Take a concrete cruise

Alex Coolman

A beach boardwalk in summer is a thing of great and vulgar beauty. A good

one, like those in Newport Beach, will feature more sweaty abdominals,

drooling pit bulls, leering teenagers and frantic 3-year-olds than should

ever be compressed onto a single, slender strand of concrete.

And the only proper way to take it all in is by cruiser.

Walking, after all, is a bit too intimate; one is subjected to the crush

of the mob, with all its odors and its inane ideas of humor.

But a cruiser -- a cruiser-style bicycle, that is -- elevates the

boardwalk voyeur ever so slightly above the din and cry of the beach

melee, the better to take it all in.

On a cruiser -- with its wide handlebars, large wheels and comfy seat --

one can roll the miles away contentedly, admiring the sunburns and the

family disputes. One can accelerate, if necessary, when passing large

packs of rowdy drunks. And one can pause, if tempted, to survey

particularly choice examples of cosmetic surgery.

It’s an undeniably regal mode of transport.

That, no doubt, was the reason Terri Pannuto and her friends came out

from Bakersfield on a recent weekend to pedal up and down the boardwalk.

“We start out in Huntington Beach and come down here or go up to Seal

Beach,” she explained.

It’s good to have a theory of cruising, as Pannuto does. It makes the

overall process more satisfying and also prevents you from ending up 15

miles away from where you started.

Newport Beach resident Marcus Rossi has done a considerable amount of

research on the subject.

He has half a dozen cruiser-style bicycles, including a fire-engine red

model with 29-inch wheels, which is ideally suited for “going over stuff

really easily.”

Rossi makes a practice of pedaling around Newport’s coastline because of

the “killer people-watching” to be had there.

For those with discriminating tastes, of course, it is possible to have

too much of a killer thing.

Newport resident Karen Maxfield could only sigh in dismay at the throngs

of out-of-town cruisers who populated the boardwalk on a recent weekend.

“I don’t usually ride on the weekends very much” because of the sheer

vulgarity of the crowds, she noted, parking her Canondale for a moment

near the pier.

But the reality of proper cruising is that it takes a certain gusto, a

certain enthusiasm for the exuberant to do it right.

As Tony Gump, in town from Las Vegas for the weekend with a vast gang of

his co-workers, eloquently put it: “We just cruise around and relax and

have a couple of beers.”