Won't Get Byrned Again: The Indignity of Being an Unwitting Participant

While many Craigslist "missed connections" posts are noteworthy in their specificity, some are actually conspicuous in their ambiguity. The following post is an example of the latter:



guy on a bike at david byrne show - w4m (prospect park )
Reply to: [deleted]
Date: 2009-06-09, 1:01AM EDT

we saw each other in passing not once but twice after the david byrne show. you were biking away on your bike and saying goodbye as i was walking home. i thought you were cute!


While it's possible the lack of detail is an attempt to solicit as many responses as possible by omitting any specifics that might serve as filters, it's more likely that this particular poster simply lacks descriptive prowess. The fact is that not everybody can describe a person accurately using only words. This is why if you're an eligible person in a large urban center and you want to be singled out for a "missed connection" it's extremely important to apply as many distinguishing features to yourself as possible. Just imagine how much more effective the above post would be if it included the sentence, "You were shirtless with a tattoo of Charles Nelson Reilly on your back, you were wearing fishing waders, and you had a pair of live macaws on your handlebars." Of course, this can backfire, since in a large enough city the more people try to set themselves apart the more they end up looking like each other. (For example, one needs only visit Williamsburg, Brooklyn to see that the Charles Nelson Reilly tattoo and waders is the tribal arm band and Dr. Martens of 2009.) Still, every little bit helps.

In truth, looking for a "guy on a bike" at last night's David Byrne concert in Prospect Park, Brooklyn was like looking for a guy with a helmet mirror at a charity ride--it described just about everybody there. And the reason I know this is that I myself was at last night's David Byrne concert; moreover, I was there on a bike as well. However, it just so happens that I was there completely by accident.

Firstly, I should say that I'm not much of a David Byrne fan, and as such I don't keep abreast of his comings and goings. Sure, since he's also become the Bono of local cycling advocacy it's inevitable I come across him from time to time, but for the most part he's like a Canadian parliamentary debate to me in that I know he's there and I know he's important to a bunch of white people, but nonetheless I have absolutely no interest in listening. Secondly, I should also mention that I regularly ride my bike through Prospect Park. Between my commute and the fact that most of the local races take place there too I've gone through that park more times than Paul Kimmage has been through Lance Armstrong's garbage.

Ordinarily, ignoring David Byrne and riding through Prospect Park regularly have never been a problem for me. However, yesterday evening, these two seemingly unrelated facets of my existence collided with disastrous consequences. As I entered the park, I noticed a larger number of people than usual in the vicinity of the band shell. "No big deal," I naively thought to myself. The summer concert season has obviously begun, and ordinarily there's no problem riding past the stage even when a show is in progress. "I'll just ride through slowly." Unfortunately, I didn't know that this particular concert was being given by David Byrne, nor did I appreciate the large number of people who apparently want to hear him. Before I knew it, it was too late to exit the park, and I was quite literally trapped in a throng of hipsters:

I valiantly tried to stay on my bike for as long as possible, but I was soon forced to dismount and walk. After awhile though even that became almost impossible. It was like being trapped in hipster quicksand. Even worse, since this was David Byrne, the quicksand was multi-generational, and the hipsters ranged from young ones desperately trying to find each-other via cellphone to older ones with "man boobs" (I believe the polite term is "manmaries") wearing Moog t-shirts and carrying their small children. I still did not know who was playing, but I was vaguely aware of a thin, warbly sort of ambient whining coming from the vicinity of the stage. I was too frightened to ask anybody who the performer was, but just as you can look at rock strata to determine the age of the Earth, I determined from the cross-section of the crowd that whoever was in that bandshell was probably pretty old.

Oh, and there were bikes. Lots of them. Some were locked to poles:



Others were under concert goers:


And to my utter horror, some people were even using them as dinner tables:

(All You Haters Scarf My Takeout.)

By now I was beginning to feel like Sean Connery in "Finding Forrester" when they go to Madison Square Garden and he has an agoraphobic freakout, and it seemed entirely possible that I might never escape this crowd. So panicked was I that I began to imagine that the world beyond the park was in chaos as well. After all, given the sheer number of people here, there must be empty apartments full of unguarded modern furnishings and late-model Apple computers from here all the way to Greenpoint. ITTET, surely hordes of bandits were now sweeping across Brookyn plundering recently-closed co-ops and gorging themselves from Sub-Zero refrigerators brimming with Fresh Direct produce. Overwhelmed by the thought that even if I survived this crowd a whole new set of horrors awaited me beyond it, it was at this point that I began to swoon:



I also realized that, while so much of what I had previously thought was important in life no longer mattered to me now, there were two things of which I was absolutely certain:

1) I don't want to die;

2) If I do die, I don't want it to be from choking to death on a blond dreadlock.

Then I saw something in the distance. At first, I thought the crowd had resorted to cannibalism and someone was holding aloft a human corpse. Soon though my eyes adjusted and I realized a concertgoer was literally raising a fixie in the air over the heads of the crowd. I managed to photograph it, though the bicycle is only barely visible:

Yes, apparently at concerts people don't hold their lighters or cellphones in the air anymore. Instead, they just use their track bikes. In a way, it would have been less terrifying had it been a corpse.

In the end, though, I managed to stay conscious, and to my intense relief I eventually made it through the crowd and to the relative safety of the streets of Brooklyn. Incidentally, if after reading this you actually still want to go to a concert for some reason, you can win tickets to something called "All Points West" on Fat Cyclist's sister's blog:

Yes, the Fat Cyclist family is a lot like the mafia, except instead of killing people they just make you help them raffle stuff off for LiveStrong. Sadly, I don't think David Byrne is playing "All Points West," but I was surprised to see that My Bloody Valentine are one of the bands on the bill, and when it comes to ambient noise they make listening to David Byrne seem like holding a conch shell up to your ear. So if you're ready for some Sidi-gazing, visit Pistols and Popcorn and enter the contest. And if you win, don't forget to bring your bike so you can wave it over your head during the power ballads.