Day 36 - French Charley's

Today was the NYC Century. I had bold visions of biking most of it. But after a couple of longish rides in the week leading up to today I decided I was still too out-of-shape to do a long ride. And this important point: I never get to see the Bronx portion of the NYC Century, lacking the stamina to do the whole 100 miles with the Bronx always the last 25 or 30 miles of the route. So as to compromise this year I headed straight for the Bronx portion of the route to do my own quarter-century ride in the quiet of the South Bronx on a sunny Sunday morning.

I sneaked over the Willis Ave. Bridge before 7:00 AM to skim the top of Hunts Point along the Bruckner. Finally, I made it into the Bronx during my time off. (I had taken one other quick trip up here several weeks ago to have lunch at Mo Gridder's BBQ in Hunts Point, but this was my first real exploring.) The biggest treat was heading into Soundview Park for the first time. The Century's route took riders along the newly opened bike paths in the park which head toward Classons Point beneath the planes landing on Runway 22 at LaGuardia just across the Upper East River.

From there I headed north into the heart of the Bronx through Olinville, a neighborhood just east of Bronx Park centering on Burke & Allerton Avenues and including the erstwhile turf of The Wanderers, one of a number of gangs of the era that loosely monitored a number of neighborhoods throught the Bronx at the time. I learned all this from my good friend Wilfredo Lopez who, in part, grew up in Olinville--and was a Wanderer.

From there I headed north into the heart of the Bronx through Olinville, a neighborhood just east of Bronx Park centering on Burke & Allerton Avenues and including the erstwhile turf of The Wanderers, one of a number of gangs of the era that loosely monitored a number of neighborhoods throught the Bronx at the time. I learned all this from my good friend Wilfredo Lopez who, in part, grew up in Olinville--and was a Wanderer.

Olinville is largely West Indian these days. (One of my favorite roti shops, Feroza's, is on Burke just east of White Plains Road--thanks, Matt!) But in the 1960's it was almost uniformly Italian. And Wilfredo moved in as one of the only Puerto Rican teenagers at a time (and in an age group) when ethnic identity was all there was for a person.

I know Wilfredo from my time at the Health Department. He retired this year after a career as their general counsel during one of urban public health's most activist and contentious periods in the modern era. It included, only most recently: the smoking ban, an effort to post caloric content on fast food menus, and regulating better tracking of diabetes patients to help them find better care in managing their disease. There were more than 20 years of similar struggles to balance the health needs of the public with the civil rights of HIV and TB patients. He has also been re-writing the health code to consider the chronic illnesses that are killing people today as thoughtfully as the contagious diseases that were the public's bane a couple of generations ago. But when I found out that he grew up in the Bronx and was willing to show me around his old haunts, I was even more enamored of him. And it's when I learned about French Charley's.

Wilfredo was a smart kid who hung around with an assortment of characters growing up in the 1960s. And it being the Bronx, the assortment include some folks who messed around and got in some trouble--mostly as a gang called The Wanderers. And French Charley's was one of those places where those sorts of guys hung out. Well, it was where they hung out when they wanted to make a little trouble. With the Ducky Boys. With the Fordham Baldies.

In his classic Bronx voice, undulled by a couple of decades on Long Island at this point, he told me on one of our tours of the old neighborhood "When we had a beef with anudduh gang, we'd go to French Charley's over there in the duh park to seddle it."

"French Charley's? What was that?" This had to find its way into a story somewhere, I thought.

"It's in duh park over dere. It was a low spot where we'd go tuh rumble. I dunno why duh hell dey call it 'French Charley's' but dats what we called it and, man!, did we guys get into some trouble down dere."

And now, a few years later on my Sunday morning bike ride through this same park, I came upon this sign:

French Charley's, as I could now see plainly, was an ideal spot for a rumble--or for cutting up in a friendlier way with friends. It is a hollow at the base of a tall, winding stairwell of Fordham gneiss and schist, out of view of most passers by. I have no proof of this, but the play equipment and signage is almsot undoubtedly better today than it was forty years ago. Here's how John McNamara describes the place from History In Asphalt: The origin of Bronx street & place names:

"A well-known ballfield and picnic grounds that were bounded by Webster Avenue, the Bronx River, and East 203rd Street was the former grounds of a French restaruant, of which "French Charley" Mangin was the proprietor in the 1890s. His daughter married a Philip Bianchi, stonemason, and lived her entire life not far from where her father's restarurant had stood."

So dats why dey call it dat.

Further along the ride, out of the idyllic gangland that was Burke Avenue, I rode into Van Cortlandt Park along bike paths that I had only ever hiked along. (Some great downhills to top out at 25mph on!) Around a few bends that weave over and under Mosholu Parkway I came across the NYC Century Bronx rest stop. Most century riders doing the full route weren't due through here for a couple more hours. So imagine their surprise when I rolled up as they were still quartering oranges and smearing peanut butter onto half-sandwiches. Sheepishly, I decided not to confirm their astonishment at my stamina and speed; I explained how I cheated.

The rest stop was set up beside the right-of-way for the old Putnam Division of the NY Central Railroad. I had known about this for years. My friend and Urban Park Ranger Matt Symons brought me here one fall afternoon to show me what had become a trackless hiking trail, knowing my love of history and trains. But what I hadn't noticed until chomping on a banana and refilling my water bottle here was the relic of the old Van Cortlandt station on the line. It's not much to speak of. The iron girders that held the canopy over the open-air station are all that stands beside the trail. The line, in different incarnations, ran from The Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan across the Harlem River and under High Bridge in the Bronx and then north in Westchester and Putnam counties. If it were still used today, it would have been roughly parallel and between Metro North's Hudson & Harlem divisions. From what I can gather from a few non-primary sources, passenger trains last ran over this line in the 1940s with gradual retrenchment along the ends of the line--as was common in the time of the automobile ascendant--until trains were completely gone in the late 1960s.

Back into northern Manhattan for my first ride down the Harlem River esplanade in over a year. On the river, students studying sculling in the morning shadows. Further down, one of the nicest treats for anyone who appreciates great structures and accomplishments of civil engineering: