Sure, you may be an aficionado of the arts, visiting famous museums around town and maybe around the world to get your fill of culture. But have you been to the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum? Probably not – it just opened a year ago. Well, here’s your chance.
We’ll start by working our legs and lungs a bit with a ride from Grand Army Plaza out to Shirley Chisholm State Park, then on to a lunch stop and the Seltzer Museum, which is housed in the Brooklyn Seltzer Boys seltzer factory in Cypress Hills. It is reputed to be the last seltzer plant in the New York area. After our visit to the museum, we’ll return to GAP, for a total ride of about 20 miles. There will be space inside the factory area to park our bikes while we’re visiting the museum.
The guided museum tour features a history of seltzer, a “seltzer journey” that teaches how Brooklyn Seltzer Boys transforms regular NYC water into seltzer using 100-year-old machinery, has puzzles and videos explaining the process, and you will be able to hold a real seltzer siphon and spray it into your mouth at the Spritzing Station. You can’t do that with your fancy-schmancy Perrier or your fancy-schmancy San Pellegrino, unless you want people to make fun of you.
On the guided tour, we will observe every step in the seltzer production process. There may be a special temporary exhibit of a 24-foot wide comic mural addressing the cultural history of seltzer when we are there (no promises on that). You can pose with mascots Spritz, Siphon and Little Spritz. If you do, we won’t tell anybody. More information about the museum is here: https://brooklynseltzermuseum.org/.
Does the tour include an egg cream? You bet!
Please Note: The museum charges $25 for this tour, so in addition to registering for the ride, you’ll need to buy a ticket here: https://brooklynseltzermuseum.org/. Select Friday, May 24. Tickets are non-refundable, but can be credited for a tour on another day. Tours are on Fridays at 1:00 pm, and the seltzer museum appears to be doing tours every other Friday during the summer. You may want to buy your ticket closer to the ride date when we have a better idea of the weather forecast for the 24th.
As always, please come prepared with a spare tube, hydration (it could be seltzer), and your helmet. Lunch will be in a nearby restaurant so a lock will be useful when we are inside the restaurant. Always check your email or the 5BBC website the night before and early morning of the ride by 8:00 a.m. in case the ride needs to be rescheduled.
Please note that this will be a Moderate ride in the front and we will accommodate Happy Face pace in the back. Please try to keep at least 10 mph minimum.
Ride With GPS: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/46550210
Cue Sheet: https://s3.amazonaws.com/ClubExpressClubFiles/511565/documents/GAP_-_Shirley_Chisholm_-_Brooklyn_Seltzer_Museum_-_GAP_Cue_Sheet_1936713434.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIA6MYUE6DNNNCCDT4J&Expires=1715107409&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DGAP_-_Shirley_Chisholm_-_Brooklyn_Seltzer_Museum_-_GAP_Cue_Sheet.pdf&Signature=2hhcKQK9wPHqjTpYbH0K1qU8mJs%3D