#ipants

Last weekend, I traveled to Randall’s Island and Wards Island, which are effectively a single landmass, to attend a friend’s birthday celebration at a golf center. It was, suffice it to say, an odd location.

Historically, Randall’s Island has occupied an odd place. It was the seat of Robert Moses’ Triborough Bridge Authority, which, for a time, answered to neither New York City nor New York State governments. Wards Island houses a number of psychiatric facilities, and their presence, together with the lack of other residents, lends a somewhat disconcerting feel to the conjoined islands. One who’s grown used to the dense population of the rest of New York City will immediately note how much open space there is on the islands, even if much of that open space seems occupied by construction machinery. This machinery, though, doesn’t seem to be building anything. While I’m an avowed unbeliever in supernatural phenomena, I sometimes feel that those islands are haunted. Why they feel that way is an enigma. Evidently, another visitor to the island agrees with me on this point, and left evidence on the 103rd Street pedestrian bridge:

That the island is an enigma, of sorts, is, apparently, not a universal sentiment, as this message from another visitor makes clear:

Yet others seem altogether unconcerned with the enigma, or lack thereof, and instead seem focused on the goings on in their iPants, which are, presumably, forthcoming from Apple after their iBike is released:

I show these images only to suggest that Randall’s Island and Wards Island are many things to many people. To some, apparently, they can even stand in for Staten Island:

Suffice it to say, I was confused about the islands before even setting foot on them. My confusion grew, however, upon encountering this bike rack:

Initially, I thought the rack to be the product of some DOT sponsored initiative to make bike racks more interesting by holding a design contest or commissioning David Byrne to design racks. I quickly realized, though, that this was no defective design but the work of a thief—both ends were, originally, set into the concrete. When I got closer, I could even see, in the hole in the concrete, the pipe inside it. While I don’t support bike theft in any form, I had to hand it to this thief that he or she had done a nice, clean job of it.

The rack’s location, cut or not, also proved enigmatic. There are no real residential units on Randall’s and Wards Island, and there were no attractions to speak of near this rack. Instead, it was along a (very nice) path, in the shadow of one of the psychiatric facilities. It was not, however, near the entrance, it was near a fence. From what I could tell, one would have no good reason to lock a bike to the rack, and yet someone clearly had, as the cut rack clearly showed. A little ways down the path, I encountered what I suspected to be more of the same thief’s handiwork:

While it lacks the formal audacity of the thief’s other work, this rack’s modification is clearly just as effective for the purpose of stealing bikes. Again, the rack’s location seemed an odd place to lock a bike, yet, again, someone clearly had. Given the proximity of one cut rack to another, it seemed likely that, before both racks had been cut, anyone who had locked their bike to the uncut rack would have noticed the other cut rack and thought twice about leaving a bike unattended but, again, the presence of two cut racks put the lie to this theory. Truly, I could not understand why the destroyed racks were left there; they served as little more than evidence of past crimes.

Between the broken racks, the psychiatric hospitals and my general belief that the Islands are haunted, if only with the hateful ghost of Robert Moses (who, incidentally, afforded for no legal bike access to the islands, despite the many bridges), I continued to my destination. There, I discovered that Rick Nielsen has apparently been living a double life: