Showing posts with label bikely. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bikely. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Bathrooms for Bikers
I could really use a map that shows usable, biker friendly bathrooms in the NYC area and I'm guessing that I'm not the only one. I couldn't find one, so I thought I'd ask for your help in making our own map.
I can't figure out how to make a map of just points (not a route) on bikely.com, which is where I post all my bike routes, so for now it's living at google maps.
I know everyone says that Starbucks and Barnes and Noble have the best public bathrooms, but are there better or worse ones? More convenient ones? Friendlier to bicyclists? How safe are they? How safe is your bike?
Supposedly, any NYC Police Station will let you use their bathroom. Has anyone tried this?
Do you have a favorite rest stop in the NYC area?
I'd love to get the following info from local (NY, NJ, CONN) riders who have actually used the facilities.
Place Name and Address
Directions to actual bathroom. (Inside? Around the back?)
Hours?
Seasonal?
Safe alone?
Safe for Women?
Safe to leave your bike? (This assumes standard NYC rules. In other words, will your bike be stripped of all its parts in the time it takes to pee, or do you need to leave a riding partner outside to watch the bikes while one of you goes inside?)
Where do you park? (Right in front or far from the entrance?)
Comments and rating. Is there an attendant, is it reasonably clean? Can you refill a standard water bottle? Do you get attitude? Do you have to be a customer? When did you last visit this bathroom?
Example:
Prospect Park Picnic House - Prospect Park Dr. West at 4th street.
Not directly on the road. Make a left into the park. The building looks closed from the west side, but the bathrooms are downstairs on the other side.
8 - 8, 7 days
Seasonal?(not sure)
Safe alone
Safe for women.
Bike racks outside on the side of the building are probably safe for a short pit stop.
To see the map mashup with the NYC bike path overlay go to google maps
I can't figure out how to make a map of just points (not a route) on bikely.com, which is where I post all my bike routes, so for now it's living at google maps.
I know everyone says that Starbucks and Barnes and Noble have the best public bathrooms, but are there better or worse ones? More convenient ones? Friendlier to bicyclists? How safe are they? How safe is your bike?
Supposedly, any NYC Police Station will let you use their bathroom. Has anyone tried this?
Do you have a favorite rest stop in the NYC area?
I'd love to get the following info from local (NY, NJ, CONN) riders who have actually used the facilities.
Place Name and Address
Directions to actual bathroom. (Inside? Around the back?)
Hours?
Seasonal?
Safe alone?
Safe for Women?
Safe to leave your bike? (This assumes standard NYC rules. In other words, will your bike be stripped of all its parts in the time it takes to pee, or do you need to leave a riding partner outside to watch the bikes while one of you goes inside?)
Where do you park? (Right in front or far from the entrance?)
Comments and rating. Is there an attendant, is it reasonably clean? Can you refill a standard water bottle? Do you get attitude? Do you have to be a customer? When did you last visit this bathroom?
Example:
Prospect Park Picnic House - Prospect Park Dr. West at 4th street.
Not directly on the road. Make a left into the park. The building looks closed from the west side, but the bathrooms are downstairs on the other side.
8 - 8, 7 days
Seasonal?(not sure)
Safe alone
Safe for women.
Bike racks outside on the side of the building are probably safe for a short pit stop.
To see the map mashup with the NYC bike path overlay go to google maps
Monday, August 13, 2007
Less than a month...
I just figured out that the NYC Century is in less than a month. I know this comes as no surprise to people who
a: have been training for it, or
b: can read a calendar, but I, apparently don't fall into either of those categories because it came as a shock to me last weekend when I realized how little time I had left.
So in classic Bike Dummy form, I chilled out on the pier for a while with my dog and a friend, had some coffee, read the paper - and then decided to go for my 'long ride' of the week.
It's hard for me to plan rides. Everyone in the NYC area seems to go on the training ride up to Nyack on the Jersey side of the Hudson. I'd love to do that sometime, but my schedule's sort of crazy and I don't know any other cyclists who want to do distances, so at the moment, that means going alone.
The thought of cycling by myself through unknown parts of Jersey freaks me out. It's like traveling to a foreign country where I don't know the customs and can't speak the language. At least in most of NYC, if I run into a problem I can hop on the subway and get myself home. Once I cross the George Washington Bridge and start heading north I get visions of dark misty roads, with me holding my crooked wheel in one hand, a flickering flashlight in the other, calling out softly into the dark..."Hello?...Is there anybody out there?..."
So I decided to go the other way.
