country road, 2016
WORKING TITLE - in process
memories of biking the east coast, eastern europe & californiathen planning a bike tour of the carolinas in colorado.
I would like the reader to know the dance that happened in New York City the day gay marriage/mirage was won.. or passed or propped or celebrated. There were rickshaws outside Stonewall Inn. Do you think there is footage somewhere? I can’t find any. If someone can - please send to me. I danced hard with some close ones.
This is the article that Time Magazine posted. You can find it here.
I think showing history of the Stonewall Inn with those beautiful photos is important. Yes gay men are beautiful... some of them. You can see the bodies in Washington DC look different in the photos in this Time article. On the streets in front of Stonewall, in front dancing, I did not care what anyone looked like -we were dancing for our lives and for our love. Some of us were blobs. Was it 2015? I honestly thought it was earlier than that. But now I stand corrected. I was there but it felt like 2012 to me. Yeah okay I’ll believe what the internet says...
*I’m not footnoting this - here is a direct astrick. I sent this to the love I danced with and she confimed that it was 2012 - turns out I read this Time article incorrectly. Probably cause it is online and not in print. Or I’m older? Wiser? Bolder. I came of queer/gay age in gaga times at Cubby Hole. Someone threw a brick at Stonewall. But we danced outside.
**I will say the dance was a fusion of bhangra & vogue. In my mind. & in my body,
***If marriage is going to be overturned, where are yall going to return it?
I understand there are different calendars. So perhaps it was on Mayan time. And Incan time. Thats my hope.
** i’ll research this to only be furthered confused that there are many times and calendars. Whodathunk it?
If I could find some actual photos of that night I think it would be helpful for the next generation and forward generations.
[I might have to paint from memory an image for this but would rather not - if you were there that night please email me at eemdesignbuild@gmail.com]
UPDATE: I have a photo and I’m not sharing.
But I do think it is strange there are no photos of this event that are public right now in any major news network... at least with my limited research abiliies currently... if Stonewall is that MECCA of gay liberation... then why wasn’t our dance party front and center? Maybe there were photos down by the bay... you know, where the watermelons grow? Back to my home. I do not know. For if I do... my mother would say... have you seen a hare.......
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If this chapter is supposed to be about South Carolina, I can’t talk about it. If this chapter is about flight, yeah I want one. I have never biked in South Carolina except a short trip to a bizarre gender reveal ferris wheel along the boardwalk by a sand castle sculpture. O’Myrtle Beach. It was quiet there but not somewhere to settle. You know there actually used to be a Hard Rock Cafe in a Pyramid... but they tore it down. I don’t know who decided that. ***NEW RESEARCH TOPIC.
[insert sandcastle from myrtle beach]
I’ve been called a settler and I’m not. Maybe I was called this because they wanted me to settle. I am reflecting on what being a settler is. Is it to build and to be destroyed? To destroy then build? Or to build and stay in place? I’d say I’m nomadic and settle my heart quickly, you know to the best of my ability.
I don’t find much romance in transactions.. most of the time. It is power. And in knowing that you will know that these memories, hopes, dreams and ambitions will come up again and you will pray that it will work out in a better way. Yes material is real. And necessary to secure but it isn’t always fun.
This is why I suggest people remember a story about tugboats. Can you put a bike on one? Have you ever? I’ve only put one on a ferry to get some tugboats.
Now I’d like the reader to research a woman who lived in a little house on Staten Island. She had a rifle and sat outside everyday to protect herself from developers.
True story.
After I read an article in the New York Times about her, I planned a bike trip with someone I love - East Village to South Street Seaport. I wanted to see and meet this rifle woman. We walked our bikes onto the ferry and crossed the waters to the most northern tip of Staten Island. Biked over Freshkills and found ourselves at the tugboat graveyard where her house was.. saw the house but not her. My love packed a meal in metal tins. Or maybe I packed a tomato potato dish in tupperware. I know that photo exists somewhere but only in my memory. And Mark Zuckerberg’s storage somewhere. I’d like to see the photo of the picnic.
{insert a generic internet photo the tugboat graveyard until i can recover an actual photo from that day)
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Here is something to consider. Stories and memory are one and the same. They are mine. You have your own. Yes we dream. And fantasize. Sometimes we wake up from a dream and realize it was possibly a message or a premonition. Memory can fade and get hazy. Or fuzzy. Or staticy. Personally an archive is recommended. Names, dates and times. But that is how I like to look at the world. Sometimes.
So right now if have Carolina on the mind while I bike under Speers Blvd. on the path of the Platte River, is it a dream or virtual? A daydream. Or is it a storm?
There was a big storm in South Carolina that destroyed many homes including the home of my grandfather - I suggest the reader look into that. In the 1950s. This is one reason I’d like to bike South Carolina specifically to see family landmarks or places they would have been. And to see native venus fly traps and some more cypress knees.
