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Those Were The Days Wartime New York

The adventures of Tony Pizzo, the sailor handcuffed to a bike

It’s Fleet Week!  The streets of New York are filled with hundreds of Marines and sailors who arrived yesterday in New York Harbor.  I’m pretty sure, however, that none of them hit the streets handcuffed to a bicycle. That distinction goes to the enigmatic Tony Pizzo who, in 1919, rode his bicycle from Los Angeles… Read More

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Podcasts

Bicycle Mania! The story of New York on two wheels, from velocipedes to ten-speeds — with women’s liberation in tow

  Alice Austen’s iconic photograph of a telegram bike messenger in 1896, a year where many New Yorkers were wild about bikes. Austen even rode one around with her camera.  PODCAST The bicycle has always seemed like a slightly awkward form of transportation in big cities, but in fact, it’s reliable, convenient, clean and —… Read More

Brooklyn residents, beware the dangers of ‘the wheel’!

“The bicycle path from Prospect Park, Brooklyn, to Coney Island.” Illustration above an 1896 issue of Munsey’s magazine (Courtesy NYPL)You have been warned! From an article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, dated May 11, 1896: “Several thousand men and women rode on bicycles in this neighborhood yesterday. Possibly twenty of them were injured in one… Read More