Streetsblog Los Angeles

Since there were no bike pit stops in Boyle Heights for Metro Bike to Work Day, I took a break from the neighborhood and checked out the one in East Los Angeles. Staff and students from La Causa Youth Build, a charter school that serves 16 to 24 year olds that are pushed out of traditional schools, stood on the corner of Olympic and Goodrich Boulevards.

Amy Ruvalcaba, La Causa’s AmeriCorps coordinator and who organized La Causa’s Bike to Work Day pit stop, said that when she saw  that there was no pitstop in the East Los Angeles area just two weeks before Bike to Work Day, she started work on bringing one to La Causa.

La Causa has a curriculum with a foundation in social justice and sustainable practices.  The school organized a team of students to help at the pit stop intermittently throughout the day. Juan Gutierrez, 23, is a current student at La Causa Youth Build. Gutierrez manned the kiosk when I visited and was there throughout the morning before his classes in the afternoon.

La Causa’s pit stop wasn’t in a prime location for cyclists, but it did allow for students to visit or man the kiosk between classes. The volunteers had to contend with the noise and presence of big rig trucks coming from a lot of industry from around their offices and neighboring City of Commerce.

Regardless, those passing by, mostly pedestrians and some cyclists, stopped at the kiosk to see what was being offered.  Read more…

Screen grab from a google map shows LAPD patting down a young man.

(This is the second part in a series on how police actions can make people feel unsafe in their own communities.  After all, if one can’t be outside in their own space without fear of harassment, be it from the police or gangs, then how can a street be Livable?  Read part one, here. – DN)

If you spot Sammy Carrera riding his bike in Boyle Heights, you won’t think much of it. At 5’5, bald and wearing a baggy shirt and jeans, and an amiable smile hidden behind his glasses, Carrera can’t go down the street without running into a familiar face. Always one to stop for a moment to say ‘wad up,’ he’s know in the community as a member of Corazon del Pueblo and all around swell guy. Yet at the same time, he can’t go down the same street without fear of being stopped and questioned by LAPD officers from the Hollenbeck Division because of the same baldhead and baggy clothes that help him stand out.

On November 2nd, 2011 Carrera was making his way to the Annual Self Help Graphics Day of the Dead Celebrations. He never could imagine that he’d end up beat up and in jail. On that night, Los Angeles Police officers from Hollenbeck Division stopped to question him after he was mistaken for an unidentified gang-banger, whom officers were looking for that same night.

He cooperated with officers and their orders, but as Carrera asked and pressed as to why he was being stopped and searched, the officers got more and more aggressive. “Shut the fuck up, you don’t know who the fuck we are man, we’re the LAPD, when we tell you what to do, you do that shit our way,” are just some of the comments Carrera claims officers made during the stop.

Sammy after his stop.

Due to his profile, shaved head and baggy clothes, officers mistook him for the unidentified suspect they were looking for that night. What followed resulted with Carrera having a swollen eye and other injuries from the arresting officers. “Everything that they asked me to do, I complied, all while asking them, ‘what the fuck is going on?’ I was really shocked, especially at the way they came at me,” says Carrera.

The line between serving and harassing the community is one that officers have abused in the past, but is still commonplace in working class communities of color such as Boyle Heights. While police cause pause for people walking down the street, the violent history, and it’s current state in the community, still impact community members that are caught in the cross fire.

Protection from Harassment or Harassment from Over Protection    Read more…

The liquor store at the corner of State and First Street removed its storefront advertisements (shown in photo above) after an inspection by the Los Angeles Police Department and the California Alcohol Beverage Control of liquor vendors. Photo illustration by Erick Huerta.

(This is the first in a series of regular news updates on Boyle Heights Streetsblog will publish.  For those not familiar with this slice of the city, we hope this news round-up will help provide more flavor and background for our Boyle Heights writing.)

