The borough’s annual unicycle festival was thrown for a loop when the city blocked the pedaling participants from their traditional route through Prospect Park over Labor Day Weekend.
For the first time in the event’s five-year history, park authorities surprised organizers with a last-minute demand for paperwork.
“This year, Prospect Park tried to keep us from going through,” said Keith Nelson, director of the New York City Unicycle Festival. “We learned that in order to ride through the park, we’d have to get a special events permit, but they didn’t tell me until the day before.”
The pack of 50 unicyclists has rolled down Park Drive through Brooklyn’s flagship green space for the past four years running, because it’s a safer route than cramming dozens of one-wheelers onto the much narrower Prospect Park West bicycle lane, according to Nelson.
This year, however, park guards blocked the pedaling posse as it attempted to enter the park at Grand Army Plaza on Aug. 29, Nelson said, and made the group detour onto the more treacherous path.
“They forced us on a more dangerous route,” said Nelson, explaining that it is easier for the group to avoid pedestrians and cars by riding through the park.
But unicyclists are, almost by definition, nonconformists, so the rebel rollers eventually ventured back into the greenspace.
“I was in the back, but at a certain point, the riders in the front decided to go back into the park anyway,” said Nelson. “I don’t think the guards were happy.”
Park policy stipulates groups of 20 or more bicyclists must obtain a permit to ride through the park en masse.
“It doesn’t mention unicyclists — almost nothing has any recognition of unicyclists,” said rider Ken Springle of Queens.
The Midwood-area Kosher Cycle Club marshaled the ride, making sure that unicyclists didn’t clash with their fellow four-wheeled and two-footed travelers, Nelson said. South of the park, the pack returned to its traditional route along Ocean Parkway’s sheltered bicycle lane, all the way down to the borough’s largest free-standing wheel — Deno’s Wonderwheel in Coney Island.
Participants said the ride has a strong safety record.
“We’ve done this five years an no one’s gotten hurt,” said unicyclist Rodrigo Sanz. “The only accident we had was during a photo shoot once we got to Coney Island.”
When the group arrived at the People’s Playground, they performed in a variety show at Coney Island USA’s shooting gallery annex, in which every act had to involve a wheel or something spinning.
The festival lasted all weekend, with most of the action taking place on Governor’s Island, but Nelson — a Williamsburg resident and member of Brooklyn’s Bindlestiff Family Cirkus — said the opening ceremonies are always in Brooklyn.
“We wanted to make sure it was kind of Brooklyn-centric,” Nelson said of the 13-mile ride from the Brooklyn Bridge to Coney Island. “The Brooklyn Bridge has always been linked to circus activity — ever since elephants were paraded across it to show it was safe.”
