Category: political
April 22 Car-Free Day Los Angeles
Yo! (Yo! MTV Raps is 20 years old )
So yo! Been busy with boring, non-bloggable activities , but I did do Los Angeles Critical Mass last weekend and it was off the hook! 250 plus. We rode through Hollywood, which I sometimes forget exists. I have to say, the best way to see Hollywood Blvd is with 250 people on bikes. Speaking of 250 cyclists, I have to point out that the City of Los Angeles has declared April 22nd a Car Free Day according to this Wilshire Center Earth Day. For real. Car Free Day. In Los Angeles. The ‘official proclamation’(pdf) says, ‘In recognition of the adverse impacts caused by motor vehicles, the City of Los Angeles declares this day a Car-Free Day City Wide…’
Is that not the most amazing proclamation you’ve ever heard from a city? Sit on that.
Oh, and the Swarm! site has some updates on it.
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I hope to get some photos up soon of my recent non-blogging activities: went on Dan Koeppel’s 4.5 hour stair walk tour of Echo Park (seriously there are a lot of fucking staircases in Echo Park), mountain biking in the San Gabriels, mountain biking in the Santa Monicas, a Hip Hop festival and rock climbing in Joshua Tree. I love California!
But I can’t be bothered to spend any more time on the computer than I have to right now, but here is some good stuff other people wrote:
Alex Thompson who writes westsidebikeside.com recently penned a controversial article called Bicycle advocacy: FAIL. Bike Activism, WANT! He’s received some criticism, including this article: Great Energy, Wrong Targets.
And this book may be worth checking out: Pedal Power: The Quiet Rise of the Bicycle in American Public Life
The Golden Arrow
One of the reasons I started a blog was to compile thoughts, projects, groups, adventures, etc that I find interesting, important, entertaining, ridiculous, etc in one place. These ideas, concerns, evaluations, etc may seem unrelated, but to me the beauty of them all is the space between their relation. Like the bicycle. For many it is a component in an athletic endeavor and nothing more. In a way I am slightly envious of some people’s ability to narrow the use of something till it has one specific function. But, obviously, I think the bicycle is way more dynamic. Sure, you consume fewer resources when you bicycle instead of drive a motor vehicle. But people who bicycle, in my subjective, non-researched opinion, live lifestyles that consume less overall. Right?
Check out this Jared Diamond article in the NY Times:
What’s Your Consumption Factor?
Here is my favorite part:
‘Real sacrifice wouldn’t be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. Ask yourself whether Americans’ wasteful use of gasoline contributes positively to any of those measures.’
This chapter of the Story of Stuff fits right in. I love the noise the Golden Arrow makes (but only in the video. I hate the noise it makes in real life).
Stuff.
The Story of Stuff.
With cycling, and adventure in general, there is a return on the higher quality (more $$$) stuff you buy in that it lasts longer. It’s very difficult for someone as cheap as me to shell out the money, but I have found it economically and environmentally worth it.
Less stuff = Less work = More fun.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P56-zWupDcI&rel=1]
Ride to the Ride
Ride to the Ride!
The Great Eddy Merckx was asked what three things
someone could do to be a better cyclist and he said
“Ride your bike, ride your bike, ride your bike”
someone could do to be a better cyclist and he said
“Ride your bike, ride your bike, ride your bike”
Riding to the ride not only increases your mileage, fitness and experience, but each time you replace a car trip with a bike trip you:
Increase the visibility of cyclists: making the roads safer for everyone
Decrease pollution and smog: improving our air quality
Join us in improving the air and roads for cyclists by leaving your motor vehicle at home.
For more information on traveling by bike, see bikenow.org or the LA Bike Coalition’s Solution Revolution page.
This is a project brought to you by Swarm!
We need more bicycles in the streets. Who better to target than people already riding their bikes? The bicycle is far more than a recreational toy and I want to share that with others. Above is the text for a small flyer I am making to put on cars at the start of rides (or in Griffith Park, etc). I appreciate any feedback.
Read Read Read
I got a couple of rides in during the holiday week, so on the weekend I had some extra time to waste on the interweb. I was looking for some cycling blogs, particularly ultra-cycling and touring stuff. I also was perusing for some new Southern California routes and groups to ride with. Assuming some people who read this blog have similar interests I’ll share them.
In the world of randonneuring only certain people are qualified to put on rides. This is why we had to travel to San Diego or SLO to qualify for Paris-Brest-Paris. For 2008 there is finally a local group. The Pacific Coast Randos. Their rides seems to cost a little more than the others, but they do have a SAG vehicle running sweep, which some other rides do not have. They have some routes listed, but I think you have to pay for them. The San Diego Randonneurs have some Permanent routes on their site with direct links to the routes. Awesome.
Down in Orange County, where I ride occasionally there is a group called the OC Rebel Riders who have multiple route slips online. There are actually some nice, quiet sections of Sprawl County. The Ultra Rob blog has a recent post about web pages to map your own rides to share with others. I am also considering submitting my blog to Great Cycling blogs, but I am unsure if mine qualifies as great.
This is just amazing: 1001 lists to read before you die. This list references Ghandi: Top Ten Things to Think About if You Want to Change the World. Lastly, if you are vegan or interested in political prisoners, the Green Scare, etc, you probably know about Eric McDavid who is in prison on suspected Earth Liberation Front activity. The article Conspiracy of Dunces explains the role of the FBI in his case.
LA Auto Show
The talk (or more accurately Green Wash) at the LA Auto show makes me cringe. I ignore the entire show the best I can, but others who are more ambitious infiltrate and spread their green message. Green LA Girl posted some of her thoughts on her LA Times blog. Are you skeptical of Chevy’s ‘From gas-friendly to gas-free’ ad campaign? You should be. It is only an ad campaign.
Lastly, some good people at Rain Forest Action Network approached Toyota’s General Manager about the hypocrisy of selling themselves as green while suing the state of California for setting fuel standards higher than Federal regulations. He responds by knocking the camera out of his hand.
Our Inner Swarm(!)
From today’s New York Times. Pretty amazing. Follow the link for the article in its entirety.
From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm
By studying army ants — as well as birds, fish, locusts and other swarming animals — Dr. Couzin and his colleagues are starting to discover simple rules that allow swarms to work so well. Those rules allow thousands of relatively simple animals to form a collective brain able to make decisions and move like a single organism…
…“One of the really fun things that we’re doing now is understanding how the type of feedbacks in these groups is like the ones in the brain that allows humans to make decisions,” Dr. Couzin said. Those decisions are not just about what to order for lunch, but about basic perception — making sense, for example, of the flood of signals coming from the eyes. “How does your brain take this information and come to a collective decision about what you’re seeing?” Dr. Couzin said. The answer, he suspects, may lie in our inner swarm.
Good bye A-house
We had a fantastic 27 months. Great people have come through and wonderful things have happened. Will be missed greatly.