Why chickens?
’cause they are no different than humans, we control their lives after they were free and wild .. Kind of what the system is doing with us …I read a book by carlos castaneda that talked about humans living in ‘humaneros’ or human chicken coops for our minds..and cause they are funny, hahaha.‘
Category: city
Los Angeles stuff this weekend
I’m a little late on this as some it starts in fewer than 12 hours, but hey, that’s how I roll. The first is Saturday morning’s LA premiere of Ride the Divide, a documentary about the Tour Divide mountain bike race 2700 miles, mostly off-road, from Banff, Canada to the Mexican border. Through the Rockies. Unsupported. Awesome. I’ve ridden most of the route as a bike tour from the Canadian border to Silver City, NM. Like the ride, my my blog posts about it are unfinished. Here’s the trailer:
Ride The Divide Movie Trailer from Ride The Divide on Vimeo.
Later on Saturday is the Tour De Fat in the Not A Cornfield state park in Chinatown/downtown. I’m not exactly sure what it is. Sort of a ride maybe, but mostly a beer party? Biking In LA does the best job of explaining what happens that I’ve read. Check it out.
Now if I can get over the Yankees losing and actually leave the house maybe I’ll see you at one of these events. Ride safe this weekend!
10-10-10 10am CicLAvia details
This is going to be historic. When I first heard about Ciclovia coming to Los Angeles I thought, ‘no fucking way. Not here.’ I was wrong! It’s not only happening, but Mayor Villaraigosa even held a press conference promoting it. More than a cycling and walking event, it’s a reclaimation of the the streets. People over cars. End the dictatorship of the personal use automobile!
This LA Streetsblog post has details for the feeder rides heading there and the other events happening in the streets. Get over there if you can and please promote this to other Angelenos! The CicLAvia site has all the details of how to get there, what to do and what to eat.
Super bike dork status achieved
Last night I was riding home from a friend’s place after purchasing his rollers (the bicycle ones, not to be confused with the bird or the photographer) . I was on my bike, with my bike-specific bag hauling a device made for riding my bike in place. I’m not sure if this is ironic, unnecessary, obvious or some combination of all those, but when I passed a cute girl on Fountain Ave (with new sharrows!) I realized how ridiculous it all is. But, I love ridiculousness!
Ciclavia 10-10-10
Death and Dancing
My Google Reader is poppin this morning. First this post with a chart outlining that the number one killer of children is motor vehicles. Number one. Think about that. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tells us that in 2007 over 41,000 total people were killed by automobiles. What makes it all the more tragic is that we take this as ‘normal’. Well, life is dangerous and we have to drive, right? No, we don’t have to. We’ve just spent the previous 60 years giving space and priority to moving automobiles as fast as possible. This has to change. And it is. Slowly.
Folks do what they can. For some in Oakland it’s this dance for their friend who was killed in a car at this corner.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQRRnAhmB58&fs=1&hl=en_US]
Here’s a little news story about it and the Turf website.
What’s your dance? Get out there and do it.
LAPD poster parody
Sarcasm is such a great political tool. This poster mocks the one put out by the LAPD after they invited themselves to Critical Mass. There is some background here.
You can see the video of LAPD kicking and assaulting cyclists on last month’s Critical Mass. The double standard is amazing.
If any cyclists break the law = cyclists break laws.
If the police beat people = it was an isolated incident.
If the police beat people = it was an isolated incident.
Not enough hours this weekend to do it all
Well, It’s not quite officially summer, but there are a number of summer-like events this weekend. It’s overwhelming, almost. The price of being involved in so much. Let’s see if I can get it covered.
Saturday I was planning on racing the second edition of the 12 hours of Temecula series. I raced the first one back in January and actually got around to writing about it. But, along came tangible proof of the existence of a mystical ride called the Santa Monica 100, a ride linking up 100 miles of mostly single track in the Santa Monica mountains. So drive over an hour, pay $85 and ride in circles or do a free, DIY, local event? Duh. Since there isn’t much info on the site here’s their page on everyone’s favorite vegan-owned social networking site: facebook. I think I’ve ridden most of these independently, linking them up should rule. Anyone else on single-speed? Will Dave Zabriskie be there again? I heard about this ride last year, but missed it and I just kept hearing about Zabriskie riding it on a 29er with drop bars. And since I know very little about professional road racing I used this lone fact to root for him for the Tour of California.
