My Bike and the Five-Star Heist

I wanted to share an anecdote from my life, which I'm not sure I've ever told anybody about. In an earlier post I mentioned the Five-Star Coffee Shop, but I'm getting ahead of myself. In order to fully express the story I need to give a background of my experiences with my bike.

I. My Bike

My family moved to Teaneck in the spring of 1985, when I was in the 3rd grade. Once we were situated in Teaneck, I remember riding my dirtbike everywhere. I had a Huffy dirtbike that I rode around town often. There were "trails" near my mother's house, and often some of the tough kids from around my neighborhood would hang out back there with their bicycles and ride up and down these trails. The highlight of the trails was a big dip in the ground where kids would drive down as quickly as they could hoping to catch air when they came out of the other side. Think of it as a precursor to the half-pipe days with the skateboarding trend which started around that time. ("Do you ever take it off of any sweet jumps?")

Anyway, a bike seemed vital for a kid who wanted some semblance of independence in the pre-middle school days. After all, any self-respecting 9-year-old couldn't just walk around, right?

So 4th and 5th grade came around and I was supposed to get bussed over to Lowell School, which was my grammar school and was a little over a mile from my mother's house. When we first moved to Teaneck, my mother must have driven to school but eventually she couldn't drive me anymore. For some reason I was opposed to taking the bus to school (I didn't know why at the time -- in retrospect I think it was some kind of social anxiety which continued through my teenage years, but I digress). My mother gave me permission to ride my bike across town to school. For a 9 or 10 year old, this was incredible.

Here are the Google-suggested driving directions from my mother's house to my grammar school - you have to click on the map to see the directions. Of course, bike riding did not go down Route 4.


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(By the way, do you remember when the kids would do concerts and the music teacher would make us sing "Hawthorne is a good school" and then they would sing "Lowell is a great school" and they would then sing "Whittier is the best school"? What's the deal with that?)

Anyway, this was the pinnacle of independence. I can distinctly remember the different routes I took. The safe route was over to Grayson Place, straight over the bridge that crosses the tracks, right on Garrison, left on Standish, and down to the school. Often, for a change, I rode straight down Forest Avenue, through Votee, and carried my bike over the walking bridge, and then rode up through Andy B's neighborhood and worked my way over. Eventually, when I felt really daring, I would actually literally walk my bike over the railroad tracks near the overpass at the end of Votee Park, near where the Biddy gym is. I always had fleeting scare thoughts of getting my foot stuck on the tracks, or somehow having a "Stand By Me" moment where a train came barreling out of nowhere and I would have to dodge it at the last minute. (Neither ever came close to happening.)

During 4th and 5th grade, I rode my bike often to Cedar Lane as well. There were certain spots that I always hit. Rocklins for candy, Flicks and Fones to browse the phones (or "Fones"), but most often Pioneer Pizza. I would get a couple of slices of Pioneer and play the video games. (Am I getting early Alzheimer's? I don't remember what games they had... anybody else remember?) I remember well having to lock up the bike. I always had a Master Lock and a metal regular chain, and I remember all the different ways I would lace the chain through the bike to ensure maximum safety. And you didn't need to find a bike rack on Cedar Lane. You would usually tether the bike to whatever structure was nearby. (I believe Lowell actually did have a bike rack though, if memory serves. Was it near the front door? Lowell sure looks different these days. "Man, things sure have changed around here in Teaneck," as a great man once said.)

Eventually, at some point in my pre-teen years or maybe even teenage years, the dirt bike transitioned into a 10-speed bike. Amber Cyclery, which was right near Feibel's Bowling Alley, became the stop for bike-related issues. The bike upgrade enabled me to go greater distances. The only folly which having a ten-speed bike caused was for the chain to occassionally "pop off" of the chains, which made one pull over and manually fix the chain. (Although, I believe this happened from time to time to with the Huffy.) I had my first girlfriend in 8th grade, and she lived in Ridgefield Park.

The 3.2 mile bike route to my 13-yr-old girlfriend's house -- we're not in Candyland anymore.


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But Walt, what happened to your first girlfriend? Well, we split up after several months of dating because 9th grade was about to start and we had to deal with the pressures of all the new people we'd meet in high school. (Cue violin music.)

The summer between 8th grade and high school, though, was where the bike really came in handy.


II. My First Job, and the Great Five-Star Heist

The summer between 8th and 9th grade, I had my first summer job. The school that my father worked at was moving from their small location in Demarest, NJ to a bigger location in Westwood, NJ. They needed some help boxing everything up and getting it ready to go. My job duties basically consisted of first, emptying out the garbages in the offices and taking the garbages out, and then finding out what books needed to be boxed up and what needed to be moved that day. A lasting memory of that summer was the smell of the used coffee from the day before that the secretaries would always dump out just before I would take out their garbage. I also remember all of the cool idiosyncracies of the building there that the school used, like the hills surrounding the school and the interesting layout of the building.

Anyway, even though my father also worked there during the summer, instead of trying to get a ride with him I insisted on riding my bike from my house in Teaneck to Demarest. The distance is shown below.


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The six-mile bike ride for a 13-year-old kid through a couple of small Bergen County towns that were unfamiliar was the coolest thing about the summer job. Eventually, I got used to it, but it remained a big deal for the duration of the summer.

Often, on my way home I would stop at the Tri-Valley Diner for a splurging of some of my pay. Feeling very grown-up, I would get whatever munchies I wanted that day, which often consisted of ice cream.

One particular day, though, I was finished with work early for some reason. I left midday and decided to go to Cedar Lane after work and for some reason found myself going to try out the now-famous Five-Star Coffee Shop. Years later, myself and friends would frequent Five-Star often for breakfast.

I locked up my bike, sat at the busy counter, and ordered a burger, fries and a soda. After eating the tasty lunch, I didn't know if I was supposed to pay at the counter or at the register. I kept trying to get the attention of the busy staff and nobody looked in my direction. In my mind, I figured something like "maybe they're ignoring me because I'm supposed to pay up at the register".

I got up, went to the register, and again tried repeatedly to get the staff's attention. A couple of minutes passed and nobody looked my way. In my mind, something along the lines of "what would happen if I just left?" occurred to me. I waited for about 10 seconds, my heart pounding, and finally just said "fuck it" and walked out. I quickly walked to my bike, nervous as hell that I'd get in trouble but figuring "oh well, it's too late now, I can't go back", and pedaled away as fast as I could. I kept expecting to see somebody (it would've been Marino Sr., I know now) chase me down the street, running after my bike and waving some cooking utensil in the air in anger. No such thing happened.

I was re-introduced to Five-Star years later, and needless to say, Marino did not remember me or still have a tab for $5 or so from years earlier, when I pulled off the Five-Star Heist of 1990.