Last week Bilenky Cycle Works put on its fifth annual Junkyard ‘Cross Race at its home in grubby Northeast Philly. Bilenky is a bike shop and custom bikemaker that just happens to abut a commercial trash heap. Oh, sure, Portlandians make with their Zoobombing and bicycle jousting so they can pretend it’s their biketopia vs. the world. But Philly? It’s bike friendlier than it used to be, but if ever there was a metaphor for a megalopolis’ history of having an adversarial relationship with nature — and with those who prefer the wide open spaces and fresh air — a cyclocross race in a junkyard just couldn’t be more apt for the “City of Brotherly Love.”

As for the race itself, how it goes down, what it’s really all about, we’ll quote blogger/bike racer Harlan Price’s post on Bike.com:

For one day a year [the junkyard] is transformed into a cyclocross course with obstacles that teeter on the scale to liability hell. It takes a minute to process the circus. Smoke from a makeshift wood-burning stove lingers over a crowd, and the MC is yelling through a megaphone while a cigarette hangs in the corner of his mouth…The crowd’s enthusiasm corresponds to the success level of the racers who have to drop in on a sketchy piece of dirt and ride or launch a makeshift tabletop at the bottom. This junkyard obstacle is made of scrap plywood supported in unidentifiable ways to the top of a rusted heating oil tank. Every year the course is different…Chicanes through oil-stained pea-gravel were created by bins of engines and other parts set in truck beds detached from their front half. In the heats of the Men’s B race, gloveless racers were sliding out in the corners and corking the bottlenecks…Unlike high production races there was no music bumping beats and the crowd was allowed to enjoy their own voices. It was a party without social rules or equipment choice restrictions. Junkyard Cross seems like one of the new leaderless movements, evolving as it goes, diversity is encouraged and seriousness becomes a joke.

Tagged as: bicycle, cycling, cyclocross