RECREATION : 32,000 Cyclists Get N.Y. Streets to Themselves

For five glorious hours last weekend, New York banned cars from 42 miles of its busiest streets and bridges and issued a carte blanche invitation to bicyclists: The roads are yours; come view our city over the top of your handlebars.

The result? Thirty-two thousand people showed up with their bicycles Sunday--6,000 more people than turned out at Yankee Stadium to watch the Yankees play the White Sox. It was the largest bike tour ever held in the United States, a two-wheeled happening that attracted bikers old and young from a dozen countries and a score of states and made New York seem like the quietest, gentlest place on earth.

“Can you imagine someone saying, ‘Let’s go to New York, and by the way, bring your bike. You can bike the whole city.’? It was a unique chance for us,” said Jinette Lepage, who came from Montreal with 500 Canadians in 10 chartered buses. They hired two 40-foot moving vans to haul their bikes.

Ever since 1977, when 200 bikers made the ride, New York has set aside the first Sunday in May, rain or shine, for its Great Five Boro Bike Tour, commonly called Bike New York. It is an event that has nothing to do with winning times and everything to do with pedaling along at your own pace to see the best and worst of New York neighborhoods.

By 7:30 Sunday morning, Battery Park in lower Manhattan had turned into a sea of cyclists, awaiting the start of the 42-mile ride up Church Street to Central Park and beyond. They sat astride spiffy 21-gear TREKS and Cannondales, on tandems and recumbents--and old clunkers pulled out of the garage for the first time in years. Some, like Charles Komanoff, an energy economist, hauled their kids in mini bike trailers. “Daniel goes everywhere with us,” he said of his 18-month-old son.

From the starter’s stage, the amplified voice of local radio personality Bruce “Cousin Brucie” Morrow boomed: “New York welcomes you. Everywhere you go today you’ll find all the neighborhoods are set to welcome you.”

“So they’re only shooting blanks in the Bronx?” muttered Ezra Brown, who lives near Hartford, Conn., and has commuted to work on a bicycle for 30 years.

But New Yorkers, as is usually the case when the world is watching, were on their best behavior. They waited patiently at cross streets as a line of bikers reaching for miles flashed by, and blew not a single horn in frustration. They clapped on the steps of tenements in Harlem and Queens.

They even survived without the southbound lanes of FDR Drive and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge that links Brooklyn and Staten Island. The Staten Island Ferry turned away motorists and carried only the tourers and their bicycles back to Manhattan Sunday afternoon.

With a battalion of cops on bikes leading the way, what could have been a nightmare of gridlock disaster came off without a hitch.

Except for a handful of in-line skaters and several thousand crashers who slipped into the tour en route, riders paid $18 each. The sponsoring organization, American Youth Hostels, estimated the event cost $350,000 to put on and will make a profit of about $100,000 to underwrite its summer programs for youth.