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Bicycle polo: Go slowly, but carry big stick
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By Billy Baker,
Boston Globe, July 15, 2007
"I've done every type of bicycling there is," says James Norton as he
picks up a makeshift mallet and gets ready to ride into a street hockey
court. "Mountain biking. BMXing. Unicycling. I've been a bike
messenger. I own a bike store. And this is the most fun of all of them,
because it encompasses all of them."
Norton smiles his jack-o'-lantern smile, revealing plenty of open real
estate where his teeth used to be.
"And payback is faster," he says.
Closer to hockey than its equestrian namesake, bicycle polo has become
the sport of choice for the city's bike messenger crowd, an urban
gladiator game for the DLWW-tattoo set (i.e., Don't Let Work Win).
"It's basically a bunch of dudes who get together and beat the
[expletive] out of each other," says Scott Horrigan, a 21-year-old bike
messenger who lives in Allston. "It's really just hockey on bikes; it
can be rough."
Here's how the game works: Three bicyclists line up at either end of
the court, with a plastic street-hockey ball sitting alone at center
court. Someone yells "Go!" and then it's a race for the ball. Using
handmade mallets -- golf-club shafts jerry-rigged with a PVC pipe on
the end or metal pipes with wooden blocks for a mallet head -- the
players try to bat the ball between a pair of cones set up as goals.
If a rider's foot touches the ground, he (most players are male) must
ride back to center court and touch the boards with his mallet before
he can resume play.
Mallet-on-mallet contact is allowed, as is bike-on-bike contact;
mallet-on-bike is a no-no. Goals only count if the ball is hit with the
narrow end of the mallet head. The first team to score three goals wins.
The key to the game is to be good on a bike. Very good on a bike. Which
is why the bike messengers, who spend their days playing chicken with
Boston traffic, excel at the sport.
"When you ride downtown all day, you develop a set of skills that are
very useful in this game," says Tyler Sage , a 21-year-old student at
the Art Institute of Boston and part-time bike messenger who is the de
facto organizer of many of the bike polo games. "You learn to do things
on a bike that others can't."
It's not about speed. Fixed-gear bicycles, which often lack hand brakes
and require the rider to constantly pedal, are the ride of choice for
the players. The constant attention required by a fixed-gear bike -- a
big part of the fetish behind the fixed-gear cult -- gives them greater
control for bike polo, they say.
"You can balance a lot easier; you can stop without a brake . It's a
big advantage to ride a fixed-gear," says Sage .
What's not an advantage is to bring your nice bike. Collisions destroy
wheels, handlebars, and everything else. Many people build bikes
specifically for the game with a simple philosophy: the crummier the
better.
"It can really help you win if you don't care what happens to your
bike," says Sage.
Norton, 37, who owns Revolution Bicycles on Atlantic Avenue, says that
to really be a star on the court, you have to understand the deep
philosophy behind the game.
"Don't follow the ball, follow the play," he says, flashing his
checkered smile.
"I'm like the Vince Lombardi of bike polo, but with less teeth and more
tattoos."
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