ADMIT it – you nested all winter long and ate everything in sight. And now, the countdown to a beach-suitable body has begun.
You could grab the jogging shoes or put some air in the tires of the ten-speed, just like last summer. Or you can mix things up a little bit, and go extreme.
If freestyle biking is your speed, then head down to Owl’s Head Park in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, home to one of the city’s best extreme meccas, the Millennium Skate Park.
Skate park regulars don’t have a lot of kind words to say about the in-line skating crowd. “It’s the final nail in the coffin of a park when the rollerbladers take over,” Martin Fedor, a skateboard enthusiast for 18 years, insists. “There’s no getting out of the way of them, and vice versa.”
There’s also no love lost between skateboarders, who consider skate parks to be rightfully theirs (the public skate parks in New York were designed by a skateboarder), and freestyle bikers, who feel unfairly excluded.
Skaters accuse bikers of damaging the ramps with their bikes. “Some of the skaters are BMX bike haters,” says Anthony Chiarelli, a freestyle biker for four years and a regular at Owl’s Head. “It’s like racism against BMX.”
Owl’s Head is one skate park that is welcoming to bikers, in part because Jason Schwab, one of the managers, has been a freestyle biker for 21 years. He looks after all the bikers, some of them 9 or 10 years old. The kids call him Shaggy.
“Shaggy’s cool. And he lets me ride his bike,” says Bimi Qoku, a 14-year-old from Dyker Heights. “Skaters used to rule this park,” Shaggy explains. “Now it’s different. You can mix.”
If you fall into the BMX-hating camp, bring a board to Riverside Skate Park, home of the best free vertical ramp in the city. This is one of the better maintained skate parks in New York, but it isn’t very welcoming to freestyle bikers.
Don’t have a burning need for speed? Check out the climbing wall at the Manhattan Plaza Health Club. It’s 22 feet of reinforced concrete with a mean overhang. “This place is great for someone who’s never done it before,” says Dylan Keefe, a climbing instructor.
Unlike the male-dominated skate park scene, many women can be found climbing. “Flexibility, balance and strength-to-weight ratio are all very important,” says Keefe. “Women definitely excel at this sport.”
Once you’ve mastered the climbing wall, you can head to Rat Rock in Central Park near the ice rink. The boulder is popular with frustrated urbanites looking to grapple with real stone in the real outdoors.
Growing up, if you always threatened to run away and join the circus, Trapeze School New York can fulfill your fantasy. This is a unique spot to learn the “aerial arts.”
The school came to Hudson River Park in 2002 and is designed for the daring and not-so-daring, aged 6 to 60. A lesson is a little more than $50, and its Web site has detailed instructions for cutting the flaps of broken skin off your hands when you’re done.
Looking for a wet and wild bit of extremism? Try the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim. It’s a 28.5-mile route around Manhattan through the East, Harlem and Hudson rivers scheduled for June 14. You must be a very strong swimmer to be allowed to race – the application process includes an uninterrupted seven-hour swim to demonstrate the necessary endurance.
For Scott Willett, a veteran of the 1985 race, it was a one-time-only experience. “It takes a lot of time to prepare for that race. Someone once said to me, swimming long distance is like putting your head in a toilet and leaving it there for four hours.”
Extreme indeed.
Extreme lengths
Millennium Skate Park
Owls Head Park, 65th Street and Colonial Road, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
Riverside Skate Park
108th Street and Riverside Drive, lower level of the park.
Manhattan Plaza Climbing Wall
482 W. 43rd St., between Ninth and 10th avenues; (212) 563-7001.
Trapeze School New York
West Street, at the Hudson River (between piers 34 and 36); (917) 797-1872.
Manhattan Island Marathon Swim
