Warning: If you’re a beginning rider don’t read this, what follows may scare you. And if you’re an avid rider the same goes, you wont find this post funny (it is) and are better off reading something on bike.com, or whatever it is you read.  

As it happens, Ty and I both have friends named “Dan” who bike on a regular basis in N.Y. and L.A. They’re the type who commute daily sans helmet and breaks, yet lack the fickle passion that finds today’s youth hanging around the corner bike shop concerned with taking that last .26lbs off their frame. These people exist. Anyway, we asked both Dans about their riding experiences in either city. Hopefully their answers will help in determining ‘which city bikes better?’ 

LA: There’s nothing better than getting a solid Sunday afternoon day-drunk going, tossin’ on your LA Dodgers cap (Go Doyers!) and swerving your way through the mayhem on Venice beach, bike-bound and narrowly avoiding transients, lepers, female-to-male chimera and assorted other people nightmares out of some second-rate Cronenberg movie. It’s one of those moments when you take a deep smogger [Ed. note: breath], stare at the sun for a second too long and thank God you’re blessed to be west.

It’s a reverie so nice that it sort of takes the sting out of the next
day, when (and this is when shit gets real) your bike is stolen
straight off the front of the bus you’re riding by some street urchin
asshole as you’re headed to work to teach little kids about “The Bard”
at some school for foreign kids in Culver City, because you can rest
assured that at the very least, that thieving 15 year old drop-out
bastard is likely lilting through L.A. in the same sort-of-drunk
momentary flight of fancy that you were a mere 24 hours earlier, and
good for him. Or you take comfort knowing that, God love him, he’s
making a tidy little profit selling your $1,200 special edition fixey
under some overpass near the four-oh-five, because, Hey, that’s THE
AMERICAN DREAM!

Actually. On second thought, fuck that kid.

But I’m not the expert on this issue, and I’d like to leave all of the
abusive verbage to the true victim of this story: Roommate Dan. A true
renaissance man, Dan teaches little kids Greek, Latin and
book-reading, and as an avid bike rider, maybe it was only a matter of
time before he had his bike stolen…

So Roommate Dan, was this bike the first thing you’ve had stolen?
No, not at all. Theft was really big in Omaha where I grew up. Here’s
a Vignette: I’m 10 and just read Hoop Dreams, or Love and Basketball
or something, and wanted to improve my game. So I would shoot hoops
down at this apartment complex and after awhile made friends with this
kid Leron. He was always complimenting me on my fresh clothes, ball
caps, sneakers. I invited him back to my house for snacks and he
probably cased our house. Stole mostly stuff from my room…an
autographed baseball etc. Ghetto Sandlot, you know?

Did you get a new bike?
I got my bike replaced. Here’s where I get sentimental: I have the
sweetest, coolest, nicest students in the world. They bought me a new
one using lunch money their parents would give them…raised like 800
dollars. Underground bakesales. They kept it a secret from me too and
presented me with this wad of cash just before xmas break. Love those
guys!

Does the bike incident make you want to move to New York?
Not really. I hadn’t thought about it until now. You know that’s some
real eggs benedict shit anyway.

What’s the best thing about living in LA?
A little “Medicali” now and then. Maybe Fatburger.

Tacos or Pizza?
You’re badgering the witness. I eat what I want and that’s that. Would
I put tacos on my pizza? As long as we got Klondike Bars for dessert.

Celebs or innately wealthy?
They are all just parents to me. We have those parent teacher
conferences twice a year, you know. I don’t get too wrapped up in all
that Joan Rivers bullshit.

MLB World Series or Coachella?
I remember when I was a kid and Albert “Don’t Call Me Joey” Belle was
putting gravy in his bat and hit like 50 triples in the playoffs. I’m
still an Indians fan….people probably don’t know that about me.

Drink till 4 a.m. or drink and drive?
I don’t drink and drive….I just have my buddy Jeremy do it.

Any general thoughts about New York?
New York is the old New Amsterdam… Great place for a 10th grade field trip.

This man is in charge of little kids. Just sayin’.

NY: Everyone’s saying white is the new black. Its popping up everywhere on the streets of New York. This is probably due to summer being the new winter (it happens every year), but lets pretend it’s not that. There are those freak occurrences when something takes hold of the social collective conscience and there’s no turning back; I apologize for inducing any thoughts of the Twilight series, kind of. I for one thought I could avoid the current (made up) craze. I was wrong. Call me crazy, but I recently purchased a WHITE Peugeot ten-speed.

Joining the summer trendsetters allowed me to cruise through the city with my friend Dan, who recently purchased WHITE tires for his bike*. Unfortunately, Dan was reamed by a car the other day when riding to the beach. The car was not WHITE. To me, this is the true image of summer in New York, not all this mumbo jumbo about a non-color. And not just because the driver wanted Dan’s info on account of “bumper damage” - lets hear it for a true New Yorker! - but because just when you think you got it right, there’s always someone to bring you down to earth. Literally.

Here’s what Dan has to say about his experience and how chipped teeth might be the next big thing:

Is this the first time you’ve been hit by a car?

This was the first car that hit me. I may have struck a car once. 

What was it like?

The whole experience was odd. I knew I was going to get hit. I was able to prepare for it a little… I’ve a tendency to punch cars that cut me off.  I always figured that if I got hit I’d just completely lose it, but I was super calm.  I just found my glasses and picked up my bike.

On a scale of one to ten, how bad did it hurt?

I believe the scale of 1 to 10 to be dated and inaccurate.  I prefer the holocaust to blowjob scale (holocaust being the worst and blowjob being the best). 

That’s vulgar.

On that scale, it was a Jehovah’s Witness.

Were you more worried about your new white tires or your face?

Lets just say I think I look better with broken teeth.  It really pulls that white trash look together. Chicks dig it when you look like you crawled out of an Alabama trailer park.

You say that the woman who hit you asked for your information. Were you surprised?

Yes, but then I thought “Oh yeah, my teeth are cracked up, she must want to meet up for a drink later.”

How long was it before you rode your bike again?

I rode to the hospital right after. I’m uninsured so I refused an ambulance. The New York No-fault Insurance would have covered the ride, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was just hit by a car.

Does this incident make you want to move to Los Angeles?

I’ve always been curious about LA. However, I recently heard that you couldn’t drink the tap water there.  It’ll make your bodily functions smell like the water, and you can tell when people eat out too much because they smell like the water. THAT IS MESSED UP. So no.

What’s the best thing about living in NY?

Biking.  I have lived in a few different places, rode bikes in all of them.  New York is the most intense and entertaining riding experience I have had. I love it!

If you had to choose to live in either city for the rest of your life, which would you choose?

I really don’t want to live in either for the rest of my life. There is too much to see.

Which do you prefer: 

Pizza or tacos?

Drunk or high?

Celebrities or the innately wealthy?

I kind of hate them both. 

Coachella or the MLB World series (each happens in either state every year)?

Yeah, yeah…yeah?

Drunk driving or drinking until 4am?

I thought they went hand in hand.  Both are a good time when you’re drunk!

Woody Allen or P.T. Anderson?

P.T. Anderson.

Ooh, thats a nod to the Golden state my friend. Anything else you want to say?

“One brother said, It pleases me very much that I have discovered how prettily green looks next to blue and how water looks so well rushing down hill. I am going away for a little while. He said this to his brother. He got up and he went away.”

I’d like to say Dan made his exit on that note, but we actually sat around and talked for 20 minutes about some more new trends we’re trying to ignore. And there you have it, a first hand account of summer rides in the city. I ♥ NY

*White tires = ultra-hip