NYLowLife

This last Sunday I took a ride along the boardwalks of Rockaway Beach and Long Beach. These areas are long skinny barrier islands along the south shore of Long Island, New York. At Long Beach there were more beach cruisers than I have ever seen in my life! There were tons of them parked and leaning up against the non-water-side boardwalk fence. At one crowded area along the fence I rode by slowly and took a video that lasted over a minute. Below are some highlight shots from the video.

The Long Beach boardwalk is visited mostly by locals, and many of them ride there. Because of Long Beach's skinny shape, all its residents live within easy riding distance of the beach. The local bike shops sell lots of beach cruisers. I saw Sun, Jamis, Giant, Diamondback, Retrospec, Tuesday, Electra and Huffy cruisers. Also saw a lot of hybrids.

These were regular beach cruisers used as transportation. Many had surfboard racks installed. Other than that they weren’t modded, and I didn’t get the impression of a cruiser bike “scene.” Though I did see one guy on a Phat Cycles custom.

I’ve never seen so many beach cruisers ever!

Velo Mule

Yep, Long Beach is ideal Cruiser territory. Most residents live within blocks of the beach as you stated above and riding a cruiser with flop-flops is just fine. It is a nice ride on the boardwalk when you are just cruising along. 2+ miles of smooth cruising. I may have to get down that way sometime soon. Thanks for reminding me @NYLowLife .

NYLowLife

Velo Mule Yeah it is a great ride, very smooth new boards. A couple of other things I noticed. Long Beach's boardwalk is about half a mile from Rockaway's boardwalk, I rode both that day, up and back. It's a lot shorter than Rockaway's but has about 10x as many bikes.

And maybe it's just me, the way I like to seek out the social aspects of cycling -- but I noticed no traces of clubs or crews or groups riding cruisers because they are cruisers. Around NYC I've seen that with roadies, with fixies, with scooter groups, with recumbents and with Schwinn fans. But not with cruisers.

In some places, cruisers have some overlap with vintage and custom bike fans, and clubs patterned after motorcycle clubs, etc. I stopped by Local Cycles in Long Beach. They do some custom cruisers and choppers, and have hosted rides and events at based at the shop. The owner told me also that there is no "scene" in Long Beach, despite the great setting. And when he invites groups to come in (like the Jersey Devils or VooDoo Bike Rides), they come from far away. I was hoping to find something along those lines there.....

Steve B.

My work cycling commute route used Rockaway Beach Blvd. in the NYC part of the Rockaways, it had a marked one-way bike lanes on each side of the road and was routinely used by these local cyclists riding the wrong way in the lane. I called them the “Rockaway Wrong-Ways”. They were outright dangerous as they would come out of a side street on the beach side without looking if there was oncoming traffic. I had many near head on collisions we these clueless *******s on their beach cruisers.

NYLowLife

I ride down there 2-3 times per summer, always on Sundays. I see even more people riding beach cruisers on the cross-streets, like Beach 126th to about Beach 109th, residential area. Going to or from the boardwalk I guess.