Burritos on a roof in San Diego back in April.If you aren’t coming mountain biking with me, you should be walking stairs as Saturday and Sunday is the second edition of the Big Parade, a 2-day, 35-mile walk covering over 100 stairways from downtown LA to the Hollywood sign including urban camping. You can do all of it, which I did last year and it was a blast, or pop in and out and do sections that interest you. It’s a slice of LA most people have no idea exists. Get out to this! The website is a wealth of info. You can follow on twitter to catch them.
If deep down you feel that walking and clothing are inhibiting, you can skip out and head over to the World Naked Bike Ride. Seriously. The LA ride leaves around 4pm from Echo Park after a popular sporting event ends. Social network with fellow naked cyclists here.
Los Angeles’ first bicycle cooperative the Bicycle Kitchen is having their closing fundraiser party at a spot on ‘the block’. Check out their blog for the details.
Also Saturday night vegan MMA fighter Mac Danzig has a fight and some friends are organizing a vegan potluck to view it. Why not?
While all this is happening here, I’ll be thinking about my friend Aidan who was on my support crew in Norway when I raced Norseman, possibly the only triathlon that requires a crew, because he’s on a race that explicitly does not allow a crew or any outside help at all- the Tour Divide. Starts today at noon in Banff and ends 2745 miles later at the Mexican border. One stage, no entry fee, no prizes. My kind of race! I wish I was there, actually. I wrote about the race a bit in 2008, including info from when I rode the Canada to (almost) Mexico section in 2006. Aidan is racing single-speed, but I’ve confidence in anyone who has finished the Alaska Iditarod Invitational. Crush it Aidan!
Lastly, I’ve a half dozen unfinished posts from previous events I’d like to get up soon. Too busy doing to write about the past! This is my public commitment to get them up!
From this year:
Cool 24 hour mountain bike race
Mt. Laguna Bicycle Classic
LA County Bicycle Coalition LA River century
Last year:
Boggs 24hr mountain bike race
To/from Mt. Whitney Summit from Los Angeles via public transit (seriously!).
Have fun in the world this weekend.
Walking in LA
I’ve been following this series at Good magazine, Walking in LA, by Ryan Bradley. It’s terrific. From there Sasha found a link to a story about our friend Dan Koeppel’s The Big Parade called Walking for Walking in Los Angeles. On the top photo our Swarm! socks make a center stage appearance. Anyway, in the most recent post he discusses parking and how it affects the ‘feel’ and layout of downtown:
If you took all of the parking spaces in Los Angeles’s central business district and spread them horizontally in a surface lot, they would cover 81 percent of downtown. I know this because of a paper called “People, Parking, and Cities” by Michael Manville and Donald Shoup at UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning [pdf here]. This “parking coverage rate,” they write, is “higher in downtown L.A. than in any other downtown on earth. In San Francisco, for instance, the coverage rate is 31 percent, and in New York it is only 18 percent.” Their paper goes on to show how this glut of parking keeps downtown from having a vibrant city center, because downtowns in general “thrive on high density … the prime advantage they offer over other parts of a metropolitan area is proximity—the immediate availability of a wide variety of activities…. So long as its zoning assumes that almost every new person will also bring a car—and requires parking for that car,” they conclude “[downtown Los Angeles] will never develop the sort of vital core we associate with older urban centers.”
I read it this like this: You can’t have both. Either give up your car and work toward compacting DTLA or keep your car and your parking and don’t complain! But it’s never quite that simple. As I say over and over, most people cannot or will not believe that their individual actions matter and can change the environment and culture we live in. Oh, but they do!
And Hope Dies a Little Bit
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DZfdX42CZo&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]
Thanks to Joe Linton from LA Creek Freak for the share on this.