Please indulge an old man.

I have a vague recollection of walking on a velodrome track when I was very young, maybe 6 or 7 (49 now). Since I grew up in the Boston-Cambridge-Somerville area, perhaps it was at one of the many universities in the area. Any ideas?

Thanks,

deaconbam

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

perhaps you are thinking of the elevated mezzanine at a bike shop

what bike shop is (or was) that with the wooden circular second floor ?

MIT has a velodrome. Their cycling site is down, so no link.

you're mistaken MIT does not have a velodrome, but a ghettodrome. We just ride the running track late at night. There was a velodrome somewhere in southie at one point or another, but I think that was arround the turn of the century.

necco built a drome once, but i dont think it was used very long. that was probably the 30's or even earlier.

A ghettodrome! I'm living in Somerville this summer, I'll have to stop by the drome for some rides with you guys. When do you ride?

From a Harvard PDF I found:

Lansdowne to Pacific:
From the 1890s to about 1910,
where the NECCO building now stands used to be the end
of a large velodrome – a bicycle-racing track, called the
Charles River Park. The Stanley Steamer was
demonstrated here. The velodrome owners tried to interest
the precursors of the Red Sox to move here, but after an
exciting late season surge they lost out in a heart-breaker.
So NECCO bought the land and built its candy factory on
the northern slice.

god i wish we had a velodrome...

You do ...
Sort of...

The track used might not be quite the real thing but the racing is real.45 guys showed up last tuesday. 318 meters 14 degree banking, pavement is pretty smooth.

https://www.leadcycling.com/

Check it out. Most of the guys seem pretty happy to be there.

edzo lf memory serves me correctly high roads had two shops in the eastern ma. area that had elevated second floor indoor oval/test track.

Every four years when the Olympics are on, and there's the usual 90 seconds of track racing on TV (why is it always pursuit????) my phone will ring with some Boston area relative or other asking "What the hell are they doing? Do you ever do this?"

Eventually I'll hear, "Ya know, they useta have one of those at Revere Beach." I have an uncle born in 1950 who claims to have seen the RB velodrome, so possibly it existed, whether it was used or usable or not, as late as 1960.

https://northeastvelo.com/

Link appears to be dead.

I believe there was some effort into housing a "portable" wooden velodrome somewhere in the Boston area about 10 or 15 years ago. A google search finds that the conversation is ongoing...

Fingers crossed...

Now link is as posted above by walshconor, as there was according to reports a hostile takeover and the velodrome now goes under a new name.

If you want to see the old website, search archive.org with the old URL - 2008 returns pages...