While the Brits might be having a horny summer on the lush and green Hampstead Heath—and who knows where Dua Lipa and Callum Turner are doing honeymoon part due next—back in sticky New York, celebrities have anointed the seat of the Citi Bike as this summer’s date spot.
Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet (the latter also a lover of the British Lime e-bike) were spotted out for a ride on the rented silver and blue bikes through Manhattan last month, amid their ardent attendance at the New York Knicks’s championship games. (Don’t expect Jenner to compromise her personal style for a cycle à deux, though, she kept her Margiela tabis firmly on.) Earlier that month, Jenner’s sister Kim Kardashian basically hard-launched her relationship with Lewis Hamilton by going Instagram official with a video of the pair’s own chaotic bike ride through NYC—Kim nearly crashing into a flowerbed, but kept it cute. The seven-time Formula 1 champion stayed smooth. And more often than not, you’ll see Jennifer Lawrence and her husband Cooke Maroney biking to dinner or the movies.
Photo: Backgrid
Photo: Backgrid
Yesterday, Vittoria Ceretti—who had just walked the Chanel couture show in Paris the previous day—was spotted cycling through Soho with her boyfriend Leonardo DiCaprio. We’re more used to seeing the famous couple having late dinner dates in Ibiza or Saint-Tropez.
Now, I’m not a celebrity, or particularly athletic, an activewear mogul, a sportsperson, or a pink-haired CEO masterminding the sugar-spiking buzzword-loaded fun drinks collab of the summer.(I do love my tabis though, and I think that the split toe actually gives me a better grip of the pedals.) But I’m all-in on a Citi Bike summer with a lover. Who wants to post up in the thick fug outside Le Dive or (if it ever re-opens) Kiki’s bumping into former colleagues or dating app ghosts, when you could be breezing down the Hudson River Greenway with just you and your beau? Why get antsy and fight with TikTokers in the line for froyo when you could bike through Brooklyn, pause your Citi Bike, and pick up your preordered mango sticky rice pint from Caffè Panna to share when you’ve done your circuit?
I’m still relatively new to the rentable e-bikes—as of this summer actually—but it’s opened up the city to me. I’m less hot and bothered on the subway or schleppin’ through Soho in puddling sandals, and spending more time pretending I’m a main character in a movie while pedal-assist cruising through Prospect Park, a hottie just within my periphery. Keep those Citi Bike passes topped up for an easy, breezy summer romance.
