Kip Johnson

On December 9, 2011, Kim (Kip) Anthony Johnson of the renowned King Charles Troupe set a world record by jumping double dutch while on a unicycle. He completed 164 jumps in a single try. He broke his own original record of 122 jumps. Check out the video of new double dutch unicycle record. Congratulations to Kip!

Image courtesy of JustOneWheel.com

Adam and Renie Cohen of Justonewheel.com have recently been thrust into the spotlight in a article/video interview by Amanda Puglies entitled: ‘Just One Wheel of  Fun’ posted on the Plainview Patch website. The video also features Ziggy Cohen, Adam and Renie’s four year old son riding his unicycle. Ziggy was recently featured in a performance of the King Charles Troupe on the Wendy Williams show.

During the video interview, Adam tells his personal story of unicycling and the opening of their brand new Just One Wheel facility “dedicated to the sport of balance”.  Located in  the hamlet of Plainview Long Island, the 5,200 square foot facility is a one of kind facility dedicated to unicycling and a variety of other balance activities.

The Just One Wheel facility is available for training parties, unicycle parties and other  group events. Check the contact area at the bottom of the JustOneWheel.com website homepage for further details and contact information.

On December 4th, early Sunday morning, CBS News aired a segment by correspondent Susan Spencer documenting on video, her attempt to learn to ride a unicycle. She enlisted the assistance of Lisa Polinari alias The Unicycle Lady to aide in her endeavor to learn the basics of learning to ride. Check i t out.

The New York Unicycle  encourages and assists individuals to learn how to ride unicycle  regardless of age or gender.  The diversity of those that have over the year attended our meetings in terms of age, gender nationality, ethnicity and cultural background is astounding.  Meeting twice per month all year round, you have ample opportunity to come out and learn to ride.

In case you missed it the King Charles Troupe made an appearance on the Wendy Williams Show on November 11, 2011. At the end of the performance there was a special extra added bonus of Ziggy Cohen the youngest unicycle rider in the northeast putting on the show of riding across the stage and sinking a basket. Ziggy is the son of Adam and Renie Cohen of JustOneWheel.

A new up coming video soon to be release on DVD  called Unicycling is not a crime features 36 different unicycle riders of 12 nationalities.  Parts of this video was recorded in 1o different countries. Two NYUC members can be spotted at the beginning of this video trailer.

New York Unicycle Club  member, Calvin Wright (right) and his his unicycle were highlighted in an article entitled Harlem’s Unicycle Man Keeps Peddling written by Paul Smith. The article appeared in this weeks copy of the Uptowner,  a  local Manhattan newspaper that focuses on the neighborhoods of northern portion of the borough o Manhattan, New York. This article gives a snap shot into Calvin’s life as a unicyclist in New York.  The photo at the beginning of the article was taken at the African American Day Parade that took place in Harlem, on Sunday, September 11.  At the parade Calvin was joined by seven other unicyclists. Five of the unicyclist were  fellow members of the NYUC in addition to the two unicyclist from King Charles Troupe that were mentioned in the article.  The eight unicyclist had a good time entertaining the crowd riding behind one of the floats.  Check out some of the other photos that were taken on the day  of the parade in this slide show on our Flickr page.

The second annual three day New York City Unicycle Festival took place over the Labor Day weekend. This years festival organized and produced by by the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus turned out to be a well attended success. The festival began with a contingent of 57 unicyclist with unicycles of various sizes and colors, including one made up to look like a sea horse, making the trek over the Brooklyn Bridge. The day was officially proclaimed by Brooklyn’s Borough President, Marty Markowitz as “Brooklyn Unicycle Day”.

About 40 or so riders continued on riding through Brooklyn briefly stopping at Grand Army Plaza and the south end of Prospect Park finally ending up in Coney Island where we met up with participants that decided to get there via other forms of transportation. We had two adventurous 11 year old riders that traveled the entire 13 mile distance from the Manhattan side of the bridge to Coney Island on their unicycles. These two young men actually out paced many of the more experienced unicyclist throughout the ride. Many of the out paced rides were riding on wheels larger than the 20″ and 24″ size wheels on their respective unicycles of the young riders.

Photo courtesy of Norman Blake

At Coney Island after hanging out at Nathan’s Famous, riders were rewarded with a ride on Deno’s Wonder Wheel followed by participation in a unicycle skills demonstration being accompanied by music on the boardwalk. The first day of the unicycle festival was capped off with an incredible fireworks display out over the water.

