Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Jeff Underwood
Occupation: Owner, Continuum Cycles and Bike Shop, Continuum Coffee.
Location: Avenue B, between 12th and 13th.
Time: 4:30 on Friday, May 3.

I moved here from North Carolina in 1999. I’ve ridden bikes my whole life but more seriously since I moved to New York. I raced BMX when I was a kid and rode mountain bikes in North Carolina.

I worked in social work in harm reduction. I helped start the first syringe exchange in harm reduction in the state of North Carolina in 1993. Harm reduction is based on meeting people where they’re at as drug users. Instead of telling people they have to get clean, it’s more about telling them, “you know what, today you are going to use a little less, or you’re going to actually clean yourself before you inject and you’re going to use a clean, new syringe.” Any positive change.

You meet them where they’re at and eventually work to make themselves better and healthier. The concept is weird for people but it works if you do it right. I had my own problems with drugs and ended up addicted to heroin and cocaine and living on the streets for a few years. I lost everything. This was a year after I got here. I lost my girlfriend, I lost my dog, I lost my job. I was in a new city with no family and I relapsed and lost everything.

I had to figure out a way to make a living so I got a job as a bike messenger and I also had a book stand on Avenue A between 5th and 6th. Bike messengers are people from all walks of life. It’s terrible money and it’s a very dangerous job. And people treat messengers like shit. Everyone does. But I was used to that so the job seemed okay.

Working at the book stand, a lot of people would bring me books and stuff and one day someone brought me a bike and said, “See if you can sell this, I’m going back to my hometown.” I fixed the flats on it, cleaned it up a little bit and made $100 on it immediately. So I made business cards and started putting them on the beat up bikes lying around with my pager number from the messenger service, to page me if they wanted the bike fixed or to sell it. That’s how I started. Then I went to a flea market and started working at a shop.

I then got a job in my field again doing homeless outreach. Actually, I was homeless, sleeping by the river, going to a drop-in center, getting showered, cleaned up, putting on my Bowery Residence Community shirt, and running around in vans picking up homeless people at night. They had no idea I was homeless.

I started seeing the positive parts of not using. And it’s interesting because my girlfriend, now of almost 10 years, was working as the coordinator of the Lower East Side syringe exchange. We applied for the same job and she got it. She was Columbia University educated, knows everybody in the field, harm reduction superstar. I was kind of the blue-collar harm reduction superstar junkie. Then she ended up being my boss because I was working as a stipend worker there and we used to come to Tompkins Square Park together to do outreach and that’s where we started hanging out and fell in love.

We broke up for like 6 months, which is when I opened up the store. She called me and I was like, “What? Here I was thinking that you were freezing on the streets. I’m crying at night thinking you were a junkie on the streets and here you are opening a store.”

For me, when you say how did I get clean or off drugs, basically everyone just told me to go fuck myself and I couldn’t deal with the rejection anymore. That was the worst thing in the world. No trust. And now everyone trusts me. The difference is insane. And it’s in the same neighborhood, which is even crazier. Usually people have to leave.

We sell bikes all over the world. We’re not just a bike shop. Continuum Cycles is a bicycle company, Continuum, a Bicycle Shop is the space that you see, I fix bikes, we sell new and used bikes, and then Continuum Coffee is our coffee shop.

I opened the coffee shop a week before the hurricane. We lost a lot, that’s all I have to say. But it’s Spring, we’re here. We have a lot of locals, families, kids. It was funny because no one came in the first few months. They were just walking by not even knowing that we had a cafe here. So I put up the sign for an after-school special for dollar hot chocolate and boom. It was crazy.

I think [a bike share program] is a great idea. Obviously, I do — I own a bike shop, I love to bike, I tell people they should sell their car and buy a bicycle. I also don’t understand the makings of this program enough. So I’m kind of ignorant when I’m complaining.

My first question was, why did it have to be such a huge corporation, and then they told me, “Because the city was not going to pay for it.” Okay, so why couldn’t they say, “New York Bike, sponsored by Citibike,” and not with all big blue letters.

Who knows ... after one year of people riding these heavy bikes they might think, “I want my own bike.” It might help us. I hope that it’s successful. The only thing we can do is sit and wait and see what happens.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.