The other night I ran into some friends in the East Village who invited me to eat with them at The Dumpling House. It’s a tiny, hole-in-the-wall joint on a backstreet in Chinatown, where the dumplings are handmade to order and six pieces cost an unbelievable $1 a pop.
The few stools they had were taken, so we took our paper bowls and walked around the corner to the Sara D. Roosevelt Park. That’s when one of those NYC moments occurred. I had to look twice to make sure I was seeing right: a bunch of men and women on bicycles chasing a ball around an oval asphalt pit with mallets. It looked just like they were playing polo. Wait, they were playing polo!
We watched them play a practice game as the sun set. It went something like this: Eight men and women rode around in what looked a sort of ballet on their bikes, simultaneously pedaling and steering their bikes and swinging at a small, hard ball with their mallets. It was remarkably graceful. All this while balancing carefully so as not to break the most important rule of all—never let your feet touch the ground. Each time a player’s feet did touch the ground, he or she had to immediately dismount and exit the field, with bike, to tag a cone on the sideline before re-entering play.
The game has similar rules to its country cousin, played on horsies, but the culture—and accompanying soundtrack—are quite different. Instead of blue-blood royals, the teams consist mostly of bike messengers, activists and enthusiasts. It’s physically rough and verbally bawdy and it was about the best thing I’ve ever seen.
We ate our delicious dumplings and chatted with the players as they came off the court. Teams play every week all over the city, but you can find a game every Sunday at the Sara D. Roosevelt Park.
“It’s a great time to watch and check out what bike polo is all about ... kind of like hockey and polo,” explained Michael Green of Brooklyn. “We’ll play with teams of either three-on-three or fours, depending on how many people show up.”
Turns out, like so many other things New York, what looks old is new and vice versa. Bicycle Polo has been around for a long time. Not long as in 2,000 years, like its equestrian cousin, but longer than the five minutes since I’d discovered it. It was invented in 1891 by an Irishman, and quickly spread to Britain, France and the U.S. Cycle polo was even an Olympic event in the 1908 London Olympics—with Ireland beating Germany for the gold medal.
The popularity of the game has risen, and now there are national bicycle polo associations all over the world and a world championship (the U.S. won in 2004!). So much for rebel biker culture and my discovery of a secret underground cult; this sport is legit!
“Bike polo is alive and well in New York City,” said Green.
It looks like a near-impossible feat to play, but it takes my vote as the best spectator sport in the city. Especially with dumplings!
