Bike Karma

Bike Karma - How to Be Orange Chapter __ (part 1)

I bike. Even in Chicago. If ever you’ve seen the one madman, biking in the middle of a snowstorm, that was me. When I saw the standard means of transport in Amsterdam, a part of me felt like I was home.

My first bike in Amsterdam was a rental. Then a loaner. I asked where to get my own bike, and the common answer I received was ‘Go find a junkie.’ I’d happened to be accompanying a friend of mine home, when a junkie approached us. ‘Fiets te koop’ meant ‘Wanna buy a bike?’ My friend offered 50 Guilders, and presto he had a bike. The next night, I found myself wandering the same street on the way home, with 50 Guilders in my pocket.

It was near the Red Light District that I found a thoroughly disreputable looking gentleman on a bike, saying ‘wanna buy?’ I nodded yes and followed him around the corner into one of the myriad shadowy corners. I looked at the bike. It seemed rather new. I asked, ‘How much?’ And he said, ‘25 Guilders.’ This seemed a bit too good to be true. All my instincts were now telling me I was in over my head. If I’d been brought up in New York City, I’d have said ‘I don’t like this,’ and walked away. But I was from the Midwest, and I felt that wouldn’t have been polite.

I held up 25 Guilders and asked ‘Can I try it first?’ Now nervous, the man said ‘Yeah. Here,’ and he gave me the bag he was holding, so he could turn the bike around. To my surprise, he hopped on the bike and took off – with my 25 Guilders. Like an idiot, I followed him, saying ‘You forgot your bag…’

A quick examination of the plastic baggie proved that I hadn’t purchased a bike at all, but instead what looked like crack cocaine. I’d heard of these guys. Fake drug dealers. It’s one of the more enduring scams in the city. And it’s not technically illegal, since no one was in possession of any real drugs. It’s just some powder made to look like a rock of crack in a baggie.

At this point I’d drawn a bit of attention to myself, since I was holding up a bag of drugs in public. One downtrodden guy was looking at me curiously. I said, ‘Can you believe it? I was trying to buy the bike. Instead, I got fake drugs.’ Wide-eyed, the guy said ‘Let me see that…’ The way he cherished the bag, I’d started to think maybe it wasn’t fake. It occurred to me to say ‘That’ll be 25 Guilders, Sir…’ But in retrospect, I was happy to get out of there with my syringe virginity.

The junkie bike. At one point, everyone I knew had one. My boss even had one covered in red & yellow tape, to be decorative. That’s how I learned a valuable lesson about Amsterdam biking etiquette. My colleague had borrowed the fancy, taped-up bike from our boss. Together, we were riding side by side in the bike lane. At one point, the bike lane merged a bit with the sidewalk, and two pedestrians started shouting at us in Dutch. We weren’t sure what we’d done wrong, but one of these guys had lunged at my colleague and started grabbing the bike. It soon became apparent that this pedestrian was – in fact – the one who’d meticulously applied the red & yellow tape, since it was his bike. And he had every reason to believe we’d actively stolen it. My colleague was trying to explain: ‘But you see, I’m just borrowing the bike from the guy who paid the guy who stole it from you…’ And after realizing what he’d just said, he immediately gave the bike back.

Now we had to explain to our boss what had happened to his bike. He just laughed ‘Easy come, easy go. Sorry to put you in that situation.’ That would not be the last awkward situation. Another colleague of mine was caught on camera. On the front page of Het Parool. They were doing an exposé on the rampant sale of junkie bikes in Amsterdam, and they had a tryptic of photos chronicling the sale, with the faces blurred. But to anyone who knew him, it was obvious: that man is Pete Grosz. The location was right next to Boom Chicago. Of course, Boom Chicago was not implicated. Though they’ve sold me more than one illegal bike over the years.

I like to think I’ve paid for my junkie bike sins, in that I’ve had so many of my own bikes stolen. Although I guess you can’t really call it stealing when I leave my keys in the lock, like an idiot.