I’m spending 10 days this holiday season kicking around Manhattan. Great to be here for Christmas and the New Year. One of the unexpected treats this year (there always seems to be unexpected treats in New York City) was a New Year’s bike “race” called the Alley Kitten, a slightly tamed down version of the nearly legendary Alley Cat races. If any of you have ever seen the movie “Red Light Go”, primarily filmed during a prior Alley Cat, you’re missing an amazing freakshow in the world of bicycling. http://www.redlightgo.ws/ This is very off the beaten path stuff, even though it’s in the middle of Manhattan.
Down the street from where I’m staying is trackstar bicycles, a tiny bike shop with more attitude than a Madison Ave boutique. http://www.trackstarnyc.com/web2/blog/
they had a flyer in there this week for today’s race. I give it 10/10 in the world of race flyers, see for yourself. Read it, hilarious..

Since it’s first timers and out-of-towners only, and I was both, I was qualified to enter. I was warned that it would start and hour late. It did, but it didn’t matter.
I wanted to make sure I was dressed right, they were predicting snow in New York City today (they were right).

Here how an Alley Cat–or Kitten–works. You sign up for the race ($7.53-things are expensive here in Manhattan) and then are given a manifest. The manifest has checkpoints on it, you need to get them all signed and then turn it in at the finish (which-surprisingly is at a bar!). So you take off in the direction of the first check point. There is no set course, which is exactly the point. You decide the route, whatever it might be, and the wrong way on a one-way street really isn’t so wrong in these events. Particularly in Manhattan. Here are a couple shots of the course, riding up Madison Ave in midtown.
CLICK ON THESE SUCKERS TO CHECK BIG JUICY IMAGES

So you hit the checkpoints and might get asked to do something in order to get your manifest signed. One checkpoint his year required you to do 10 push-ups or take a shot of vodka. Another made you write down your New Year’s resolution. Another made you put your forehead on a baseball bat that is touching the ground and do 5 turns, followed by slamming a Budweiser. As you can see, this is serious racing.

We ended up going from Midtown, up to 70th, down to the bottom of the island and back up to 42nd for the finish and awards ceremony in a bar. Epic fun I have to say. The awards ceremony had many great and funny awards which probably shouldn’t be repeated here. It took place at one of your “less fancy” Manhattan establishments. Some would call it a dive. Others would call it “the only place that would have us”.

Needless to say, there was not a lot of emphasis on who won. Style points were much more important. In fact, the winner or DFL award, got a “Gold 40″ which is a solid gold bottle of some kind of very expensive liquor.

Suffice to say, it was fun, a great way to celebrate the end of 2005.

Walking out of the bar, we were greeted with a dumping snowstorm…PERFECT!

Ciao, and Happy New Year!!!
Scot aka Chuck aka Pimpy Blogstocking

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 31st, 2005 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Scot?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.