1. The last residence of jazz great Jelly Roll Morton
2. The childhood home of Nobel Prize Winner Ralph Bunche
3. The location of the 1969 Black Panthers shootout
4. The Hotel Dunbar, centerpiece of the Historic Central Avenue Jazz Corridor
5. The location of the 1974 SLA shootout
6. The actual fictional location of the Sanford and Son Salvage Yard
7. The Watts Towers of Simon Rodia
8. The location of the incident setting off the 1965 Watts Riots
9. The home of Eula Love, killed by police in 1979 as a result of a past-due gas bill dispute
10. The motel where legendary singer Sam Cooke was killed
11. The flashpoint of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots
12. The location of Wrigley Field, demolished in 1966.

Unfortunately, the above annotated timelapse video abruptly ends at the third-to-last location we visited, leaving me to discover that I need to get a bigger memory card if I want to capture the entire 33-mile, six-hour tour on camera the next time — and there will be a next time. I hope you’ll join me.

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.

This photo shows LA cyclist Alex Thompson being handcuffed Saturday night for, get ready for this, walking in a cross walk while there is a red hand showing. He was in cuffs for 20 minutes, but he wasn’t trying to cross when they grabbed him. He was trying to take a photo of another cyclist who was being cited by Officer Schube for not having a bike license. More details on West Side Bike Side -as you can imagine this one will be going to court. On the list of the worst people in the city to give a bike license citation to, the people who were actively involved with getting the law suspended 3 months prior are probably towards the top of the list. This one is going to be interesting…

[Photo of Alex Thompson in cuffs by Gary Se7en, used with permission]

Click to go to streetfilms & see the video

More on living la vida bike:

Via treehugger, I came across this film from streetfilms created about the LA bike scene and the wellspring of community action that has flowed from the Bike Kitchen out to all corners of the city. Neato!

Gutted and sawn

“Great, the junkies are at it again, digging for those tasty sellable morsels of copper wire. Only now they have a frickin’ concrete saw.”

Then I skated a little farther and saw a different vault situation (after the jump) …
Wonder of wonders, it looks like the city is methodically replacing all the electrical vaults, pouring slabs of concrete around them.

Over the past couple years, the copper thieves basically ripped open the wiring vaults with prybars or simply smashed the sides with something nice and heavy (little more than a short-handled 4-pound sledge would do it) and plunged the path into total darkness for anyone riding pre-dawn or post-dusk.

Now they’ll have to smash through what looks like a nice thick slab of cement – or just use a good prybar again. Unfortunately, the new lids look just like the old ones – cast iron.

I wonder how effective this will be.

You see, Pamela goes for morning walks along the bikeway. She recently witnessed an accident involving 2 bicyclists and 1 blader. So, she wants going really fast to be against the law.

The city of Burbank needs to impose and post a speed limit for bicyclists and those using roller blades, skateboards or any other vehicle on wheels. I have personally witnessed those on bikes passing me at an alarmingly fast speed.

Now, I’m not sure about your skateboard or your roller blades, but my Trek mountain bike did not come with a speedometer. However, I did find one for under $5 here. And one for skates here. They even make them for skateboards. Although, this one appears to be discontinued. Shucks.

Anyhoo.. I have a few questions that I’d like you to consider as you trudge through the rest of the day:

1. Should bikeways be off-limits to bikes?
2. Should there be posted speed limits?
3. What should that speed limit be?
4. Will there be use of radar technology to enforce said speed limit?
5. What about minimum speeds?
6. Will dogs and squirrels be exempt?

Discuss.

Update: There’s a post up on West Side Bike Side detailing what actually went down:

Yesterday approximately 6o cyclists protested police harassment (photos on Flickr & Ridazz) of Santa Monica Critical Mass.  In response to the 14 citations of Santa Monica Critical Mass (SMCM) riders last Friday we, the Crimanimalz, blocked 4 crosswalks for a cumulative period of 40 minutes.  By walking back and forth across crosswalks continuously the Crimanimalz were able to legally create massive traffic jams.  We effectively showed that legal behavior can be outrageously disruptive.  Further, we showed that should the Santa Monica Police Department (SMPD) continue targeting cyclists on Critical Mass, there will be consequences for traffic in Santa Monica on other days.

Picture nabbed from planet pooks

Hello friends! We know a more than a few of you reading this will go out of their way to ride a bike anywhere and everywhere they can. Even places that seem crazy! Attempting to survive while perched atop a frame of hollow metal with some wheels stuck on and conquer mountains, forests, deserts and even the freeway!

But more dangerous, more foolhardy and just plain more inconvenient for everyone involved… are those riders who choose to ride on the sidewalk!

We’ve read so many rants from people on bikes complaining about how dangerous the people in cars can make it for the people on bikes. Swerving, not looking out properly and sometimes just going out of their way to make life difficult for some cycle-jockey trying to save a few bucks and burn a few calories. So, it’s easy to see how someone on a bike might be inclined to retreat from the scary street to the relative safety of the sidewalk, where they can be the bigger, more imposing entity menacing typical occupants of the sidewalk, pedestrians.

Isn’t there some kind of law in L.A. against bike riding on the sidewalk? We all had to learn about how to deal with people on bikes when we got our driver’s license… slow down, go carefully around them, don’t drive in bike lanes, watch for hand signals, etc… but at no point did we ever learn about how to properly dodge out of the way of some speedster taking up most of the sidewalk while carrying bags full of meaningless goods like a decent American!

Also, we live in a fairly busy area, right near the tourist zoo that is Hollywood and Highland. The sidewalks are oft times difficult to navigate on foot much less while riding a wheeled menace. Every other day we see people on bikes looking all flustered that they can’t zip along and instead have to trudge and nudge through a dense thicket of euro/asian/midwest/etc. tourists while no less then ten feet away is a road packed with cars with plenty of room for someone on a bike to weave through and potentially become the fastest form of land-based travel in the immediate area!

Even if it is legal and lets say for the sake of argument that riding on the sidewalk is much safer and no pedestrians ever get hurt by the very conscientious riders of bikes in Los Angeles, why would one bother riding through such a famously overcrowded area… and be angry that it’s difficult to traverse?

Lets just end it by saying that Mark has terrible balance and has never successfully been on a bike… Unicycle? Yes. Bike, never. Steve probably rode a bike once, but has since made it a rule to never to anything physical for fun that can’t take place while in the shower.

So what do we know about it? Other than it sucks to have to minimally alter our path on the sidewalk to get out of the way of some cyclist hellbent on setting a new land speed record all over our shoes… beyond that, not much.