Last week, I was kicked out of my house for fumigation.  The past weekend, I was up north for a friend’s graduation (Congrats Cindy Chen on getting your bachelor’s degree). Just because I was away, doesn’t mean that the news slowed down in Boyle Heights.

In the past couple of weeks, there have been liquor store inspections, Roosevelt High School was called a teen pregnancy “Hot Spot” and White Memorial Hospital broke ground on a possible addition to its facility. To catch up on the lost of time, I made it into this post, with some additional information.

“Hundreds of Boyle Heights Liquor Stores Get Visit From the ABC” reported in EGP News

Forty California Alcohol Beverage Control and Los Angeles Police Department officers inspected nearly 200 liquor vendors two weeks ago in response to complaints from the public over the high availability of alcohol in the neighborhood. While there were no citations handed out, according to a report by Eastern Group Publications, one liquor store has changed its look after the inspections. Community Blogger Erick Huerta made a before and after photo of a liquor market on the corner of State Street and First Street and posted it on various social media outlets (photo is shown at the top of the post).

Sergeant Marc Archuleta, the head of  the LAPD Vice Department at Hollenbeck station , said that businesses can only have 50 percent of windows covered with advertisements. If a store has a violation, the officers warn the business and allow them to resolve the problem rather than fine the store for a first offense.

(Click here for the full story.)

The Congress of New Urbanism awards the master plan for the  New Wyvernwood – Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community  Read more…

Un Solo Sol Kitchen started offering last week a 25 percent discount on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for those who arrive on foot, bike, or public transportation. Photo by Kris Fortin

Un Solo Sol Kitchen, a Boyle Heights restaurant that specializes in Pan-American dishes, but adds an eclectic and healthy twist, is offering a 25 percent discount Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays to people that arrive to the restaurant by bike, public transportation, or on foot. Basically, if you want the best deal at Un Solo Sol Kitchen don’t bring a car.

The discount and restaurant’s location gives people an incentive to use a full range of transportation options.  The Mariachi Plaza Gold Line Station is across the street, and  the green-stripped bicycle lanes pass by the restaurant on 1st Street, said Carlos Ortez, owner of Un Solo Sol Kitchen.

Ortez hopes to get more people from Boyle Heights to explore transportation options to get to the restaurant, he also hopes to increase the links between communities such as Highland Park and Pasadena that are connected by the Gold Line.

Ortez is creative in his attempts to form a sense of community around the restaurant with daily $6 dollar specials, and weekly community dinners aimed at supporting local music. If the equivalent of 50 dinner specials are sold on two consecutive Wednesdays, Ortez hires mariachis to play on the immediate Thursday in front of the restaurant for Un Solo Sol’s Serenata Marichi on 1st Street. Read more…

Riders gather at the end of an Eastside Bike Club/Salesian Boys and Girls Club garden tour. For more pictures from the tour, read on to the end of the article. Photo provided by Carlos Morales

The Salesian Boys & Girls Club teamed up with the Eastside Bike Club (EBC) to host a Community Garden Bike Ride on March 31 as part of Mayor Villaraigosa’s “Good Food Day 2012” -  A day of Service in recognition of the late Cesar Chavez.

The goal of this community bike ride was to expose participants to beautiful gardens that are flourishing in Northeast Los Angeles.  The tour included open discussions of gardens being a sustainable food option and the benefits of healthier, affordable food choices we can make each time we consume a meal.

Fifty participants showed up ready to travel through Boyle Heights, El Sereno and the Lincoln Heights communities. Prior to departure, Eastside Bike Club members Gustavo Muniz, Manuel Hernandez, Cesar Solano, Rudy Montes and Rene Morales performed safety checks on participants bikes, including checking tire air pressure, lubrication of chain, and making proper seat and brake adjustments.  EBC members gave  a brief talk on bike riding on the streets with a group, because for many it was their first group ride.

