Category Archives: Fashion

By the time we arrived, the Big Air finals had ended. Pogopalooza 10 was barreling towards its final couple of hours. None of the participants, it seemed, were tired. They were hardly breaking a sweat. It was as if the 10^th Annual World Championships of Extreme Pogo, held in venues around New York City over the past day and a half, had just barely begun.

The crowd surged around the cordoned-off performance area in Union Square Park, on Broadway between 14^th and 17^th Streets. Because it was New York, where everything happens, twin ferrets made an appearance in the bustling audience, a distraction that was pretty much overlooked.

The real attraction was the lineup of Xpogo stars, the ones hoping to break Guinness Records or at least achieve their personal best. This was the largest pogo stick event world wide, and all the pro athletes were here.

First came a practice period, with a break in the middle for one brave pogoer to take the mike and propose marriage to his pogo-fan girlfriend. He dropped to one knee and spoke of his happiness, and the crowd applauded. A guy in an orange helmet jumped by the couple: “Hey, congrats,” he said with a grin. (The two betrothed are pictured in the middle.)

Then a yellow-hatted, yellow-tied, yellow-suspendered master of ceremonies out of a Wizard of Oz  remake introduced a contestant who had pogoed 23.22 miles, and broken a Guinness record with 70,271 bounces (seven straight hours). The athlete made  a pitch for his charity, Bounce to a Cure.

Next came the the Best Trick competition. The dozen or so contestants ranged in age from 16 to28 and in looks from movie-star handsome to pretty darn cute. Fluorescent garb seemed somewhat de rigeur, as were sturdy helmets.

When I was about 10, I ruled on the pogo stick, setting records on my driveway with 100 jumps at a time. I didn’t put a lot of air between my stick and the blacktop, it just felt good to go boing-a-boing-a-boing. To keep that balance for so long. To hold on when it looked like I might crash down.

The athletes now acquiescing to pre-Tricks interviews had bigger plans. Some of them, after all, could take themselve fully nine feet in the air, just for a start. There was Wacky Chad from Syracuse, the one in the fluorescent orange helmet and kicks.

Also, a qualifier known as Manchild, who jumps his pogo backwards but had no name as of yet for his move. There was Michael Mena, who called his move the “Manchild” out of respect for his colleague. The other contestants gave previews of their tricks: the under the leg bar spin, the infinity wrap, the double 180 wrap, the grisly whip. “You’ll just have to wait and see,” said one fellow who had stripped to the waist, with a mischievous expression.

The Ramones song Judy is a Punk blared from the speakers as the action began.

“None of these tricks have been landed before!” announced the mc.

And I noticed that this sport looked fun and all, but was anything but safe. You could injure your body, yes, but you could even more easily bruise your ego. One after the other, the jumpers broke the line and came out into the center, boing-a, boing-a, going through their moves. And invariably, each one wiped out. Dusted himself off. Rejoined the line.

Beck’s Loser was now in the air, a fitting soundtrack for these redblooded competitors who seemed immune to failture.

A guy in sunglasses came out and tripped himself up almost before he began – every single time. “It’s a very technical move,” said the mc, “Give him a hand.”

A duo on a double pogo tried over and over again to achieve a back flip—and they did manage to nail it, only they landed with their feet on the ground rather than the stick’s pedals.

Manchild came so close, so many times.

Dan Mahoney, from Nova Scotia, the bare-chested athlete with the wry smile, at 20 is a veteran jumper.

He held the world record for highest jump on a pogo stick (9’6”). He went high, high, high, with his trick at Union Square, he flew, and the figure he cut was so complex that a second after he’d done it I couldn’t even figure out what he did. Still, he failed.

Until he made it. Yes! Glory. The crowd erupted. Yet the competition continued, as the judges would assess the overall performances at the end of the period and make a cumulative judgment.

The Black Keys Howling for You, their big stadium hit, pounded from the amplifiers now as a backdrop for a sport in a smaller stadium, a struggling extreme sport whose people have performed in Beijing, Rome, London, Japan. Can pogoing ever achieve the respect given snowboarding or skateboarding?

Another champion, Biff Hutchinson of Burley, Idaho, jumped into the fray, accomplishing a back flip, then another, then another. Earlier he had taken first in the Big Air contest.

No one wanted to stop. Even Wacky Chad had to come out for one more ride.

Finally, the end. I watched Mahoney remove his sneaks and socks and carefully examine his feet. He had developed a small limp in the course of the contest. Now he went forward to collect his prize. Do his interview. “When I think of a trick,” the athlete told the audience, “I can see it in my head.” He’s won this prize for four years now. “I love you all,” he said.

Fail and try again. Fail, and win. That was the spirit of the day. But did I dare?

