So this past Monday I boldly went somewhere by bike that I’d never gone before. And so, for the lack of a substantive and/or interesting post on any number of prevalent topics, I do hereby give you: The Los Angeles Riverbed Ride. In which I navigated downstream from the south end of Elysian Valley down to the Seventh Street Viaduct and then back. For your viewing pleasure, these are the 12 spans I pedaled under, beginning with the 110 Freeway and ending at Seventh Street.

A slideshow of the above Flickr set of images is viewable here.

After the jump is the SFW video-still of the naked guy I encountered under the First Street Viaduct who was bathing in the water (given its quality I use “bathing” in its least optimistic sense), along with the obligatory timelapse video of the entire ride. Enjoy.

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I had such a blast discovering the east bank of the Los Angeles River by bike a couple weekends ago, that I’m going back to get me some more laidbackification this holiday weekend. So if you’re not headed/heading out of town for the holiday weekend and don’t have anything cooking July 4 morning, feel free to join my wife Susan and me. We’re planning on setting out from the Fletcher Avenue Bridge around 9:30 a.m. for a heat-beating, entirely casual out-and-back roll that’s about six miles in length.

The Real East Side: 1967 Chevy Chevelle SS. Artist: "Adam."

In my 475 years  of existence in this city, I have been visiting the Los Angeles River for 323 of them. But ALWAYS the west bank south of Fletcher Avenue. Never the much more rugged and less-accessible east bank. Until yesterday, when stuck inside my head I prescribed a self-medicating  bike ride instead.

Boy did it coat, soothe and relieve.

Pedaling from Silver Lake to Atwater Village, I accessed the far side via Sunnynook Drive and then headed south, finding the river partially sandbagged and diverted at Fletcher for what looks to be stabilization/reinforcement work that’s being done to the underside of its bridge.

Scooting under the span I then had the three-mile length to Elysian Valley enfuckingtirely to myself, and I felt Lewis & Clarksian in discovering some seriously amazing scenery that strengthened the bond I have with our misbegotten waterway.

Anywhat, it was just what I needed to clear my cranium. And you know if it’s me on a bike there will be handlebarcam timelapsification of the entire trip for your stop-motion viewing pleasure:

If I told you that someone driving a car ran into a stationary object, would you think the fault rested with the driver or with the stationary object? What if that object was a person? Now whose fault is it? What if that person was actually several people. A large group in fact? And what if I told you the driver had been drinking? Still with me? And what if I told you the driver made no attempt to stop, left no skid marks, and by some eyewitness accounts may have even sped up? Any idea who might be at blame here? And what if this collision sent many of those people to the hospital, some in critical condition, many with broken bones?

So just to clarify. If a driver, who had been drinking ran into a large group of people who were standing still (that is, they didn’t jump in front of the car or anything stupid like that) without making any efforts to avoid them – who do you think is at fault?

If you said the driver, congrats, you have some shred of common sense. If you said it must have been the fault of the people the driver hit, you must work for the LAPD.

This is disgusting.

The author as Thatawayman somewhere between Boyle Heights and Vernon last year (Photo courtesy my friend and fellow route marker Stephen Roullier).

I’m a far more consistent Los Angeles River Ride volunteer than I am a participant. Though I can trace my sporadic involvement as a rider back to 2001, I’ve only done the LA County Bicycle Coalition’s annual trip to Long Beach and back four times.

Part of the reason for such laxness is that I’ve been far more consistent every year since 2006 in getting up the morning before the big event and getting my ride on helping to mark the section of the route from Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights to Imperial Highway and back.

This year’s no exception. And the reason I’m telling you this is not only to remind you the ride itself is Sunday, but also to invite you — if you’re both morning-embracing and volunteeristically inclined — to join me and the hearty band of route markers tomorrow morning either at 7:30 a.m. in front of Echo Park’s Brite Spot for the ride to the Los Angeles River Center, or at 8 a.m. there (map). Either way have a bike in good working order as well as a pack-pack to help haul the materials.

If the volunteer ranks marshaled tomorrow by organizer extraordinaire Colin Bogart end up a bit thin you might get pressed into service marking another stage, but if  the no-shows are minimal feel free join me and my friend Stephen Roullier. We’re planning after we finish placing arrows and hanging signs (somewhere around noon) on lunching at the Most Awesome Blue Star in the Scrap Metal District before heading back uptown.

