Canarsie's Famous "Wheelmen" Bicycle Races

When bicycle riding was at its height in the early teens, cars were very few and Henry Ford was coming out with his Model T, with its planetary transmission, which was not a stick shift. All you had to do was push down on clutch pedal for first speed and let it go all the way back and you were in high speed when you could get all of 25 miles per hour with it.

Not too many owned one of them. It sold for around $400 and a special planetary license was needed to drive it, so most of our young men formed a club called "The Canarsie Wheelmen" and they made their headquarters in a small building on East 92nd Street near Skidmore Lane.

They had a bicycle track made between Avenue K and Avenue L, which had on each end a large hill. The track was flat all the distance on both sides; about a half mile track that went from East 94th Street to East 92nd and the start was in the middle, where East 93rd Street was to come through later on.

The races were held on Independence Day, July 4th and Labor Day in September. Well-known Canarsiens took part in the race, including Lou Kern with his starter, Jackie Abrams; Gus Guiler with brother George, his starter; Bert White, with brother "Scrapy" White; and Art McAvoy with Fritz, our Canarsie lawyer, William R. Wilson, who was later in charge of the Corporation Council Office of the City of New York and then an Honorable Supreme Court Judge for New York State, gave the signal. This race was held on July 4th about 1912 and the two men to watch were Ellie Abrams, a Canarsie oyster dealer with Brother James Pitty Abrams to root for Lou Kern, who was an employee of Ellie.

They also had a juvenile race on the track at times with Ray McAvoy (brother of Art) and Stephen Hawkshurst, son of Henry Hawkshurst the farmer from down Church Lane. They would (just the two of them) race for a prize like a watch or a ten dollar gold piece. There was a spill once in a while at the turn on the hills when a couple of bikes got tangled up and sometimes a couple of riders would wind up with a broken arm or dislocated shoulder. But after recovering, they looked for the next racing day.

When the bikes needed repairs they would be taken to Archie McDonald, who had his shop in the rear of his home on East 92nd Street across from M.P. Church. This was a great sport at that time for all the young men of "Little Old Canarsie."

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