***FIND THE NAME ANNIVERSARY AND DOCUMENTARY ON THIS HURRICANE.
(only one photo from this cluster is from NC)
If you are confused by planning a bike trip, So am I.
I’ve only biked locally but for long distances. At least in Brooklyn, I would bike 24 miles a day. 12 miles to school and 12 miles back home. That is a good feeling.
I biked wherever to the shore of the Brooklyn Bridge before it was taken over by condos & landscape architecture. I biked through Chelsea without a shirt proud of my robert gober body. I’d stop where I felt compelled - to take in a site, visit a gallery show, listen to a conversation on the street. Its called derive and wayfinding. I learned this from Guy DeBord and the situationists as well as freedom fighters and the right for independence and expression.
Once I rode from the Upper East Side on the way to a witch kitchen in Ditmas Park blasting Led Zeppeliin in Times Square. One memorable ride biking over Brooklyn Bridge getting turned on by a BMXer who loves Mars Bar. She listens to Bad Brains. But I’m more of a Mariah Carey fan. She actually gave me a KHS soul bike that she won in a raffle. A fixed gear. I had been riding an old school green bike around Bedstuy and Brooklyn cafes to dance parties. Before I enrolled in college. I’d bike to cafes and read texts on urban planning and geography. I would spend hours in the library at Bryant Park - both the Schwarzmann research library and the one catty corner from it. I remember asking a librarian in the research room for a book called Indencent Theology by Marcella Althaus-Reid - a book on liberation theology and sexuality. The book came up from storage on a conveyor belt. I took it to one of the large study tables in the room where the acoustics are sharp but everyone is careful and intentionally quiet the room buzzes.
Sabrina the bmxer from bay ridge. I met at Cubby Hole - she went to Hunter College we talked about what I was reading and I met her friends and applied to Hunter quickly.
{insert KHS soul bike photo and green bike schwinn photo under the brooklyn bridge]
I didn’t plan those rides. Other than from school then to home. I didn’t bike the same way every day. I’d change bridges depending on how social I felt. Brooklyn Bridge is often crowded but when its quiet it is amazing. Manhattan Bridge is wild to bike through its cage but I like the arrival and turn at the end. Better to cross in a car - you see the fireworks. Williamsburg Bridge was for nights of fun too but also a good way to commute to a juice shop and get punjab deli. George Washington Bridge is amazing to bike over but difficult if I remember correctly. Sometimes they would lock the pedestrian gate and I’d luck out sometimes being able to pass.
There was one bike ride down to Manhattan Beach. There is video somewhere from that day - but nothing to prove we were on bikes. I can’t remember. I was focused on falling in love. She said it was a sad day for her. And I’m not entirely sure why. Probably cause I didn’t want to get into the water.
The bike ride back was cinematic. She said that. I love architecture and it feels good to ride down the middle of the street - free and engaged. We went back to her place ate and made love.
I love biking early mornings when the city is quiet and I could weave up and down the street in the middle of the road - carefree.
Many times down to Riis beach when it was quieter and not as developed. I’d bike down Flatbush Ave to get there - weaving in and out of all the traffic and dollar vans. Once you hit the Belt Parkway things got a calmer. Then once you were over the Marine Parkway Bridge you were free to choose Riis Beach or Ft. Tilden. I loved being naked at Riis and loved the trails to shore at Ft. Tilden. I lived for those summers and exploring everything the city had to offer.
{insert riis beach naked bike photo}
While I was living in Bed-Stuy and wanted to go to Prospect Park I’d bike down Franklin and pass the old spice factory that held the best aroma despite being closed. That block had a hill so it was easy to cruise down without pedaling. And to avoid the hill on the way home I’d bike through Grand Army plaza.
A few years of undergrad under my belt I planned a bike tour with some friends of all sites keith hering public art - starting in upper manhattan at the crack as whack wall to the public pool in brooklyn. I had seen a map in NYTimes of different pieces and researched some more like the sidewalks he scribbled into... I forget everyone who joined. I had taken some photos but they are lost in Google storage - whoever owns that now or is “looking after it”. I only remember a coworker joining from a cafe I worked at that was across from my first apartment in Brooklyn, NY. But I know it was a group of us.
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The love who I took to the tug boat grave yard I followed to Berlin for a residency at a performing arts space in a 700 year old castle on the border of Poland. My first time out of the country as an adult. I left my job at La Colombe to live on barely nothing in this castle. it was pretty sweet. The whole experience of the 4 months there cost me around $2400 at the time.. that includes the flight. We biked around Berlin a couple times seeing the Berlin Wall and different parks. Once I was in Broellin at the residency I was pretty solo and a little bored. I started painting seriously. And watched the strangeness and darkness of Eastern European art and Czech theater. Practicing butoh, tai chi and watching one of most bizarre performances about lust inside a human aquarium which makes more sense to me today...
At one point the sculptor who ran the residency took me to a small town in Poland for a show at an architecture office. It was filled with land mines. I still don’t know if they were art or actual land mines.
