If you were just about to compete in a fixed-gear bike race, in the dark, in the cold, on a course with some very sharp turns and 30 or so other competitors, your nerves would show, right? At the Red Hook Criterium last year, the photographer Benedict Evans decided to find out. "The idea," Evans, an avid cyclist himself, told me, "was to set up a kind of portable studio outdoors near the track, but it rained on the day, so I ended up renting the biggest U-Haul truck I could afford, covering the inside of it with black paper, driving it up next to the finish line and coaxing people inside it to be photographed. I figured that anyone willing to ride brakeless bikes around an intricate course in the dark of night would make for an interesting subject." You can see some of his portraits here, among them that of Dan Chabanov, a bike messenger who has won three of the five races held so far.
This year's event takes place at 9 p.m. tomorrow at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. The race consists of 24 laps that add up to 30 kilometers and takes about 45 minutes to complete. The competitors include amateur road and track enthusiasts, bike messengers and a few professional racers. The bikes themselves must all be track bikes and therefore do not have hand brakes. (There is also a 5K footrace that takes place on the same course, earlier in the evening.)
I'm no bike race aficionado, but by Lap 4 at last year's event I was hooked. Certainly the atmosphere is festive and sociable, which may have something to do with the event's unusual origins. David Trimble (shown above), the Crit's organizer and member of a family that has been racing for two generations, moved to Red Hook in 2008. Struck by the area's desolate streets, lack of traffic and policing, he set up a race among friends to celebrate his birthday. It was so popular, he did it again the following year. Five years later, he expects there will be roughly 5,000 spectators in attendance. It has also grown beyond Red Hook: Saturday's race is the first in a four-part series, with points accrued at each stop. The next three races will take place this year in Brooklyn (at the Navy Yard), Barcelona and Milan, where a champion will be crowned. Not a bad birthday party by any standards.
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The 6th Floor Blog: On a Cold Night in Brooklyn … a Daredevil Bike Race
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