Jan 24 '06 - 1030 W, 3 I - Vote Good + 20 :: Bad - 15 Malcolm BMX: Pedaling Revolution
New Monthly Feature
Published January 24, 2006 by C.I.C.L.E.
Contributed by Brady Russell
At the corner of K Street and Connecticut in Washington, D.C., the downtown, there sits a little park, a patch of greenspace, really. It has one of those classic Washington statues of some military man with four little cannons aiming out in four directions on all sides. Some people know of the park as a summer/fall lunch spot. Others know it as one of the places the D.C. bike couriers hang out between calls. Especially when the day is wearing them down.
On one coolish, breezy day, when the legislature was not in session and vacations were near, many couriers congregated in this park because they did not have very much to do. They chatted about this or that.
The D.C. couriers are a unique group of men and women. They ride around on their bikes all day, delivering this and that, pretty much in contempt of the people they work for. Pretty much in contempt of everyone who doesn't live on their bicycle all day long, though they don't really like the guys who deliver pizzas by bike, either. The couriers dress colorfully. Some of them ride very strange machines. They have their own language. They work for different companies but they all know each other.
Alysius and Denae were the only two not sitting in a circle on the top tube of their bikes gabbing about courier competitions coming up on the east coast and reminiscing about how badly their colleague, Bryson, had performed at the Boston Alleycat. Those two lay in the shade, staring at the leaves, talking about Friends and William Least-Heat Moon. They were the first to see him.
He rode up covered in green spandex from head to toe. He had red, cut-off dungarees on with a chain belt over his tights. He had on a vest, too, which looked like it had a lot of junk in it, but they could only see the P/S camera for sure. He also wore a white hankerchief around the bottom part of his face. He came from the southwest corner, around the far side of the military statue and bunny hopped his bike onto a fence.
He yelled, "I come to tell you all of a revolution!" It looked as though his skin had been burned a lot.
His bike was a fixed gear with thick tires and taped up mustache handlebars. No brake, but he had police band radio attached to the handlebars and two short handlebars welded to the top of his forks. Alysius tried to imagine what he looked like when he got so low he could hold onto those. The bike was painted blue and grey. No stickers.
"This city will be the first where we start to crush and smash the automobiles until we drive them out. I tell you, I tell you, I tell you! No one should put up with those damn things anymore. Fuck bike lanes. Fuck turn signals. Fuck Rock Creek Park! This, my friends, is the battleground. We can drive them out of here, one by one, we'll drive the stinky, ugly, space sucking bastards out!"
He had a raspy voice. A high pitched voice. He had one foot still in the stirrup of his pedal and one on the top back of the bench he stood on. People turned their head to look. Bryson mouthed, "nutcase," to Luce, who he had a crush on, but she didn't look at him. She didn't look at him very often at all.
The masked man shook his fist. He rattled on. He didn't ask anything of them but somehow they had a sense he did expect something – and why they had given him this much attention after all the crazy homeless ranters they had seen in this park... who knew? He had a mask on, though, right? Was he just letting off steam?
As suddlenly as he came, he said something like, "And so when they start to come at us with their squad..." but he just stopped talking. The light at the corner of Connecticut and K behind him had turned yellow in the east-west direction.
He bunny hopped off the bench and never completed his sentence. He dodged two sets of lunchers and then jumped a low hanging chain fence to reach the sidewalk. By then, the light was red.
He bunny hopped onto a Toyota Corolla (beige) three cars back from the front, hopped from that to the hood of PT Cruiser (blue) rolled down it and Denae felt pretty sure she could hear his chainring scratch the hood as he came off from there (but that was impossible), then he rode against the stopped traffic about a block, ripped into oncoming traffic and disappeared up 19th, northbound - for now, as if he had never been.
"Who was that?" Alysius asked, but he wasn't looking at anyone.
A grizzled old black dude with a long beard they called Goliath, owner of D.C.'s strangest bike, stepped out from the circle, smiling, shaking his head, "That motherfucker is Malcolm BMX. Ain't seen his ass in town a while."
(c) Brady Russell, 2004. All rights reserved.
Brady Russell works in politics. He has been a national
organizer, a local organizer, a campus organizer and is currently the
Pennsylvania Lobbyist for ACORN. He started writing in elementary
school and never stopped. In fact, he remembers his second grade
teacher scolding his class for not trying any of the writing exercises
she had put out for them, which she finished by saying, "except for
Brady and he's done all of them."
Sometime in high school he decided he would not pursue studies in writing and just try to do it himself. Brady had a few opinion pieces published in some small magazines around the country, but so far he's largely been writing in a closet and keeping his work there.
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that was awesome
thanks for creating that image in my head
it was a fun ride
leaves me wanting more
gwadzilla (Email) (URL) - January 25 '06 - 18:25
You know we forgot to mention (but we are about to) that Brady will be writing this as a monthly series for us…so there is more to come.Liz (Email) (URL) - January 25 '06 - 18:31
Nice. Can’t wait for next month.gundog99 (URL) - January 27 '06 - 10:10
i am looking for some bmx trails tracks or places where bmx riders hang outmo (Email) - October 02 '06 - 07:58