 Hi there. I am sitting in a little park here tucked away in New York City and today I'm gonna show you how to get around New York City by bicycle and a lot of people think wow New York that place must be nuts to ride a bike there's so much traffic and chaos and noise and other things and that is true but New York is actually a great place to ride a bicycle. They're doing a lot in the world of bicycle advocacy and adding more bike lanes. I personally love riding here. It's exhilarating and fun and pretty safe. So I enlisted the help of my good friend Clarence Eggerson Jr. He has highlighted transportation projects all over the world. He knows New York City so well all the bike lanes and he has a rad bike. Look at that bike. That's my kid or it's for you maybe. Yeah I think I should sit right there. So where are we gonna roll today? Well we're here in Williamsburg so we're gonna see a few things here in Brooklyn. I'm gonna take people over to Queens to see you know Queens doesn't really get it stewed to see some of the cool things we got going on there. It really kind of depends where you are in the city. Yeah there's a lot of different kinds of lanes and there's a lot of different types of lanes to see. So I thought we'd do that and then we maybe head over to Manhattan to see a little bit of Manhattan. Alright so we're gonna get Ryan a city bike. Yesterday in fact we set a record for a daily city bike use. I think it was 80 about 89,000 rides. So all what you see here is new. All these residential towers, all this public space, all this waterfront access. You know I can tell you 20 years ago we used to come over here and we'd hike over boulders and fences and broken bottles and who knows what maybe occasional dead body. Just to you know walk along the waterfront. Now you know it's nice to see that you know people are gonna grow up with this from day one. Look at us. Are you smart? We have a delivery truck right in the bike lane. Reminds me of the Casey Neistat video where he just crashed himself into everything that was blocking the bike lanes. Hit it. That's what happens. You almost hit somebody. And that's not allowed. They're not allowed to unload in the bike lanes but they just don't care. They don't care. They don't care. Whatever the truck. Clarence I like riding on bridges. Which one is this? This is the Pulaski bridge in about three years ago. After almost 10 years of adjudicacy and people asking for it. They decided to give us our own lane on the roadway. They took the roadway down from three to two lanes. Made this for bicycles. This just for pedestrians. And it's incredible. It's one of the more successful things that have ever happened because now you go between Brooklyn Queens without any stress. Are we in Queens dude? We'll be in Queens in exactly three. You know when I think of Queens I think of coming to America. That's one of my favorite movies man. We're in New York now. Let us dress as New Yorkers. I feel like a complete idiot. You see there is some nature in New York City. He just got to look for it. Like in the back of a little hoopty. A little bit of nature. It's really cool because at this spot they're going to be building a lot of businesses. A lot of residential towers. A lot of investment. And they put in the protected bike lanes basically before anything. And it's kind of what we need to be doing in any city in America that we know it's going to be having a lot of investment. You got to build the infrastructure now for when people move in. So they don't gripe and moan and community boards go. We don't want bike lanes. Because that's what happened. This is so cool. It's like a little observation deck overlooking Manhattan. So this opened up last year and we're right along the waterfront in Queens at Gantry State Park. And you can see they have designed this for our future for when the seas rise. All this can you know take a lot more water than used to be what was here. So you know we're looking at very environmentally friendly. Very accessible for recreation and walkers and runners. We have the protected bike lane out there. We are set in this area for hopefully the next 50 years when the seas rise. But there's a lot of plans to do stuff like this all around New York along the East River and anywhere that touches water. What should I do? There's a truck in the bike lane. Do we hit them? These guys are just parked here. We're riding it legally on the sidewalk now but what are you gonna do? Carved out by New York City DOT and parks so that we can get safely to the Queensborough Bridge. So we're about to head into Manhattan over the Queensborough Bridge. Not as it says the Edcott Bridge. Nobody calls it the Edcott Bridge. I've never heard anybody say that. This is quite a climb to go over this bridge. Everything in New York is somewhat flat. But if you live in one of the boroughs and you got to go to Manhattan, you face a climb at some point. So this is First Avenue and you can see from First Avenue they have a bus lane, bus only lane, and they also have the protected bike lane which I absolutely adore. I love First Avenue. It's my favorite bike lane in all of Manhattan. It goes from Canal Street all the way up to the 120s. Yeah buddy. Oh wow. I don't know where he's going surfing but he's going to have a great day. That is a guarantee. That's pretty cool. You know another good reason that these are so wide and also here you can see people that are in wheelchairs can use them. People on scooters. We are in Central Park and we are going to get a break from the madness of Manhattan. Central Park was made completely car-free just last year and that followed a long time of advocacy. From the 70s, 1970s we got weekends closed and then you know incrementalism a little bit here more and more and more until you can now see the wonderful quiet oasis that it is that people that live in the city come for a little peace of mind. It is as quiet as it's going to get anywhere in Manhattan here. Ah you know I feel like my heart rate has seriously gone down being here in Central Park. You can just breathe easier and it smells better. Everything is better in Central Park which goes to show that nature when you allow it to grow really does good things for human well-being and of course nature and animals. There's birds flying overhead and it's bizarre because I flipped this camera around you can see some huge buildings right here. We would love to hang out in Central Park and have a little picnic but Clarence has to pick up his little boy so we're going to go get him. Yeah Clarence the third! Not Clarence Jr. that's me. Oh I want this bike the Lovemore bike. Pride week. I think it's for Pride week and yeah we are going to celebrate. It's another truck garden. You might see bikes like this that are painted white and left out as a shrine that in cities all over the world and they're called ghost bikes and they're to commemorate people who have died while riding their bikes and I like what they've done here they actually made it like an official monument now with a sign and everything and it's just a reminder that you know there's a lot of bike lanes a lot of bike infrastructure but you still have to be very careful especially in a city like New York. Is that your boy? That's my boy. Say hi Clarence. Yeah my man. Who can only ride in the green lanes? Bicycles. He really enjoys the back of the bike and you know it's it's so much nicer to you know interact with your kid on a bicycle and talk to them and they get to see nature and they get to feel the weather and they're you know not restricted inside of a car. We are hanging out in this little park lit took over two parking spots they made this cozy place to sit. Brian a big hug. Thank you buddy. Thank you for having a play date with us. How were you playing? Brian you had a play date with us? I guess I did. Yeah we just had a play date that was so fun. Yeah but it was great that we actually got to see three boroughs yeah and um three hours. Three hours to see. A lot of fun things and there's like so much more going on and I really appreciate you showing me a little piece of your world man. Yeah it's fun and again New York has a long way to go and it's a little trouble in areas to ride but if you know what you're doing and you know the good places to go yeah you can really get around pretty safely. That's right so if you ever come to New York City get one of the city bikes and just start cruising around and you'll figure it out and you know ride fairly carefully and you should be a okay we didn't get hit by any cars today. No not even close.