My first stop was Red Hook. I've been reading a lot about how quickly the IKEA is going up on the waterfront down there and decided to take a look at the 'progress'. Without starting a blog war about development, I will say that I wish as a city we would look to our own historical examples of expanding the beauty and enjoyment of our extensive waterfront, ie. the west side promenade and bike path or the Bay Ridge shore parkway promenade and bike path, instead of forgetting the examples of our waterfront failures, ie. the west side promenade's 125th street detour under the highway to avoid the Fairway Supermarket, or the shore parkway's ignominious end in the parking lot of Kohl's department store just before it reaches Coney Island. Can't we make a plan for public use of the waterfront BEFORE we give it all away to big box stores? I'm not arguing against IKEA, I'd just like to see the possibility of continuous public loops around the waterfront. Every new store that builds at the water increases the probability that the greenways of the city will remain isolated from each other.
OK, stepping down off of the soapbox.
So, Red Hook. I went down around Fairway and tried to get up near the IKEA, but there were roadblocks and the streets to get around the other side are all cobbles, so I decided to leave that for another day. For those who don't know, Rocky Sullivan's, the long-lived east side Irish bar lost its lease and has moved down to Red Hook.
If any of you thought you still might find a real estate 'bargain' down there, I suggest you revisit that. Red Hook has been bought and paid for.
It's a great neighborhood, but possibly better for walking than biking. The street surfaces are way too uneven for it to be pleasant on a road bike.
Next stop, across the mouth of the Gowanus and onto Third Avenue.
Third Avenue is pretty gross to bike on and normally I would avoid it altogether, but it's the quickest way between Red Hook and Bay Ridge where I was going to pick up the shore parkway bike path. The saving grace of Third Avenue is that you are riding under the Gowanus Expressway, so on a hot day it's shaded.
I didn't see much visible damage in Sunset Park or Bay Ridge from the tornado that touched down earlier this week. They've done an amazing job of clearing most of the downed trees and branches already.
The view from the Veteran's Memorial Pier in Bay Ridge is one of my favorites and on Saturday it did not disappoint. The refinished (until the bridge) bike path is smooth and usually uncrowded. Even with the headwind, it's a great place to let rip for about 2 miles before the surface gets crappy again. The next 3 miles are cracked, bumpy, narrow and occasionally covered in broken glass, but the view is lovely, and the alternate would be Cropsy Avenue (which bites).
The end of the shore parkway bike path is an example of one my favorite urban planning snafus - greenways that end at malls. On Saturday, it was the site of some kind of indeterminate demonstration that involved some megaphones and people milling about.
I went online after I got home and discovered this:
DATE: SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2007 NATIONAL MARINA DAY
TIME: 11:30 A.M.
PLACE: Bay Parkway and Gravesend Bay (near Kohl’s
Shopping Center): The entrance to the Bensonhurst
Promenade along Gravesend Bay
PROPOSED WASTE PLANT CHURNS UP THE FIRST EVER
FLOTILLA IN BENSONHURST ON NATIONAL MARINA DAY
ASSEMBLYMAN WILLIAM COLTON VOWS TO FIGHT THE PROPOSED
SOUTHWEST BROOKLYN WASTE TRANSFER STATION BY LAND AND
BY SEA WITH LAUNCHING BENSONHURST=92S FIRST EVER
FLOTILLA PROTEST SPECTACLE
AS BOATERS WILL CONVERGE IN THE WATERS OF GRAVESEND
BAY IN A SHOW OF UNITY, PROTESTERS WILL GATHER ON LAND
OVERLOOKING THE BAY TO CONDUCT A SIMULTANEOUS
DEMONSTRATION OPPOSING A PROPOSED WASTE TRANSFER
STATION SLATED TO OPEN IN BENSONHURST
Point#1 - Who knew there was a national marina day?
Point#2 - I must have blinked, because I totally didn't see a flotilla of anything.
Point#3 - I'm sorry that I did miss the flotilla, because it was probably really cool.
To see my route, click on the map to go to bikely.com.
For part two of the ride, tune in tomorrow.
a: have been training for it, or
b: can read a calendar, but I, apparently don't fall into either of those categories because it came as a shock to me last weekend when I realized how little time I had left.
So in classic Bike Dummy form, I chilled out on the pier for a while with my dog and a friend, had some coffee, read the paper - and then decided to go for my 'long ride' of the week.
It's hard for me to plan rides. Everyone in the NYC area seems to go on the training ride up to Nyack on the Jersey side of the Hudson. I'd love to do that sometime, but my schedule's sort of crazy and I don't know any other cyclists who want to do distances, so at the moment, that means going alone.
The thought of cycling by myself through unknown parts of Jersey freaks me out. It's like traveling to a foreign country where I don't know the customs and can't speak the language. At least in most of NYC, if I run into a problem I can hop on the subway and get myself home. Once I cross the George Washington Bridge and start heading north I get visions of dark misty roads, with me holding my crooked wheel in one hand, a flickering flashlight in the other, calling out softly into the dark..."Hello?...Is there anybody out there?..."
