Not Just Present at Work, but Presentable

Once she locks up her bike each morning at work, Andrea Cortes-Comerer faces a series of potentially awkward moments. She climbs into a crowded elevator, still sweaty, her hair matted down from her helmet, hoping to avoid eye contact. She rushes into the bathroom, where she changes clothes, combs her hair (which she has shampooed and tied into a ponytail before leaving her apartment), washes her face and applies deodorant. Then she heads to her desk, where she has arranged some cardboard boxes at her feet where she can hang her clothing to dry, out of sight.

It is the bathroom stall that poses the biggest challenge, Ms. Cortes-Comerer says. She becomes increasingly self-conscious the longer she spends there.

“Since the bathroom stalls have toilets that flush automatically, the toilet will flush multiple times,” she said. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to solve this problem even when I use the handicapped stall and try to stand as far as I can from the toilet!”

Like many bike commuters, Ms. Cortes-Comerer speaks about the time she spends on the bicycle each morning as a revelation, the joys of which easily offset the associated indignities. But she also acknowledges the disadvantages of a form of transportation that can leave a person sweaty and dirty at the beginning of each day at work. With the hottest months of the year looming, concerns about personal hygiene on the bike are heightened.

In response, cyclists head to nearby gym locker rooms, wipe themselves down with paper towels, or simply tell themselves that they would get just as sweaty on the subway. (A number of people who were interviewed for this article seemed convinced that air-conditioning was not a standard feature of subway cars.) The luckiest ones have showers at their places of employment. Others rely on sink showers or showers-in-bottles, and a select few head to a friendly bike messengers’ service in Midtown that offers them a place to bathe and stow their bicycles out of a spirit of camaraderie.

About 185,000 people in New York City bike to work or use a bike for work each day, according to Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group that encourages bicycle commuting. The responsibility for making commuters more comfortable when they arrive at work should fall to employers, said Wiley Norvell, the group’s communication director.

“It’s an accumulation of small things that make this possible,” Mr. Norvell said. “In New York City, we’re accustomed to adapting to unusual spaces and unusual situations.”

Short of installing showers or locker rooms, Mr. Norvell said, employers can designate a space as a changing room and provide space for clothing storage (his own office’s changing room consists of a five-by-five area cordoned off by a curtain). Employers are increasingly receptive to such suggestions, Mr. Norvell said. Also important, he said, has been the gradual erosion of what he described as the city’s “1960s Madison Avenue decorum,” where casual clothes and sweaty bodies were looked at disapprovingly in office situations.

Last year, Transportation Alternatives and the city’s Department of Transportation began giving an award to the city’s most bicycle-friendly workplaces. The first year, Credit Suisse won the award. It won plaudits for maintaining bicycle rooms with secure parking and air pumps to fill flat tires in its office, and for offering discounted memberships to the gym next door, where commuters could shower.

Chicago has taken a more direct approach. There, cyclists can pay $150 for an annual membership to the McDonald’s Cycle Center in Millennium Park. The center, financed by the city and operated by McDonald’s, has lockers, showers and bike parking.

Having a shower at the office makes a big difference, said Bancha Srikacha, 34, who commutes from Jackson Heights to the Upper West Side. His commuting became unexpectedly better when he got a tip about a shower in his building that other commuters had come across, allowing him to ditch the washcloth he kept in his desk drawer. The whole thing has an air of secrecy; Mr. Srikacha got access through a building maintenance worker.

“It’s an industrial shower in a staff-only place,” Mr. Srikacha said. “I don’t know why it’s there, but I know other people use it. I see their T-shirts and soap in there.” He asked that his workplace not be named, out of concern that he might embarrass his employer or threaten his own access to the shower.

For James Nachlin, who has been commuting by bike “since I had somewhere to commute to” and now rides to work almost five days a week, the best strategy is a preventive one. When he reaches the base of the Williamsburg Bridge, he pulls over and strips off all the clothing he can “without scandalizing anyone.” He rides slowly from that point on, guaranteeing that he will show up at work reasonably dry.

This has turned Mr. Nachlin’s commute into an exercise in self-restraint.

“It’s easy not to sweat (for a reasonably in-shape person, in the cooler months), if you just ride slowly,” he said in an e-mail message. “Somehow, it is very hard to ride slowly!”

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