Culture
The 'Fight Club of Cycling' Makes Parking Garages Cool Again
When the workers clock out, the fixies, unicycles, and penny-farthings roll in for an evening of races where “anything goes.”
By 8 o’clock on a chilly Wednesday evening, the streets of Crystal City are fairly quiet. Most workers in the Northern Virginia neighborhood have cleared out in the after-hours, and the most raucous noise of the night is the howling wind. That is, until you go underground.
Unbeknownst to the few at street level, there’s a crowd gathering in a parking garage below an unremarkable office building. Inside, giant speakers blast rock music. Cow bells ring. There’s whooping and hollering, there’s pie and beer—and there are bikes everywhere. Well, bikes, unicycles, scooters… pretty much anything with wheels that’s powered by humans and isn’t a car. They’ll spend the next half-hour whizzing around a makeshift track that spans two floors.