So I decided to go the other way.
My first stop was Red Hook. I've been reading a lot about how quickly the IKEA is going up on the waterfront down there and decided to take a look at the 'progress'. Without starting a blog war about development, I will say that I wish as a city we would look to our own historical examples of expanding the beauty and enjoyment of our extensive waterfront, ie. the west side promenade and bike path or the Bay Ridge shore parkway promenade and bike path, instead of forgetting the examples of our waterfront failures, ie. the west side promenade's 125th street detour under the highway to avoid the Fairway Supermarket, or the shore parkway's ignominious end in the parking lot of Kohl's department store just before it reaches Coney Island. Can't we make a plan for public use of the waterfront BEFORE we give it all away to big box stores? I'm not arguing against IKEA, I'd just like to see the possibility of continuous public loops around the waterfront. Every new store that builds at the water increases the probability that the greenways of the city will remain isolated from each other.
OK, stepping down off of the soapbox.
So, Red Hook. I went down around Fairway and tried to get up near the IKEA, but there were roadblocks and the streets to get around the other side are all cobbles, so I decided to leave that for another day. For those who don't know, Rocky Sullivan's, the long-lived east side Irish bar lost its lease and has moved down to Red Hook.
If any of you thought you still might find a real estate 'bargain' down there, I suggest you revisit that. Red Hook has been bought and paid for.
It's a great neighborhood, but possibly better for walking than biking. The street surfaces are way too uneven for it to be pleasant on a road bike.
Next stop, across the mouth of the Gowanus and onto Third Avenue.
Third Avenue is pretty gross to bike on and normally I would avoid it altogether, but it's the quickest way between Red Hook and Bay Ridge where I was going to pick up the shore parkway bike path. The saving grace of Third Avenue is that you are riding under the Gowanus Expressway, so on a hot day it's shaded.
I didn't see much visible damage in Sunset Park or Bay Ridge from the tornado that touched down earlier this week. They've done an amazing job of clearing most of the downed trees and branches already.
The view from the Veteran's Memorial Pier in Bay Ridge is one of my favorites and on Saturday it did not disappoint. The refinished (until the bridge) bike path is smooth and usually uncrowded. Even with the headwind, it's a great place to let rip for about 2 miles before the surface gets crappy again. The next 3 miles are cracked, bumpy, narrow and occasionally covered in broken glass, but the view is lovely, and the alternate would be Cropsy Avenue (which bites).
The end of the shore parkway bike path is an example of one my favorite urban planning snafus - greenways that end at malls. On Saturday, it was the site of some kind of indeterminate demonstration that involved some megaphones and people milling about.
I went online after I got home and discovered this:
DATE: SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2007 NATIONAL MARINA DAY
TIME: 11:30 A.M.
PLACE: Bay Parkway and Gravesend Bay (near Kohl’s
Shopping Center): The entrance to the Bensonhurst
Promenade along Gravesend Bay
PROPOSED WASTE PLANT CHURNS UP THE FIRST EVER
FLOTILLA IN BENSONHURST ON NATIONAL MARINA DAY
ASSEMBLYMAN WILLIAM COLTON VOWS TO FIGHT THE PROPOSED
SOUTHWEST BROOKLYN WASTE TRANSFER STATION BY LAND AND
BY SEA WITH LAUNCHING BENSONHURST=92S FIRST EVER
FLOTILLA PROTEST SPECTACLE
AS BOATERS WILL CONVERGE IN THE WATERS OF GRAVESEND
BAY IN A SHOW OF UNITY, PROTESTERS WILL GATHER ON LAND
OVERLOOKING THE BAY TO CONDUCT A SIMULTANEOUS
DEMONSTRATION OPPOSING A PROPOSED WASTE TRANSFER
STATION SLATED TO OPEN IN BENSONHURST
Point#1 - Who knew there was a national marina day?
Point#2 - I must have blinked, because I totally didn't see a flotilla of anything.
Point#3 - I'm sorry that I did miss the flotilla, because it was probably really cool.
To see my route, click on the map to go to bikely.com.
For part two of the ride, tune in tomorrow.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Your Mileage May Vary....
I'm saying it out loud.
I am going to try to ride the NYC Century this fall.
I've never ridden a century - I've only ridden over 50 miles in a day once, and that was during this years 5 Boro bike tour, which as many of you may know is more an exercise in patience than it is exercise.
I've been trying to train for longer distances, but it's been challenging to find the time every day to get out and ride.