Ana Valdez, High School Programs Director for the Salesian Boys & Girls Club of Los Angeles stated, “When we began this project we did not know how many gardens existed in Northeast Los Angeles and after doing the research we discovered that there were more gardens than we first anticipated.  Several gardens found out of our excursion and contacted us to offer their gardens for consideration for our tour.  Our challenge was to define which ones we were going to visit for in the allotted time and distance.”

The bike ride began at the Salesian Family Youth Center on 4th Street in Boyle Heights.  The ride made brief stops at six Community Gardens (CG) located on the Eastside.  Each garden varied in size, the array of vegetation, the layout, topography, and the way each one is managed.

The Garden tour included; Roosevelt High School Main Campus CG, Girls Today, Women Tomorrow CG, Roosevelt ESP Campus CG at the ELA Skill Center in Lincoln Heights, Wilson High School CG, The El Sereno CG, and Proyecto Jardin CG in Boyle Heights Read more…

The Ovarian-Psyco Bicycle Brigade Luna Ride for May. The women ride out Saturday evening from Proyecto Jardin in Boyle Heights. Photo from Ovarian-Psycos Facebook page

Cinco de Mayo is often celebrated in bars, with people donning red, green and white apparel, and drinking tequila. While people miss out the meaning of Cinco de Mayo – the Battle of Puebla anyone?- the best party this Cinco de Mayo can be found tomorrow night on a bike, and looking up at the sky.

The Ovarian-Psycos Bicycle Brigade, an all-women bicycle collective with Eastside roots, are having  their monthly Luna Ride, or Full Moon ride, tomorrow night in one of the most exciting environments for the year. Tomorrow’s women-only ride will also have one of the largest full moons of the year.

The group will start gathering at 5 P.M. at Proyecto Jardin, a community garden in Boyle Heights, and will ride out at 5:30 to City Terrace to the Coyolxauhqui Statue, a memorial to the Aztec Moon Goddess. Proyecto Jardin will also have a  salsa contest before the ride that is open to the public.

Tomorrow’s super moon will appear to look 14% larger and 30% brighter than other full moons in 2012. The super moon will reach perigee, or the point it gets closest to the earth in its elliptical path, at 8:34 pm.

The Ovarian-Psycos are an all-women bicycle group that advocate for increasing women-ridership, but also increase social awareness on issues surrounding women. The Ovarian-Psycos have had Luna rides since their inception. The ride shows how women’s menstrual cycles have connection to the moon cycle. This is an all-women ride, and it is open to bicyclists of all skill level. Read more…

Bicycles ride past Mariachi Plaza on the 1st Street Green Bike Lanes. Mariachi Plaza is one of the first stops in the proposed Boyle Heights expansion that has been stalled for the past year. Photo from LADOT Bike Blog

For CicLAvia, figuring out how, when and where to expand has been its biggest challenge.  While CicLAvia is free to attend, it costs a lot of money to push past the current 10-mile route, closing streets to cars, providing police support and re-routing car drivers who find entrences and exits from the freeway blocked.  Despite CicLAvia’s success, money to expand has been hard to find.

Yet, CicLAvia is working with what they have. At a CicLAvia board of trustees meeting last week, trustees decided the existing route would be cut at certain parts in order to accommodate an expansion in other parts. Bobby Gadda, CicLAvia board of trustee president, said that CicLAvia expansion on First Street to Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights would be in the draft route the board will send to the city next week for the next CicLAvia in October.

“(We’re) pretty committed and looking to make it happen,” said Gadda about the Boyle Heights expansion.

Currently, LADOT provides services for the 10-mile route but can’t provide for more coverage. If miles were to be added, CicLAvia would need to hire contractors to manage the same services LADOT would do, adding an extra cost to their budget, Gadda added.

For an event that has after four CicLAvia, with media outlets saying each brought out more than 100,000 participants, it remains in a precarious financial state.

