The Ruff Ryders at Randalls Island.   (Photo: Brian Finke)

On the way to the hospital, the ambulance pulled over and turned off the siren. Dee’s heart had stopped. For ten or fifteen seconds, he was dead. After he was resuscitated, he spent a year and a half in what his brother calls a “meeting with God,” otherwise known as a coma. Waah at first suspected sabotage, “because sometimes if guys can’t get at you, they get at your bike.” But both brothers now seem resigned to the more likely explanation: Like those kids who died on Randalls Island, Dee was pushing it too hard and wearing no helmet.

Stunt riding today is where bodybuilding was in the early eighties. Parking lots are the new muscle beaches.“How much you bench?” is now “How many blocks you got?”

Dee theorizes that he survived only because the tires of the truck acted as air bags. He knows plenty of people who weren’t so lucky. “That’s the downside of a bike. You’re gonna see a lot of people die,” he says. But like every rider I met, he figures it’s not a bad way to go. “Most of the time, when you do die by a bike, you don’t think you’re going to die. You’re dying enjoying yourself. It happens like that.” He claps his hands. “You’re gone, it’s over. Somebody pull a gun on you, you probably gonna say, ‘I’m going to die today and I don’t want to die this way.’ ”

Dee still misses riding, never more than when he hears the sound of motorcycles. “There’s nothing better,” he says, “than when summer comes in New York and you hear the bikes.”

This summer, the Ruff Ryders will embark on a fifteen-city tour to “reclaim the streets” after the pause imposed by Dee’s accident. The record company is not just organizing concerts but also hosting “battles” to determine “who got the hottest bike and who got the hottest stunts.” So popular have the bikes become that the Dean brothers now view Ruff Ryders as equal parts bikes and music. Which means they are well positioned to try to turn the lifestyle of their youth into a new empire. “We’re looking to take this mainstream,” says Waah. The goal is to be the “future Harley-Davidson,” and they are pursuing agreements to manufacture Ruff Ryder brand motorcycles. Along the way, they may just help turn stunt riding into a full-fledged arena sport.

Who are the potential stars? “Yayi’s the best as far as the women,” Dee says. “I don’t know a girl better than her.” Among the men, there’s Supamax, commander-in-chief of the New York Ruff Ryders, and G/Block’s, president of the Brooklyn chapter. Plus, Winky and Oiste!!, of course. And one other guy, what was his name? Dee asks his brother about “that little dude that used to be nice on the bikes?” Waah remembers him. The guy crashed and died. “That other kid died too,” Waah says. “I forgot his name, but he got hit by an ambulance doing twelve o’clock right here on 110th and Eighth.”

Yayi the Queen takes the Banshee across the parking lot, popping wheelies and riding on the two left or right tires. She wears a tank top, short shorts, fishnets, and high heels. This is her first time on a bike since having a baby more than a year ago, and she’s not familiar with this particular borrowed Banshee. Though she seems to be riding well, it is hard to shake the premonition of disaster. This is Parking Lot F on Randalls Island, the same patch of asphalt where three have died stunt riding within the past year.

A few of the Rockland County Ruff Ryders arrive, and we watch Yayi from the shade beneath the Triborough Bridge. There is a collective jolt when, in a millisecond, as if someone has spliced together two pieces of film, she is no longer holding her wheelie but lying motionless on the pavement.

Some of the Ruff Ryders go after the decelerating ATV while others sprint toward the fallen Queen. Yayi has paid dearly in past accidents; one crash resulted in a broken tailbone, 47 stitches in her knee, and, as she put it, “half my butt was gone.” Today, her show-off clothing does not offer much protection from the pebbly asphalt, which has scored a road rash onto her shoulder, but at least there is no injury to her head, which she jokes is harder than any helmet she could have been wearing. The proper etiquette for recovering from a spill is to insist that you are fine and get up. You get a pass only if you’re unconscious or missing an extremity. (One of the Queen’s acquaintances did, in fact, lose his foot in a crash; it was reattached, and he still rides.) True to form, Yayi says she’s all right, but for the rest of the afternoon, she joins the spectators in the shade and holds her infant son.