Bike Snob - Anonymous [41]
Punk was an anti-establishment statement born on the rough streets of New York City and London in the 1970s. By the 1980s, though, it had evidently grown tired of the streets and was instead fomenting revolt in summer camps across America, because that’s where I first discovered it. Nonetheless, punk’s urgency was hardly diminished, because after only a few hours with my off-brand Walkman and a borrowed cassette tape I had not only adopted this music as my own, but I’d also vowed to wage war against the establishment. Of course, in my case the establishment was the camp’s director, an affable, bespectacled man, with a strong resemblance to Woody Allen and a penchant for Gilligan hats, named Eric “Scobes” Scoblionko. Drunk with power (and probably some bug juice) “Scobes” did not allow us to ride our skateboards at camp, and insisted that we keep them stowed up in the rafters until the end of the summer or else he’d take them away. Well, once I took those headphones off, nobody—but nobody—was going to tell me I couldn’t skate at camp. And there was no way anybody was going to take my board from me—I’d like to see them try.
Well, it turns out Scobes’s nebbishy persona belied a steely resolve, and even though I was emboldened by eighties hardcore I ultimately proved to be no match for him. He did give me my skateboard back on the last day of camp, though, and I came home with both it and a new wardrobe. (Actually, it was just my old wardrobe, but it had stuff drawn on it.) And more than that, I returned with an identity. Once I was home, I immersed myself further in this exciting new world. Before long, I’d been there, done that, and literally purchased the T-shirt (on Saint Mark’s Place, where else?). I was inscrutable and mysterious to my classmates, and I’d even get the coveted barely perceptible head nod of approval from others like myself.
But I was soon to find out that basing your identity on a subculture is a tricky thing, because they don’t always dovetail neatly into other subcultures. It so happened I was also getting interested in BMX racing, and around this time I made my first trip to Newbridge Road BMX track in Bellmore to do a race. Naturally, outfit selection would be critical, so in order to display my Camp Wekeela-via-the-Lower-East-Side street cred I picked out my least intact jeans, my most damaged sneakers, and even hand-drew a fresh T-shirt for the occasion. I topped it all off with a Pro-Tec skateboard helmet complete with bubble visor and snap-on chin guard and prepared to intimidate my fellow racers.
Unfortunately, though, it turned out that the BMX racing subculture was different from my punk subculture, and when I lined up at the starting gate, instead of being intimidated, my fellow racers had the audacity to laugh at me as though I looked ridiculous. Of course, I did look ridiculous—between my tattered clothing and the helmet I probably looked like a homeless stunt man about to launch his shopping cart through a ring of fire—but I certainly didn’t think so at the time. And they of course looked equally ridiculous, since everybody was decked out in full motocross gear, right down to the colorful nylon pants with giant logos all over them. They looked exactly like the kids hanging out at Chuck’s Bike-O-Rama in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.
So there we were, a bunch of leering twelve-year-olds already sizing each other up, waiting for the gate to drop and the race to begin. Little did I know at the time that this was a moment pregnant with significance. See, when I got to the track I was already vibrating with nervousness—if you had placed a tuning fork against my forehead it probably would have resonated audibly. I was under more tension than the spokes lacing my Araya rims to my Peregrine hubs. (Cyclists never forget their components.) My nervousness mounted until the gate dropped. Then, something amazing happened. The nervousness disappeared, leaving only total clarity. The entire race lasted maybe thirty seconds, but in that time absolutely nothing existed except the track and me. I didn’t worry