The five-day blowout celebration of the Brooklyn Bridge’s 125th anniversary begins Thursday, May 22, and there are a multitude of cool things planned: a Technicolor light installation, a Brooklyn Philharmonic performance, outdoor films in Fulton-Ferry State Park, guided tours, and Grucci fireworks (all detailed here).

But BB is particularly psyched about two great events that just happen to coincide with the bridge’s big birthday bash:

City Reliquary Ride
The Tour de Brooklyn on Sunday, May 25, is being touted as “the” ride to celebrate the bridge’s b-day, but only the Children’s Parade actually traverses it. To really honor our most famous landmark (or to get the most exercise), join the annual City Reliquary Brooklyn Bridge Birthday Bike Ride on Saturday, May 24. The five-year-old tradition is “a way to promote cycling in the city,” says museum director Dave Herman, “but also one of our missions is to instill a sense of civic pride, and this is a way to mark a significant moment in New York City history and appreciate it at the same time.” Bikers depart from the tiny Williamsburg museum on the anniversary of the bridge’s opening day, May 24, 1883, and pedal to its first tower, where they’re met with birthday cake (made out to the bridge) and refreshments (of all kinds). Why stop midway? “It’s a ride to the bridge itself–not Manhattan,” says Herman, though he notes that one year half the group continued on to McSorley’s, where an invitation to the opening of the bridge hangs on the wall. The Reliquary itself has artifacts as well, including nuts and bolts from the original construction. Saturday, May 24, meet at noon at 370 Metropolitan Ave. near Havemeyer St., cityreliquary.org.

The Telectroscope
If you’ve heard the term “steampunking” but considered it an obscure trend you’d never experience first hand, think again. On May 21, a drill bit will begin began boring out of Fulton Ferry Landing to expose a tunnel 30 feet long and seven feet in diameter in time for May 22, the kickoff of the bridge’s anniversary bash. Created by artist/inventor Paul St. George, this Telectroscope is actually the outer part of a tunnel (wink wink) connecting Brooklyn to South London, and outfitted with an optical device that will allow us to see Londoners in real time and vice versa, 24/7 through June 15. It’s the culmination of a project St. George’s great grandfather began and later abandoned in the nineteenth century (as lore has it), and it was brought here by Katie Dixon of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. A fan of London’s public art organization Artichoke, she asked the Brits if they would import one of their commissions to Brooklyn, and this is the project they agreed on. Only when they realized the perfect site for this Jules-Verne-like installation was the Fulton Ferry Landing did they decide to unveil it in time for the bridge’s 125th anniversary. The fact that the transatlantic peephole will also exist in South London, in the shadow of Tower Bridge, is fitting, says Dixon, because “the South Bank has so much vital arts and cultural activity happening.” In other words, it’s the Brooklyn of London. Blog.telectroscope.org, May 22-June 15, Fulton Ferry Landing, Old Fulton Street and More London, Riverside, London, SE1 2DB, morelondon.com Update: Here’s what it’s like on the London end — gowanuslounge.com