The first time I saw David Byrne on a bike came six years into my New York residency. It felt right, the timing. After years of grinding and leveling up, I finally encounter a rare spawn along the West Side Highway.
Riding the Hudson River bikepath on Manhattan’s West Coast is one of New York City biking’s iconic stretches; I rarely go there. The highest concentrations of bike dorks are in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and on the Hudson River bikepath. I can’t speak for the Bronx, but there’s got to be an epicenter up there too. I was killing time. One of the best parts of city life is you have X amount of time in between things. You’re not going to go home back and forth (if that’s even an option). What the hell are you going to do? Today I was riding around handing out flyers for a comedy show trying to get them in the hands of as many bikers as possible. The flyer looked great. “DON’T HONK AT ME” Most everybody was disappointed it wasn’t a sticker.
My method was to catch up to people, chat them up, hand them a flyer, and ride off. It was mid-afternoon and traffic was light with regular barren stretches. I had done a couple laps from Chambers Street to the Intrepid (54th) and was heading North once more. Somewhere past Christopher a lone biker came into view, and the only distinguishing characteristic from a hundred yards was that this biker was wearing a red jumpsuit. It was a cruising bike. Lastly I noticed white hair cut short. I eased my speed up next to him. The dude looked a lot like David Byrne. I readied a flyer and gave him a look, hoping to safely get his attention. When he looked at me I smiled and said, “For a moment I thought you were David Byrne.” He kind of laughed. Then I told him I was doing a comedy show and handed him a flyer. He smiled and took it, and I took off. He was soon out of sight.
After a solid minute I stopped, thought about it, and turned around. When I passed him we didn’t acknowledge each other. Then I turned around and caught up to him. I was in the left lane; he was in the right. He was looking at me as I approached. We made eye contact. I said, “You are, aren’t you?” He nodded. I rode off again.
A couple of months ago I was parking my bike on 36th & 6th when I locked eyes with David Axelrod. He was in regular clothes just out to get shit. That’s how it looked anyway. He took a slight defensive posture, expecting me to say something and hoping I wouldn’t. It wasn’t fear — maybe a dollop of dread. Five seconds of hard eye contact with a stranger on the streets of New York is a genuine moment. Most of the time when you encounter a stranger it’s nothing, you don’t even notice each other. Often enough you make fleeting eye contact in a normal human way. Every once in a while you look at each other, and both of you (probably) are wondering what the hell the other person is looking at. Sometimes in New York, these strangers happen to be celebrities of some sort. There’s a whole lot of guys around Greenwich Village with eyeglasses and Mets hats. When you look close, one of those guys, sometime, is going to be Matthew Broderick. I don’t know how many New York City bikers have white hair and love wearing jumpsuits, but I know David Byrne isn’t the only one. It’s a great look; that’s why he goes for it.