Tour de Queens 2008
Not even the heat and humidity of a sizzling 96 degree day could keep nearly 500 people from pedaling the inaugural Tour de Queens. The beautiful, family-friendly course - which hugged much of the northwest perimeter of the borough - was put together by the Queens Transportation Alternatives Committee and featured "lots of smiles per hour." Highlights included: a very bike-friendly Queens Museum of Art (which also showed some Streetfilms) and a briefly ironic moment where it looked like riders were queuing up for $4.25 per gallon gas!
Mike Heffron: [00:00] Welcome everyone to the first annual Tour de Queens.
Paul Steely-White: [00:06] Five, four, three, two, one, Queens, Tour de Queens is underway.
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John Liu: [00:26] I think this is a great day to not only have a great, great time, but to promote cycling, and this is something that Transportation Alternatives has been doing so… for so many years, so successfully. We’re going to make this city a far more bike friendly place.
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Tom Finkelpearl: [00:47] Welcome to Queens worth, it’s really good to be here and I can’t wait to do the ride. Come on inside afterwards, if you haven’t seen the panorama, you can see the route that you rode on the world cyclist architectural model.
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Anthony Weiner: [01:01] We still have to make this city a much more bike friendly town. For every $10 we spend for transportation in this city, $9.30 goes to moving cars around, and the other 70 cents is to help pedestrians and bike riders. We need to change that.
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Speaker: [01:19] I love it, man. About time Queens had a Tour.
Speaker: [01:21] I love Queens. Yeah, I won’t swear this time, how about that.
Clarence Eckerson Jr.: [01:24] Okay.
Speaker: [01:25] I love Queens.
Clarence Eckerson Jr.: [01:26] Yeah.
Speaker: [01:27] I live here, it’s my favourite Borough.
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Speaker: [01:30] I’m from Nashville.
Clarence Eckerson Jr.: [01:31] Nashville, why’d you come do Tour de Queens for?
Speaker: [01:33] I’m doing an internship in New York City, so I decided to, you know, take a little bike ride. It’s great, I love it.
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Clarence Eckerson Jr.: [01:44] Bicycle repair. Here we are. These guys are doing me a great favour. We got a broken spoke on the Tour de Queens. We’re going to be right back in action thanks to these guys. Going right to work. Praise you guys. Thank you very much.
Speaker: [01:56] [speaking Spanish]
Clarence Eckerson Jr.: [02:06] Spoke has been fixed. Streetfilms cannot be denied from finishing this ride. Woohoo, I’m back riding, woohoo.
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Speaker: [02:16] Oh my god, I’m so psyched. Go Queens.
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Speaker: [02:20] I got to like Streetfilms, I think they’re cool.
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Speaker: [02:31] As soon as you get to the rest stop, they already have three packets of baggies for you, banana, apple, you know, all the goodies and they’re leading the way so [unintelligible 02:39].
Speaker: [02:40] It’s a little moist, a little warm, but it’s no problem. We can overcome this.
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Mike Heffron:
[03:23] Clarence, they gave me a megaphone. The biggest mistake
they could have made.
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