photo of the month from randy kato Hi, Yesterday I attended the New Amsterdam Bicycle Show, the kickoff event for Bike Month NYC. I love bikes, and they are a big deal here. An entire culture revolves around cycling in the city, complete with numerous subcultures ranging from the fixed gear no brakes crowd, to the racers on bikes costing more than cars, to the Nuyorican chromed-out cruisers blasting salsa music from massive sound systems. If you have any doubt, just ask one of the 32,000 people riding 42 miles through all five boroughs of New York City today in the largest bicycling event in North America. So I guess it's quite obvious why I chose this month's photo. These guys and their custom rides were hanging out on the boardwalk at Coney Island. The big professional expo I attended yesterday had nothing on these guys in terms of "Wow!" value. The pride in their machines is evident - not only in the way they park them on the boardwalk in such an impossible to ignore display - but on their faces and in their posture. My intention was to capture the sun glinting off the countless chrome spokes of this wheel, but as I took the photo some people walked into the light casting shadows on the bike. When I looked at the photo later, I realized that this 'accident' made the image better. While it loses a bit of shiny chrome, you can see the kids and part of the trike through the spokes, and the guy is actually posing for the shadow people. There is some detail lost at this size, so click the image to see a higher-resolution version. Enjoy! Randy Photo of the Month archive