Good morning. It\u2019s Friday. We\u2019ll meet a first-time rider in the Five Boro Bike Tour who learned the hard way that wearing a helmet matters. And on this, the 95th anniversary of the day the Empire State Building opened, we\u2019ll find out about some of the workers who built it.<\/p>\n
As a first-timer in the Five Boro Bike Tour<\/a> on Sunday, Patricia Hochhauser will wear a helmet. It\u2019s a must for the 32,000 entrants.<\/p>\n But Hochhauser has special reason to. She wasn\u2019t wearing one a couple of years ago, when she tried out a gas-powered scooter. Her husband, Harold Hochhauser, said it had bucked and thrown her off. She sustained a traumatic brain injury.<\/p>\n \u201cI live every day with the consequences of not wearing that helmet,\u201d she said. She was checking out the scooter in a parking lot. \u201cI was so excited about it, thinking I was going to do errands in the neighborhood \u2014 put on a backpack and throw my groceries in there,\u201d she said. \u201cI had all these big hopes and dreams.\u201d She said she did not remember anything about the accident \u201cuntil they were putting staples in my head\u201d \u2014 15 in all, she said.<\/p>\n The accident cost her a job opportunity, she said: She had been scheduled to start training a week later as a bus driver with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. She had been a school bus driver and was looking forward to getting behind the wheel of one of the 1,300 buses in the M.T.A.\u2019s fleet.<\/p>\n On Sunday she is looking forward to riding over the 2.6-mile-long Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. The lower level will be closed to cars and trucks to accommodate the cyclists, who will start out at Franklin Street and Church Street in TriBeCa in Manhattan. Some avenues and major highways will also be off limits to cars and trucks at times during the tour. The City Department of Transportation\u2019s traffic advisory is here<\/a>. And the Five Boro Bike Tour does not permit scooters like the one she was riding when she had the accident. Some e-bikes are allowed. She plans to ride her regular road bike.<\/p>\n \u2018We are Gen X\u2019<\/p>\n When the accident happened, Hochhauser and her husband were already practiced cyclists and owned helmets. But they never bothered with them, she said.<\/p>\n Why not?<\/p>\n \u201cBecause we are Gen X, and I grew up not having to wear a helmet,\u201d she said. \u201cHalf the time growing up, I didn\u2019t even have to wear a seatbelt in the car. It wasn\u2019t like, Oh, get in the back seat and buckle up, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n After the accident, she was determined to ride again. Harold Hochhauser said that their first outings were difficult. To help her maintain balance, he put training wheels on her bike \u2014 since removed, he said.<\/p>\n Last year they rode in the Tour de Yonkers, picking the 50-mile route, the longest of three that participants could follow. She said there were hills that she could not conquer \u2014 she had to get off and walk up.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m doing it all myself this time,\u201d she said. \u201cI am, you know, stronger than I was then.\u201d<\/p>\n Weather<\/p>\n Today will be bright and sunny with a high near 65. Expect increasing clouds and a chance of rain tonight, as temperatures fall near 51.<\/p>\n ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING<\/p>\n In effect until May 14 (Solemnity of the Ascension).<\/p>\n QUOTE OF THE DAY<\/p>\n \u201cI would probably encourage him to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond.\u201d \u2014 Mayor Zohran Mamdani, on what he would have said to King Charles III if they had met privately<\/a> during the royal visit on Wednesday. The priceless jewel is a symbol of colonial plunder.<\/p>\n The workers who built the Empire State Building<\/p>\n On another May 1 \u2014 in 1931, by coincidence also a Friday \u2014 the Empire State Building opened, and on that morning, everyone\u2019s perspective changed. People were awed by the view of the building and the view from the building, \u201ca new view\u201d of New York, as The New York Times described it<\/a> from 85 stories up. The ships in the Hudson River were \u201clittle more than rowboats,\u201d the paper reported. Fifth Avenue and Broadway were \u201cslender black ribbons.\u201d<\/p>\n The Times said that 3,400 workers had \u201ccoordinated tasks to finish ahead of schedule.\u201d Glenn Kurtz, whose father\u2019s office was in the building, wondered who they were.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you look at the standard histories, the answer is always the architects, the owners and the contractors,\u201d Kurtz told me. He wanted to know about the \u201cpeople who had tools in their hands.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI very quickly discovered there was almost no information about them,\u201d he said. There was no list of their names; the men in famous photographs taken by Lewis W. Hine \u201chave invariably been referred to as \u2018anonymous workers,\u2019\u201d Kurtz said. He spent a decade doing research for the book \u201cMen at Work: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen Who Built It\u201d<\/a> and put names to some of the faces in Hine\u2019s photos.<\/p>\n He spotted 32 names on a plaque in the lobby \u2014 for workers who were given \u201ccertificates of superior craftsmanship\u201d \u2014 and realized that many were the men in Hine\u2019s photographs.<\/p>\n But the images themselves were why the workers\u2019 identities had been overlooked. \u201cThe photographs are iconic, they represent a generalized ideal, and we love generalized ideals,\u201d Kurtz said. To say, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s not this magnificent, iconic image of a worker, it\u2019s Victor Gosselin, who lived in Canada and died in a car crash\u2019 \u2014 many people would feel it diminishes the image to know who the actual person was.\u201d<\/p>\n Or, as he said a moment later, \u201cthe actual lives of these men often undermine the mythology.\u201d<\/p>\n Gosselin was almost certainly a Mohawk from the Kahnawake reservation, whose territory once reached what is now upstate New York. Another, George Adams, was apparently distantly related to the second president of the United States, John Adams. Others were recent immigrants from Ireland and Italy, as well as Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. Some were sons or grandsons of German or Scottish immigrants.<\/p>\n