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Get
Out: Risk jockeys
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Staten Island Live(silive.com), March 13, 2008
by Jodi Lee Reifer
The blueblood game of polo elevates cycling to bruising new high
Coasting across the asphalt on his mountain bike, Phil Miarmi picks up
speed. Thwack. Thwack. His stick hits the ground, narrowly missing the
street hockey ball.
A few seconds later, a couple more cyclists charge at the red ball,
mallets loaded with determination.
Thwack. Thwack. The ball shoots through two orange construction site
cones. Score!
Boom! Miarmi is flat on his back.
The 32-year-old cartographer has fallen hard for urban bike polo --
literally and figuratively.
"I'm loving it," says the Upper East Sider on his first day at it. "So
far, I'm sucking, but I'm loving it."
Armed with long-handled mallets (second-hand ski poles jury-rigged to
corrugated plastic tubes), customized bikes and nerve, adventurous
cyclists are hitting city parks for pick-up games and formal
competitions from Boston to Seattle. And make no mistake, this offshoot
of the vintage high society lawn game is more black and blue than
blueblood.
In Manhattan, they've claimed the court at Sara D. Roosevelt Park on
the Lower East Side.
Closer to hockey than its equestrian cousin, urban bike polo started on
the West Coast in the bike messenger communities of Seattle and
Portland, Ore., in the early 2000s. This version, also known as Little
Beirut, has fewer rules than even bike polo on the grass. The history
of straight-up cycle polo, played internationally today, stretches back
to the 1890s.
Modern urban bike polo rules are few, simple and vary slightly from
city to city. Shooters may use the flat side of the mallet to "shuffle"
the ball, but not to score. Goals, which pass through orange cones
about a bike's width apart, must be scored off the end of the mallet.
If a player's foot touches the ground at any time during the game they
have to "tap out" at an orange cone on the side of the court, but can
return immediately after. "Like" contact -- body to body, mallet to
mallet -- is allowed.
Games typically last less than 15 minutes and are over after a team --
each has three players -- scores five times.
"Hitting it is pretty tough because you're moving and the ball is
moving," says Miarmi, the newbie, who discovered the Lower East Side
bike polo scene by riding by a few weeks ago.
But even players who've been at it for years say bike polo is still
challenging.
"It's like being 6 all the time," says Jon Birdseye, 32, a photo
retoucher for a commercial photography studio. "You still get that
feeling you had when you were a little kid. If you can maintain that
feeling, why not?"
Many players prefer fixed-speed rides -- typical for messenger bikers
-- while other pluck bikes from the trash. The NYC players, a lose
bunch of mostly 20- and 30-somethings, don't answer to a leader.
Within the group of 50, who play pick-up games Sunday and with pre-fab
teams Thursday night are an architect, a luthier (maker of stringed
instruments), graphic artists and food delivery cyclists. Many adopt
anti-establishment aesthetics.
"We all definitely have a different attitude about bicycling than most
people. Regardless of what we do, it's how we get around," says
Birdseye, who bikes from his Astoria, Queens, apartment across the 59th
Street Bridge to work in Midtown Manhattan.
The group is mostly men, but several women, who take good ribbings and
bloody knees in stride, play too. On a recent afternoon one of the
ladies was teased because her undies were showing as she peddled.
"I watched for a long time and was just kind of a supporter -- then
decided I wanted to do it," says Quinn Shamlian, 25, of South Park
Slope, Brooklyn. The photo researcher for Discover magazine, who
started cycling in college, claims she's "horribly uncoordinated," but
now describes herself as a "decent" bike polo player.
"There is a lot of crashing," says Shamlian, laughing and shedding an
outer jacket on a frigid night, post-game. "That's what makes it fun.
After a while if you land on the same knee five times, it starts to
hurt. It's super fun."
BIKE CURIOUS?
Get in the NYC bike polo game Sundays from noon till dark. The free
games are in "the pit" in Sara D. Roosevelt Park, on Broome Street
between Chrystie and Forsyth streets on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Anybody able to ride a bike one handed and swing a mallet at the same
time is welcome. Die-hards supply mallets to newbies. NYCbikepolo
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