I approached the open pogo area, where brash little pink skirted toddlers and perplexed looking middle agers tried to develop some confidence on the stick.

I was the last in line for the day.

I’d done it before. Yes, several decades before. But give me a moment to collect myself, we’d see who still had the chops.

I left my fluorescents at home. I still had my boing-a attitude, though. I asked to use one of the big bazookas but was told by a helper, “That’s what they use,” pointing to the professional pogo pit. That was okay. I mounted my steed and managed not one, not two, but eight jumps. I fell off, then I got up. I dusted myself off.

Eight good bounces. Only 92 more to go.

You’ve heard about the Citi Bikes that now throng Manhattan. There are thousands of them parked in solar-powered docks from Battery Park to Central Park. Anybody with a bank card can rent one for half an hour. (There are some bikes in the outer boroughs, too.) They’re making New York into Minneapolis or Melbourne or any of the other healthy bike-sharing cities around the world. Everybody in New York is taking a set of wheels out for a spin, tourists and natives alike.

I said, when asked, I wouldn’t do it.

I did it.

My logic: there are a lot of things on my reverse bucket list, my fuck-it list, things I pledge never to do. Anything involving getting lofted high above the ground. No skydiving for my 60th birthday.  No bungee jumping any time at all. The list goes on.

Then there are things I will probably never do even though it’s my dream. Leaping over a fence, say, while gracefully swinging my legs out to the side. It’s not a question of being young enough — I never could do it. Too difficult.

But riding a soft-saddled steed on a Manhattan summer afternoon? This I could probably accomplish without undue shock to the system.

Gil agreed.

It would only be 30 minutes, after all.

We started at luxury car alley, that stretch of Eleventh Avenue in Midtown where drivers with a fat wallet can take away  a Lexus, an Audi or a Mini. Glossy, glassy buildings on every side. But as in so many corners of New York, shreds of a past neighborhood identity can be found if you look, like old signage for a supermarket over the Lexus dealership.

Someone was watching us.

We’d better behave. Across the avenue from the bike rack, at 59th Street, stands a grand monument to both the subway system and steam, a full-block-square Stanford White designed industrial temple that was originally the Interborough Rapid Transit Powerhouse.

Built in 1904, it has bold Rennaissance Revival details. When it outlasted its usefulness to the subway system in the 1950s, Con Edison took is over to supply the New York City steam system.

Under the shadow of its grand façade we pedaled to the Hudson, wobbling ever so slightly and nearly getting sideswiped by several taxis. Then we joined the stream of cyclists on the pavement along the river under the West Side Highway.

Biking is hardly a new fashion in New York City, especially for women. In the 1890s, female cyclists crowded the urban streets, and their exploits were enthusiastically described by gossip columnists. Pictures of glamorous women, the wind in their upswept hair, graced the covers of Puck, Life, Scribner’s.

A slight hitch in their pursuit of the sport lay in their mode of dress – the yardage of their ankle-length skirts had a tendency to get snagged in the wheels of the so-called “safety bicycle.” But that was okay, split skirts – bloomers – were coming in. Just ignore the consternation of cycling advocate Mrs. Mary Hopkins of Boston on the subject: “It has made wheeling just another way for a woman to make a fool of herself,” she told the New York Times. “She has made a half-way sort of creature of herself. She can’t be a man, and she is a disgrace as a woman.”

Susan B. Anthony thought differently. She said: “I think cycling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance.” Feminism before feminism, all on the mean streets of Riverside Drive.

“The moment she takes her seat she knows she can’t get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.” I don’t know if Susan B. Anthony rode a bike herself.

I don’t see how I could come to any harm if I got off my bike in one of New York’s new, pristine waterfront parks, aside from getting a headache from looking up at one of the oversized sculptures looking out over New Jersey.

The sculpture by Benat Iglesias Lopez is one of a group installed this year called The Bathers.

I somehow prefer the art of the decrepit pilings that march along the coastline, vestiges of a different age.

They’ve been there so long, and they’ve seen so much.

I’ve also always loved this  landmarked historic ruin, the control tower of the 69th Street Transfer Bridge, which at one time belonged to the West Side Line of the NY Central Railroad. The bridge was built in 1911 and enabled the transfer of train cars from rail to boat, to be floated across the river to the rail yards of Weehawken, New Jersey.

I often get a view of this spooky structure from the West Side Highway that runs alongside it at just about its level. Something else, too, that I can usually spot from the highway but now get a better view from my bike, the proud classical gateway to the Sanitation Pier at 58^th Street.

We checked our watches and found it was the moment to return, but promised ourselves this wouldn’t be the last time we risked our necks for a half hour of the Manhattan wind in our hair.  As we picked up to go, I felt a certain proud resemblance to another female cyclist of the past.

Only her cycling get-up’s a little more elegant than mine.