Ike on a bicycle: the dedicated cyclist plays Eisenhower on stage

Good morning. It’s Tuesday. We meet the actor John Rubinstein, who is a biker and plays former president Dwight Eisenhower in an Off Broadway show. It is impossible to resist the expression “Ike on a bicycle”. We’ll also meet a man who didn’t know the house he rented was a few blocks away from one of the country’s first Superfund sites.

This is John Rubinstein’s take on cycling the streets of New York City: “Everyone out there wants to kill you. The buses want to crush you, the taxis want to knock you down, and the cars are completely oblivious.” And then there are the pedestrians.

Yet he is a dedicated cyclist. He will climb on a bike today and pedal 40 blocks to a theater on West 46th Street for the first of eight previews of the show he’s in, “Eisenhower: This piece of land.” It can’t go on without him: it’s a one-man show and there’s no substitute.

So he hopes the commute is smoother than a late-night drive back in the 1980s when he starred in David Rabe’s dark comedy “Hurlyburly.”

“I was late and I was rushing,” he said as he pedaled down Broadway. The light on West 56th Street was green. “Without really looking to see if there was some crazy guy trying to kill me, which you’re supposed to do, I went across the intersection and a car ran a red light.”

It touched him.

“I went flying, but not very far,” he said. “I went about four feet, hit the cement on my left side, got shaken and bruised, nothing broken. I didn’t have time to yell at the man. He yelled at me, of course – he yelled at me like I was some kind of mass murderer he had stopped. I picked myself up and drove on because I had to make a curtain.

Because his bike is being shipped from Los Angeles but hasn’t arrived yet, Rubinstein is riding a Citi Bike today, a way to cycle around the city that didn’t exist in the ’80s. The city’s transportation commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez says that in their 10 years in New York, Citi Bikes “have boosted the growth of bicycles.” City officials also point to extensive bike infrastructure, which now includes protected bike lanes on most Manhattan avenues, though bike enthusiasts say more bike lanes are needed.

Rubinstein’s own bicycle? He bought it in New York in 2017 after another not-so-good commute.

“I went to work, to the theater, and I needed something quick, like toothpaste,” he said. “I always lock my bike—two locks. Two or three bikes have been stolen around town over the years, and I take off my big saddlebags and carry them with me to every shop and restaurant where I go in. And I turn off all the lights.”

He saw a drugstore. He stopt. He took off the saddlebags and the lights. He went in and bought the toothpaste.

When he came out – after “two minutes, maybe two and a half” – the bike was gone. He forgot to lock it. “Someone saw me, got on it and drove off,” he said. “That was the end of that bike.”

As for the man he plays in “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground,” Rubinstein met Eisenhower at the White House in the mid-1950s — his father was the pianist Artur Rubinstein, and the family went on some sort of behind-the-road scenes tour with Sherman Adams, Eisenhower’s chief of staff (who later resigned in a scandal over taking a vicuña coat and consulting with other officials about the donor’s troubles with the federal government).

The meeting with the president was brief: “He shook my hand and shook my sister’s hand,” Rubinstein said. “I didn’t tell him I would be playing against him in 70 years.”

Weather

Enjoy a mostly sunny day around 80. At night it will be partly cloudy, with temperatures reaching around 60.

ALTERNATIVE SIDE PARKING

Effective until Monday (June 16).

The latest New York news

Love Canal, one of the country’s biggest toxic disasters, made headlines in the summer of 1978, 11 years before Mitchell Montgomery was born.

The Environmental Service listed Love Canal in the first group of Superfund sites in 1983, six years before he was born.

It wasn’t until he rented a house there last year, when he was 33, that he learned about the neighborhood’s infamous history.

My colleague Jesse McKinley says Montgomery belonged to a new, and sometimes unsuspecting, generation of homesteaders in a neighborhood where some blocks have been declared safe but others have not. His block, east of the old canal, is still considered restricted, according to state guidelines from the time the area was cleared.

Property records show that at least four homes in that eastern section have been sold in recent years, even though the EPA says those blocks should be “restricted to commercial and/or industrial use only.” That provision “must be passed with the land whenever the land is sold to a new owner,” the EPA says.

Mitchell’s landlord, Heather Moudy, said she bought the house last year from a woman who lived there. Moudy said she was well aware of Love Canal’s history because she had lived in Niagara Falls but could not recall if the home’s proximity to the location had been mentioned before going through with the deal.

“I don’t know if anyone raised a red flag at me,” she said.

Montgomery, a car salesman who grew up about 20 miles away in Buffalo, only recently learned about Love Canal when he met a New York Times photographer. Suddenly some things about the house and neighborhood made sense and caused concern.

He had wondered why there were overgrown lots and empty streets nearby—and why rents were lower in other neighborhoods he’d looked at. He had wondered if there was a strange smell coming from the drain when he brushed his teeth.

It seemed like his 8-year-old son’s asthma flared up more often. His pregnant girlfriend got headaches and nosebleeds from time to time.

And when he went to replace a pump in the basement a few months ago, he discovered that it was covered in a black tar-like substance.

Love Canal was removed from the Superfund list in 2004, several years after the cleanup work was completed. State and federal officials insist Love Canal is safe: A clay cap was placed over some 40 acres, which are dotted with test wells. Contaminated soil was drained and sewers were scrubbed. But tons of toxic chemicals remain buried beneath the site. All told, nearly 1,000 families were evacuated and hundreds of homes were demolished in the 10-block area next to the Love Canal in the late 1970s, according to the EPA

Montgomery spent a lot of time searching for information about Love Canal and watching YouTube videos. He said his son’s doctor had raised the possibility that the grass around the house had caused the asthma attacks. His girlfriend, who is due in August, has not seen a doctor because of her headaches and nosebleeds.

Montgomery said he likes the neighborhood’s “peace and quiet” but is looking to relocate to Charlotte, NY

“I had to weigh all the factors,” he said, “but you know, everyone here seems to be doing well.”

METROPOLITAN Diary

Absurdity

Dear Diary:

My wife and I were walking back to our apartment in the West Village on a cold, rainy winter evening after an early dinner of Indian food in the East Village.

As we approached Broadway and West 12th Street, the rain started to pick up. I glanced at the sign above the entrance to the Strand bookstore.

“Let’s go inside until the rain is over,” I suggested.

“That might take a while,” my wife said.

“That’s okay,” I said.

We walked in and shook off the rain like wet dogs.

“There’s a collection of stories I want to find,” I said. “I think it’s called ‘Russia’s Lost Literature of the Absurd’ or something like that.”

I heard a voice coming from behind a pile of books nearby. I couldn’t tell if it belonged to an employee or someone else.

“It’s not lost,” said the voice. “It’s right there, in the ‘Absurd’ section.”

“Oh, thank you,” I stammered. “Where is that?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

— Doug Silver

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here And read more Metropolitan Diary here.