First, the bad news: Earlier rumors from Twitter are true. There will be no CicLAvia this July. Bike all you want, but the cars ain’t stopping.

The good news: CicLAvia is expanding into South Los Angeles and deeper into Boyle Heights. More room for more people doing more things. Sounds like this thing is a hit. Since you guys are taking time off to do a little more planning, maybe we could get this thing up to Hollywood and the Valley? Pretty please?

The official post is after the jump.

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2 bikes that weren't in the Tour of California

You’re pardoned if you didn’t know that a world-class sports competition, featuring many of its top athletes, wrapped up yesterday in Thousand Oaks. It was the Amgen Tour of California bike race, and is seen as a lead-in to the Tour de France in July.

The Tour of California covered 8 stages, beginning at Lake Tahoe. It included many of the world’s best cyclists, including California resident Levi Leipheimer, who placed second to fellow American Chris Horner. In Europe, where bike racing is as popular as soccer and Formula One auto racing, many racers are household names. In the U.S., bike racing has more of a cult status, even among the many commuter biking enthusiasts at blogging.la.

However, the Tour of California could change that. Cult members showed up along the route, or followed the action on the Versus cable channel or website. The weather was excellent, and the route showcased much of the beauty of Central and Southern California. In particular, on Saturday, the riders climbed more than 6,000 feet up Mt. Baldy (i.e., Mt. San Antonio), the 10,000+ foot highest peak in the San Gabriel Mountains that border the Los Angeles area, and the snow-capped biggie that many of us see outside our windows. The “Mt. Baldy” climb could become an iconic staple of the Tour of California the way the infamous Alpe D’Huez has for the Tour de France.

It was an exciting race, and a great chance to show off our neck of the woods to the world, and, hopefully, to some Americans too.

As someone who rides bikes in Los Angeles, who is obsessed with subcultures, and who walks the line on cool kid wannabeness, it’s no surprise that Takeover LA is one of my daily reads. If you aren’t into bikes then it’s likely of no interest to you, but if you are this is a rabbit hole that runs very, very deep. TOLA (as it’s more commonly known) is an LA blog in that the authors live in LA, the post about LA events, post videos of LA stuff and LA is in the title of the site, though I’d argue it’s focus is really more about the fixed gear / track bike scene. They write about stuff they are into, and since they are in LA a lot of that stuff happens to be in LA as well. There is also no question these are the cool kids, which, not being one of the cool kids, is cool to be able to live vicariously through this blog. It’s a fun guilty pleasure at worst.

On the good side they posts all the time. Really several posts a day on any given day. These are pretty well balanced between videos, photos, events, reviews and profiles. I can’t say I’m totally down with some of the fashion they endorse but I’m old so that’s to be expected I think. If you wanted a good idea what is cool in the fixed gear scene right this very second, you could read TOLA for one day, and no other site, and have a very good idea. They are seriously all over this, and I really appreciate passion in a blog. There’s no question they are into the stuff they are writing about.

On the bad side, I’d challenge you to find a single review on the site that says anything negative about the product they are reviewing. I’d also challenge you to find a review that doesn’t causally mention that the product they are reviewing was given to them free. I’d also challenge you to find a review that didn’t say that said free products were awesome. Ethically, this is a little suspect. I don’t really trust their reviews because of this, are they giving this product a good review because they like it or because they got it free? It’s hard to tell. I wish they talked more about stuff they thought was lame or not awesome, or stuff they just bought for themselves because they wanted rather than only stuff given to them for free. That would add a ton of credibility in my book, but again, I’m old. So take that how ever you will.

Having participated  in Bike Week going back to its beginnings in the mid-1990s, it’s good to see how far the events have come from such humble origins. But one thing that’s always perplexed me through those years is how big the collective emphasis is on biking “to” work, with pretty much a total divorce from that whole “from” part.

Though the Law of Commuting states, “What goes out, must come back,” year in and year out Bike Week organizers ignore that all-important second part. On the designated “Bike To Work Day” that “To” part is taken literally. Mornings are chock full of strategic events and pitstops and various freebies, sprinkled with the occasional councilpersons who’ll don helmets and grins and pedal under an MTA sign and past a camera pool. And if you’re in the right place as you pedal, you might find a few scattered Starbucks that’d give up a free drip coffee if you rolled there before 9 a.m.