Day two of the festival that took place on  Governors Island, was chock full of activities. With unicycle tutorials, unicycle hockey, unicycle races and, skill demonstrations there was constant activity throughout the festival area of the island the entire day. Many tried out the outstanding Hell on Wheel unicycle trials course. The demonstrations featured four year old unicycle rider Ziggy Cohen as well as Kyle Petersen (Brooklyn Juggler) and Davd Cox performing comedic juggling acts.

Through out the day there were more than 300 participants with more than 160 unicycles. There were vendors on hand including Unicycle.com and Dubé Juggling Equipment and others. Adam and Renie Cohen of Just One Wheel were directing the tutorial efforts for those that wanted to learn or hone their skills on the unicycle. DJ Sky kept the crowd entertained with music selections throughout the day.

The highlight of the day was the unicycle basketball game between Puerto Rico All Star unicycle basketball team and the King Charles Troupe. It was a competitive, hard fought basketball game.  King Charles Troupe trailed early. However, as they adjusted to the international rules of unicycle basketball, they climbed back in the game only to be edged out in the end by the Puerto Rico All Stars by a single point 37-36.

The King Charles Troupe put on excellent performance of unicycle team based skills such as basketball handling and  jumping double dutch.

All available unicyclist lined up and mounted their unicycles in an effort to break a world record of unicyclist mounted and continuously linked. Unfortunately there were not enough participants present to break the world record of 251 unicyclist. Though, this effort was not wasted by the 155 participating unicyclist who set a new New York State record of linked unicyclist.

For the third and final day of this year’s festival unicycle activities moved up to Harlem, USA. This is the regular meeting venue of the New York Unicycle club. About 65 unicyclist gathered for a full afternoon of just hanging out trying different and unique unicycles, doing skill demonstrations, practicing skills and unicycle networking.

Throughout the three days I snapped a nice collection of photographs that can be found on the NYUC Flickr site. Photographs of days one and two can be viewed in this photo album slideshow titled: 2011 Uni Fest, Day 1&2. Photographs from the third and final day of the festival can be found in this photo album slideshow titled 2011 UniFest Sunday.

This years festival was such a blast. There is a lot of confidence that this event will continue to grow in the future. There were many who were unable make it to this year’s event including many that had attended the first NYC unicycle festival.

The 2011 New York City Unicycle Festival received some positive press both before and during the event. The photo above comes from an August 26th article in The Brooklyn Paper written by Meridith Deliso entitled Get rollin’! Unicycle Fest returns on Sept.2 The article briefly describes the 2011 festival as it was about to happen. The same article without the photo appeared in the Courier Life’s Brooklyn Daily.

This second image comes from the The Wall Street Journal in an September 3rd article entitled For One, and for All written by V. L. Hendrickson. This is a more comprehensive article about the 3 day event with quotes from Keith Nelson of the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, David Stone founder of the New York Unicycle Club and, Kyle Peterson alias The Brooklyn Juggler who is best known for fighting against the City of New York for being ticketed for legally riding his unicycle.

This image is of a young lady, Emily Season, who has tricked her unicycle out to look like a seahorse, comes from an extensive article published on September 6 on ESPN Page 2 entitled: Unicycles make mark in New York City. This article written by Ken Derry,  gives extensive coverage to the activities that took place on Governors Island. He has enhanced his article with several personal interest stories from some of the participant unicyclists.

This last image appeared in the Columbia Spectator in an article entitled Unicyclers wheel quirky MoHi fest race written by Steven Lau. Steven interviewed several unicyclist at Grant’s Tomb gathering information in order to put together this article.

Many more websites that promote events around the New York city have given mention to this years unicycle festival. We would like to thank them for helping to promote unicycling in New York and this year’s unicycle festival. We hope that even more sites and sponsors will give us recognition for next year’s annual event.

Kyle Peterson, who as earlier reported, filed a lawsuit in federal court against the city of New York for charging him with a misdemeanor for riding his unicycle on a Brooklyn sidewalk. Has had his lawsuit dismissed by Judge Brian Cogan.

The dismissal of his lawsuit has been reported in article in the New York Daily News by John Marzulli. In an more extensive article written in the Gothamist by John Del Signore you can read the entire decision by Judge Cogan.

Since there has been so much attention brought to unicycling by this lawsuit the saga may not be quite over. I will keep you posted with any major news affecting unicycling within the city of New York.

Kyle Petersen’s interview on the Colbert Report aired on April 13, 2011. It features many clips that were taken at the New York Unicycle Club’s (NYUC) special meeting that was scheduled just to allow the camera crew access to a diverse variety of  NYUC members.

You can check out the background on Kyle’s story and the special NYUC meeting in this earlier post.