Anyway he told me I had to choose if I wanted to hang out with the guys or the girls. I chose to embarass myself and join the theater teacher and “assist” her with the Polish youth theater. She said I ccould help everyone with their english. They had invited a Turkish break dancer to lead workshops. My love at the time was teaching Turkish youth in Berlin through a fulbright scholarship so I invited her. It was silly and wholesome and I will not share those photos because it is too embarassing to see us break dance.
Cristine the woman who ran the youth program invited me to her home in Poland which was about a 5 mile bike ride away. She said she had a bike I could borrow. The tire went flat within the first mile and I continued to bike the entire way while she talked incessantly maybe not understanding or caring that I had a flat tire. We had dinner and she showed me her Philip Roth book collection and told me he was her favorite writer. To this day I still haven’t read Philip Roth - not because I have anything against him - I just haven’t. I don’t know if I’m supposed to like him or not.
I think she drove me back but I can’t remember.
{insert apple trees and mound of potatoes from berlln}
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Years later after I moved away from New York I returned and met up with a hot younger queer bike mechanic who balances their beauty soap shop aesthetic and grunge biker grease boi lifestyle. We met up at the soap shop they were working at the time - they asked me what kind of experience I wanted to have - I don’t remember how I answered but I was enamored with their beauty and their ability to live in many different worlds. They tried to ride me on their handle bars back to where I was staying but I thought I was too much of a top to do it and didn’t work out very well. And later they topped every other aspect of my life. But they did give me a bike that looked almost identical to the bike that my old love and friend used to ride. It was wild and sweet.
Unfortunately someone stole it. But I was able to ride it for a bit from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side to see the new bizarre public art they put in the medians. A giant 3D printed looking all black Bull. I don’t understand 3D printed aesthetic so much so I decided to 3D print a moon a couple years later.
I titled that specific ride a ‘French-Ukranian ride.” It is a short film that I released on my Instagram that is a sequel to a short film I had worked on years ago about communicating in an emotionally senstive way through technology for better health and to escape social isolation. It was actually just an altered advertisement for this app where you could socialize with pigs who were about to be slaughtered. An “ethical” end to their life. Which is how social media feels more and more to me these days.
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In 2007 or 2008 I decided to become a corps member for the SouthWest Conservation Corps to learn how to build trails. I flew into Denver, Colorado with my Osprey Pack that I got from CraigsList somewhere outside DC. Blue and gray. I wandered the city and remember thinking how clean it was. I took a commuter plane from Denver to Durango, CO through the night in a giant storm. It was exhilirating watching the lightning flash over the mountains. I walked from the airport to a motel and met up with the crew in the morning. I was 19 or 20. I wish I could remember the name of the mountain and the trail. I do remember there being a pack of mountain bikers making their way up the trail. I was impressed and hadn’t seen anything like it since I mostly grew up on the beach. I struggled up the mountain on foot being at high altitude for the first time but managed to get to the campsite.
It seems relevant or serediptious to be planning a street/road/mountainous bike trail now that I am back in Colorado.
I recently got a bike from the goodwill outlet in south denver. I took it to bikes together - a community bike shop where they’ll teach you how to build/maintain/fix your own bike. I tuned it up and changed it to better tires. A white mountain bike. Heavy and a bit slow but fun nonetheless. I keep wanting to take it to the mountain bike park but ride around downtown. It definitely isn’t a bike to get across the country but I suppose it could be if it is all I had. I keep forgetting to bring my bike lock when I go out so I’ll hide in different places while I’m out. ......
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LIONS JAW. ******** ?
[insert lion’s jaw drawing from north carolina]
I don’t plan on going to the outerbanks on this ride at least for now. I think I will have to head north into NC’s piedmont for a little while but will mainly focus on South Carolina’s terrain and landscape.
Thinking I should just take a rickshaw and pack the mountain bike in the back with an inflatable raft at this point.
CAROLINA BIKE TRIP:
PACK LIST:
Here are my thoughts on planning a long distance bike trek of South Carolina not just in my mind:
+ tent - has a hole in it but it is a good tent.
+ sleeping pad.
+ mountain bike - this trail is on the road and through different paths in the forest, foothills, piedmont to some sandy dunes.
+ tarp
+portable pump
+tubes
+patch kit
+allan wrench
Start on the westernside of the state. With a map and a headlight or lamp if you will.
+ a knife
+ dollars
+ cash
+ stars
+ giant ziploc
+ headlamp
+ crate on a bike rack
+ messenger bag
+ water proof case for my phone
+ maybe a disposable camera
+ jump rope
+ whisper light stove
this is the best idea i have so far.
but this can change.
i might have to trade bikes. a couple times. and go on foot.
i’ll log this trek chronologically by days and miles.
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I honestly don’t want to bike alone the whole time.
And I’m not doing tandem but could be convinced.
Putting a bike on a boat again would be cool.
Its going to rock.