“We’re back to zero in terms of funding,” said Gadda going into this October’s CicLAvia. Read more…

A bike shop on the corner of Cummings Street and Cesar Chavez Avenue in Boyle Heights set up a bike repair table on 4th Street, across the street from the Boyle Heights Technology Center. Photo by Kris Fortin

In Boyle Heights, CicLAvia is sometimes the first chance for people in the neighborhood to venture off the sidewalk and onto the streets on a bicycle, or provides local businesses an opportunity to get creative in the way they get involved in the ten and a half mile “open street” block party.

One example came from a small bike shop on the corner of Cummings Street and Cesar Chavez Avenue when some of the shops mechanics set up a table across the street from the Boyle Heights Technology Center. Last year, Misneighbors.com saw artists Lilia Ramirez and Raul Gonzalez taking up the same location at CicLAvia. This year, a teenager that works at the shop, Rosendo Valdez, convinced the stores owner to take out his supplies and work on bikes on 4th Street during CicLAvia.

The mechanics mainly replaced tires or tubes on bikes passing by on the CicLAvia route. The bike shop mechanics charged for the supplies that were used, but the labor was free, said Valdez, a student at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights.

Yesterday at an American Planning Association panel entitled “Ciclovia: Bogota’s Influence on Bike Policy,” Misneighbors.com editor Jessica Perez said that in Boyle Heights CicLAvia brings local residents to different parts of the neighborhood they never visited.

“You start noticing a lot of different things in your neighborhood through (CicLAvia),” said Perez. “I had never walked through the Fourth Street Bridge, and I’ve been a life long resident.”

Hollenbeck Park at the eastern end of CicLAvia is one of the hottest spots on the map, but there are a lot of great CicLAvia activities on the Eastside.

Though Hollenbeck Park is the jumping off point for many people in the Eastside to experience CicLavia, there are organized bike rides starting out on the eastside, and parties in the street itself, and intersections that will be teeming with activities both on and off the route. At the park itself, CicLAvia has a merchandise booth  and REI Los Angles hosts a rocking climbing wall.  Whether starting at the park, joining a group ride, or just planning a day in the sun by yourself, the eastside has a lot to offer.  Check it out:

Building Healthy Communities, Boyle Heights Ride and Party

Building Healthy Communities, Boyle Heights, hosts a youth ride that starts at 11:30 A.M. at the Weingart East YMCA at 2900 Whittier Boulevard. Families, youth, and members from Jovenes Inc., Inner City Struggle, Legacy LA, and Hollenbeck Police Activity League will all join the BHCBH contingent.  The group will ride at a leisurely pace throughout the route, said Eric Hubbard, development director for Jovenes Inc.

The group plans to arrive at Hollenbeck Park between noon and 12:15 P.M. before they ride CicLAvia. Last year, more than 45 people rode with this group for CicLAvia, Hubbard said. Adult supervisors will be riding throughout the event coordinating the group, making sure everyone is safe and the groups stays together. “We’re trying to come together for the Boyle Heights Community,” said Hubbard.  The group will ride until 3 P.M., and then return to the YMCA, where there will be a free quesadillas, chalking activities in the parking lot, and other community building activities.

A father and his son cross the 4th Street bridge into Downtown Los Angeles. The 4th Street bridge provides one of the best views of downtown and is active the day of the event with mobile photo booths that will be around the bridge. Photo: Misneighbors.com

Ovarian-Pscyo Bicycle Brigade adopts the  4^th Street and Boyle Avenue intersection, offers free silk screening

Just hosting an intersection to manage the traffic of bicycles and pedestrians isn’t enough for the Oviarian-Psyco Bicycle Brigade.  Ova core member Cinthia Garcia desinged an Ovarian-Psycos/Boyle Heights/CicLAvia image that will be silk screened at the intersection the group adopted for CicLAvia, 4th Street and Boyle Avenue.  They will be playing music from a PA system, one of the members Xela de la X might perform her works of underground hip-hop. CicLAvia also provides a great opportunity to promote their all-female styled Critical Mass ride called Clitoral Mass.

