music theory. Songs were downloaded from the Internet and played back as we looked at the notes on the original scores. Books about music were brought up. Styles, training, music as language, instrumentation, difficulty levels, the historic origins of classical music and other topics were rapidly covered. It was amazing, impressive, and relaxing in a way, to watch these two titans of gab go back and forth. It took a load off Aaron and myself, anyway, as there was always a response coming from one of them, leaving us free to become spectators, rather than participants, which was nice... it was late.