May is National Bike Month, which gives you every excuse to bust out your deluxe ten-speed tandem penny farthing. While we’re excited for all the upcoming bike events around Brooklyn, we recommend really committing to the commemorative month lifestyle by celebrating some of the other great causes May represents, like Jewish American Heritage month, Celiac Awareness Month, South Asian Heritage Month, National Pet Month and Asthma Awareness Month. So in addition to checking out these great bike events, we hope you take your Indian grandmother biking on Mother’s Day, and remember to bring your rabbi’s gluten-intolerant puppy for the ride. And please don’t ask when White Men in Cars will finally get their month.
May 1
WE Bike NYC is hosting a Bike Month Kick-Off Happy Hour at Mission Dolores from 6pm-9pm to kick off Bike Month. All genders welcome.
May 3
Jane’s Walk is a global movement of free tours that encourage people to explore their neighborhoods. Transportation Alternatives is hosting Jane’s Walk: Livable Streets in South Brooklyn, a free tour through Park Slope and Boerum Hill highlighting new design features intended to make the area’s streets safer. The three-mile walk begins at noon in the center of Bartel-Pritchard Square and the host will be holding a large “20 is Plenty” sign.
May 4
Registration for the annual TD Five Boro Bike Tour may be closed, but you can still watch people exercise from the sidelines while you eat wheel-shaped foods. Like donuts! And cinnamon buns! Or maybe even bike-lava!
May 5
The Brooklyn Historical Society and Transportation Alternatives present Spinning Wheels! Pedal-Powered Trivia with the Trivia Masters, a bike-themed mix of pop culture questions, songs, and film clips. The event starts at 6:30pm and tickets are $15 or $10 for BHS members. Prizes include passes to the Gotham Side Walks biking tour of Brooklyn baseball.
May 10
New York Bike Jumble, the city’s only bicycle flea market, returns to Washington/JJ Byrne Park around the Old Stone House in Park Slope from 10am-4pm. New and used bikes and accessories are up for sale at “internet prices without internet shadiness!”
Self-proclaimed sewage enthusiasts will be leading the 17-mile Brooklyn Sewage Bike Tour around Southern Brooklyn, where they’ll bike to three sewage plants, one storm water retention facility and one Combined Sewage Overflow outflow point. They’ll explain the history of sewage treatment in Southern Brooklyn and discuss how the ways the the water around Coney Island has become less horrifying than it was in the 1800s. The three-hour tour is $25 and starts at 11am at the 26th Ward Sewage Plant on Van Siclen Ave and Schroeder Ave in East New York.
Join Time’s Up for their monthly Prospect Park Moonlight Ride. The ride leaves from Grand Army Plaza at 9pm.
May 16
The NYC Audobon Society is hosting Biking and Birding: Prospect Park and Green-wood Cemetery, a gently-paced bird-watching bike tour. Tickets are $39, $27 for NYC Audubon members and the tour leaves from Grand Army Plaza at 9am.
Transportation Alternatives will be backing you up on Bike to Work Day with fueling stations around the city at places including the three East River bridges, DUMBO and Madison Square Park, where you can get free iced coffee and granola.
End Bike to Work Day with Transportation Alternative’s free Bike Home from Work Party
May 17
The Brooklyn Public Library hosts its 2nd annual Bike the Branches. There are prizes for riders who visit the most branches between 10am and 5pm and a Finish Line Celebration at the Central Library from 5pm-7pm. Check out the themed route suggestions here.