Mindy Fichter

Having lived in Brooklyn for nearly a decade, cycling has become increasingly important to my happiness while in this sometimes overwhelming city. I thrive on the community and subculture that surrounds bicycling in the city.

The pinnacle event for me each March is the Red Hook Criterium, which is a 20-something lap nighttime track bike road race that attracts people from all parts of the cycling world to compete and spectate.

The amount of energy and determination from these riders was palpable as they whizzed by in pelotons both large and small. It was impossible to catch a crisp outline of these riders with only the street lights to illuminate them, but I wanted desperately to capture a moment of the energy I felt from that night. I like that this image shows motion, movement, getting somewhere fast, even though really, the only place these riders were headed was back around for another loop. But even though they were competing against one another, they still gave off an aura of togetherness--a pack mentality of sorts.

It reminds me of what biking in New York is like to the average cyclist: we do so much back and forth while commuting, many of us enjoy riding the loops of the circumference of the various islands our boroughs are made up of, some of us even enjoy smiling and saying hello to our fellow two-wheeler compatriots while waiting for a green light. This race imbues all of that, and to me, is therefore perfectly New York.