I understand that the willingness to train is what separates those that do from those that don't, but it's still tough when you are looking for blocks of time sometime before or after working at a job with very unpredictable hours.
I don't know about you, but I've got things to do. I've got a dog that needs walking and a house that needs cleaning and friends that need beer drunk with them ('need' may not be the correct term in the context of beer drinking).
Saturday is bike riding prime-time.
This week was complicated. I had a thing on Tuesday night, another thing on Wednesday night, a birthday party on Thursday night, The Police concert at MSG on Friday night, and then my company picnic in Dix Hills, Long Island on Saturday. (I know, the world's smallest violin is playing for me.)
I was going to miss my long ride of the week, and for those of us with minimal motivational skills, that could be disastrous. So Saturday it was.
I broke out my NYC bike map, bought a Nassau and a Suffolk county street map, and decided to go for it. At 40 miles, it's not much longer than my regular 'long' ride up to Inwood and back along the West Side Highway bike path.
It would be an adventure.
Saturday morning came too early thanks to after concert drinks with my friend Jenny, and the weather was promising to be hot. I needed to hit an ATM. I needed air in my tires. I needed to leave.
After much dithering, I finally managed to get on the road pointed in somewhat the right direction.
Now, I've got no idea how to get where I'm going other than the driving directions that everyone was given, but I figured how hard could it be? I know next to nothing about Long Island, but exit 51 off the Long Island Expressway should be easy to find. Right?
Turns out, this is actually correct. The Long Island Expressway access road is very easy to ride. It's not particularly scenic, and the cars are shooting past at about 70 mph in many sections of it, but for the most part, it cuts across the island in an easy to follow straight line. Except when it doesn't.
The hardest part of the ride was figuring out how to get out of NYC and how to find the access road again whenever the highways intersected. I ended up on a couple of 'death roads' that are marked as bike paths on the NYC bike map, but that's par for the course. I'm convinced that there's a saboteur who wants to kill all bicyclists working for the department that makes that map.
At the end of the day, I arrived 2 hours late and jumped in the pool fully dressed. Water has never felt so good.
Now, if someone could just find me a better way from Brooklyn out to Long Island, I'd be really grateful.
To see the route that I took - click the map below to go to bikely.com
I am going to try to ride the NYC Century this fall.
I've never ridden a century - I've only ridden over 50 miles in a day once, and that was during this years 5 Boro bike tour, which as many of you may know is more an exercise in patience than it is exercise.
I've been trying to train for longer distances, but it's been challenging to find the time every day to get out and ride.
I understand that the willingness to train is what separates those that do from those that don't, but it's still tough when you are looking for blocks of time sometime before or after working at a job with very unpredictable hours.
I don't know about you, but I've got things to do. I've got a dog that needs walking and a house that needs cleaning and friends that need beer drunk with them ('need' may not be the correct term in the context of beer drinking).
Saturday is bike riding prime-time.
This week was complicated. I had a thing on Tuesday night, another thing on Wednesday night, a birthday party on Thursday night, The Police concert at MSG on Friday night, and then my company picnic in Dix Hills, Long Island on Saturday. (I know, the world's smallest violin is playing for me.)
I was going to miss my long ride of the week, and for those of us with minimal motivational skills, that could be disastrous. So Saturday it was.
I broke out my NYC bike map, bought a Nassau and a Suffolk county street map, and decided to go for it. At 40 miles, it's not much longer than my regular 'long' ride up to Inwood and back along the West Side Highway bike path.
It would be an adventure.
Saturday morning came too early thanks to after concert drinks with my friend Jenny, and the weather was promising to be hot. I needed to hit an ATM. I needed air in my tires. I needed to leave.
After much dithering, I finally managed to get on the road pointed in somewhat the right direction.
Now, I've got no idea how to get where I'm going other than the driving directions that everyone was given, but I figured how hard could it be? I know next to nothing about Long Island, but exit 51 off the Long Island Expressway should be easy to find. Right?
Turns out, this is actually correct. The Long Island Expressway access road is very easy to ride. It's not particularly scenic, and the cars are shooting past at about 70 mph in many sections of it, but for the most part, it cuts across the island in an easy to follow straight line. Except when it doesn't.
The hardest part of the ride was figuring out how to get out of NYC and how to find the access road again whenever the highways intersected. I ended up on a couple of 'death roads' that are marked as bike paths on the NYC bike map, but that's par for the course. I'm convinced that there's a saboteur who wants to kill all bicyclists working for the department that makes that map.
At the end of the day, I arrived 2 hours late and jumped in the pool fully dressed. Water has never felt so good.
Now, if someone could just find me a better way from Brooklyn out to Long Island, I'd be really grateful.
To see the route that I took - click the map below to go to bikely.com
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