As Brokelyn’s senior bike riding correspondent, I’ve had plenty of mishaps while riding my bike that could really ruin my day. Flat tires, brake cables just snapping while I have 20 punds of freight attached to my bike. One time I pedaled so hard i just snapped part of my cassette completely in half. Every time things like that have happened, I’ve turned looked around in vain for a bike shop. Had I known about Ride the City though, I wouldn’t feel alone. And now you know about it, so you’ll never be alone again anymore.
Ride the City is a pretty simple map website: it has little icons all over a GoogleMap of the city showing you where bike shops and even bike rental shops are, just in case you have the sudden urge to take a ride while you’re walking around. Which is nice, cutting out the middleman of waiting for your janky spacephone to load GoogleMaps and then allow you to search where you are for somewhere to get a repair.
The site will also map out bike routes for you, with options for the safest route or the most direct route. If you want my advice, as the senior bike riding correspondent, always go for the most direct route. The more time you spend riding on pothole-filled streets with traffic blasting by you, the quicker you’ll get acclimated to it all, so that you won’t be nervous if you find yourself biking on the side of a turnpike for some reason.
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Do NOT take the authors advice! This guy got hit by a car a few weeks back. Take the SAFE route! Seriously, if the direct route says to go down Bushwick Ave., don’t be a dumbass, there are streets to the left and right of that street that are waaaayyyy safer. Just go one or two extra blocks to ride a 1/2 mile down a safe street as opposed to not riding the extra blocks and going down Bushwick Ave or Broadway or Metropolitan or Flushing. Stay off those streets at all costs! In fact a really great improvement for this map and others like it would be to mark high danger streets like the ones I mention in RED.
I ride a bike constantly and drive a car when needed and I can never understand people biking down Metropolitan or Bushwick or Broadway or Flushing because there are safe streets with virtually no cars that go the same direction one or two blocks over.
I repeat, take the safe routes, don’t listen to the guy who chooses to ride in between two speeding metal death objects in order to save time. The few minutes you save going the direct route are all lost when you’re in the hospital or dead!
This is totally the site for you.
plaidjack:
1. I take issue with your logic: You could be in the hospital AND dead.
2. Clearly, you have not spent quality time between two speeding metal death objects. Last time I surfed the cab-cab vortex I learned the meaning of “Rosebud.” You should try it.