But pretty much after that hour things are broken down and packed up and put away — which is literally half-assed; a willingly missed opportunity to keep the good vibrations and awareness going on for that integral return trip. Well, with this coming edition of Bike Week (May 16-20; with Bike To Work Day on May 19) I’m pleased to report some progress has been made. Not by the city or the county or Metro, but rather by the LA County Bicycle Coalition who for better or worse is gonna help returning cyclists get their drink on.

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Rumors of CicLAvia‘s cancellation are flying on Twitter. Just saw this update from organizer @JoeLinton:

I’m hoping what has quickly become a very popular biking/walking/whatever event will go on as planned. I guess we’ll know more in the next week.

Did you know there was a bike ban on Metro Rail during rush hour? That ban is gone, effective immediately. The Source wants to know how you feel about that.

With gas prices surging, the city’s renewed interest in a viable bike network, and increasingly popular events like CicLAvia, this can only be a good thing.

But, exactly how will Metro handle the possible flood of fixies? There has been some talk of removing seats from rail cars.  Instead of simply placating cyclists, why not encourage them by going a step further?

What Metro needs now is a multimodal rail car with bike storage. Sound far fetched? Plans were drawn up in 1976.

Photographer Adam Rindy took some amazing portraits of people and their bikes at The Hammer Museum’s Third annual bike night last week. This is a fantastic collection showing the wide variety of Los Angeles cyclists, with many a familiar face to anyone who regularly finds themselves on 2 wheels.

Break out your old BMX  and pedal on over to the Hammer for a fun evening of bike culture.  Artist Lisa Anne Auerbach is hosting the bike related fun.  Along with vegan munchies, bicycle portraits and balloon races (honest I didn’t make up the last one) there will be a showing of the classic BMX bike movie from 1986-RAD.

DEETS Thursday April 14, 2011, Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90024. There will be monitored parking.

Tip o’ the hat to reader Gabriele who saw this and thought of all the bike riders here.

Yesterday’s CicLAvia was mindblowing and mindblowingly well-attended, and to documemmorate it differently than the forward-facing handlebar perspective with which I timelapsed the inaugural CicLAvia last October, I bolted the cam to the seat tube and pointed it out over the rear wheel — the better to look back at the event, both figuratively and literally:

From East Hollywood’s “Bicycle District” to Boyle Heights’ Hollenbeck Park:

And back from Boyle Heights to East Hollywood:

Here are the direct links if the above embeds fail: East Hollywood Out, and Boyle Heights Back.

UPDATED (5:39pm): Lost in the video translation are some of the details that can be found chosen from the mass of higher-resolution stills used to make the timelapse — no, not via the thumbnail farm below (though it slightly bigable), but via this Flickr photoset:

CicLAvia Shot From srd515's Flickr Stream

I’ve added CicLAvia to my list of Favorite Things To Do in L.A. If you missed the first two, I suggest you get your bike/skates/shoes ready for the next one on 7/10/11.

Here are 8 Ways CicLAvia can be even better:

1. Longer hours. Make it an all day party. Something like 8-6, or later. Imagine enjoying a Southern California sunset with 150,000 of your closest friends.

2. Extend the route. Let’s get this thing into the heart of Hollywood, take it over Cahuenga, and into the Valley. Close off Ventura Boulevard. Shop owners might be surprised how much walk-up business they would get.

3. More destinations. Set up entertainment stages along the route. Schedule local bands and performance groups. Establish a food truck zone. Farmer’s Market. Arts & crafts vendors.

4. Better traffic mitigation. LAPD needs to learn that you cannot throw up your hand and shout for 100 cyclists to stop on a dime. Maybe smile a little. People on bikes are not necessarily criminals.

5. Eliminate some of the current street crossings, like Grand, Olive, and Broadway. If you’re Downtown, you should be on foot anyway. Close Broadway to traffic and include it as part of CicLAvia. Get Bringing Back Broadway involved. What better way to raise awareness of that initiative?

6. Encourage local restaurants to be open along the route. More curbside tables and booths along the way. Set up sidewalk dining.

7. Pave the route. Pave the route. Pave the entire route, right now.

8. Make this happen every Sunday. Permanently.