Bouncers Did you know that New York surrenders the energy of its frenetic days slowly. You can hear it, like the faint sigh of a bicycle tire with a leaky valve. At 3 AM it’s done and the city streets are unburdened by the buzz of millions of tethered lives. Tony told me that soon after we’d reconnected. He was easy enough to track down, and we would meet for coffee on occasion at the Pink Pony on Ludlow Street. Old and Army-thin, Tony loved to talk about Brownsville, the Canarsie Bouncers, and my brother— the Warlord. They were a greased-up gang of Jewish and Italian kids in combat boots and garrison belts that headquartered in his mom’s apartment over the greengrocer’s. They hoped for girls and glory and spent the nights looking for fights with the Hispanic and Black gangs that shared the neighborhood. My mom said their claim to fame was that they never changed their clothes. Tony raced his chopper up and down Hopkinson Avenue all hours of the day and night. One day his Uncle Frank grabbed him by an ear and took him to an Army recruiter. Army life suited him. Tony told me he’d fought in Vietnam and every backwater battle that never made the NY Times. Tony rode his bike well into his eighties. He’d take to the streets at 3 and ride ‘til dawn. He boarded a Greyhound last week for one last visit with his aging Army buddies scattered across the country. He hopes to see two old Bouncers, Sal and Artie in San Diego. He gave me his bike to tend. Ride it, he ordered. At 3 every morning, I hump the bike down four flights of stairs and ride for an hour or so in the eerie dark of early morning absorbing all that freed-up energy with every breath I take.