DREAM Riders Contingent

Some of the DREAM riders that organized the DREAM Ride from Orange County to Los Angeles in February will meet at 10 A.M. at Hollenbeck Park to ride CicLAvia. This group has ridden in past CicLAvias to and show the connection the immigrant community has with cycling and exemplify the people that could be affected by the DREAM Act, a federal law that would allow undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. The DREAM Riders have donned lucha libre masks, and installed PVC pipes on the back of their bikes with flags hanging off the poles with messages like “Sin Papers, y ke?” or “No papers, and what?” One of the groups founders and local resident Erick Huerta said he will be projecting music, specifically cumbia, from his backpack, and clanging his cowbell during the ride.

213 FB Hikers Ride

Blogger and DREAM activist Erick Huerta rides out at last April's CicLAvia with the the DREAM Act contingent. The group will be riding out at 10 am from Hollenbeck Park. Photo by Rafael Cardenas (Eastsiderwriter.com)

The 213 FB hikers, a recreational hiking group that focuses on wellness and healthy living, will be meeting at 9 A.M. at Metro Auto Service, on the Corner of 1^st Street and State Street. The group, a majority of which are from Boyle Heights, plans to ride to Los Angeles City College, and then to the South Los Angeles hub. The 213 FB Hikers started in July as a hiking group that explores Griffith Park every Tuesday night at 7 P.M. and Saturday morning at 7:15 A.M. To learn more about the group click here.

4^st Street bridge

It’s one of the main arteries that connects downtown Los Angeles to Boyle Heights and it provides one of the best views of Downtown. A mobile photo booth will be at the bridge taking profile photos of bicyclists and pedestrians.

1^st street bike lane/Mariachi Plaza/Mariachi Festival

Though the CicLAvia route wasn’t able to extend to Mariachi Plaza at 1^st Street, the adventurous pedestrian can head north on Boyle Avenue to check out the only other green striped bike lane in Los Angeles. The 21st annual Mariachi Festival will be going on at Mariachi Plaza from 11 A.M.-4 P.M. Cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz will serve as the master of ceremonies. Down the block, Primera Taza Coffee House will offer free conchita sweet bread with a purchase of a coffee. There are many restaurants that can be found on 1st Street, such as Placita del D.F. restaurant, where Huerta recommends the cemita and aguas frescas.

CORRECTION: The original post stated incorrectly that the Ovarian-Pscyos/CicLAvia/Boyle Heights shirts would be silkscreened for free. The Ovarian-Psycos will be taking donations for silkscreening.

Mechanics and Boyle Heights residents worked on their bikes at Saturday's ResuWRENCHion at Proyecto Jardin, hosted by the Ovarian-Psycos Bicycle Brigade. Photo by Kris Fortin

When Rey Veitia works on people’s bicycles at Bici Libre, he’s used to the sounds of traffic outside the co-op.  Volunteering at last Saturday’s ResuWRENCHion at Proyecto Jardin in Boyle Heights was a nice change of pace.  The car horns of Downtown Los Angeles were replaced by the sounds of children laughing and bouncing a ball at each other.  Veitia compared the atmosphere to a backyard barbecue.  ”I’m just waiting for the drunk uncle to get into a fight,” Veitia said.

The Ovarian Psycos Bicycle Brigade hosted a bicycle repair workshop at Proyecto Jardin in Boyle Heights in preparation for this Sunday’s CicLAvia. The event, which ran from 12-6 P.M., gave nearby residents, and specifically youth, a chance to fix their bicycles. The Ovas also wanted to find youth that didn’t own bicycles or helmets and get them ones.

By all accounts, the event was a rousing success.

While this isn’t the first time the group has put on a bicycle workshop, it is the first time they have had so many organizations working with them. Building Healthy Communities, Boyle Heights, a program of the California Endowment, gave $500 to the Ovarian-Psycos to purchase bicycle parts to be used to help the Boyle Heights community, specifically the youth.  The Flying Pigeon Bike Shop sold the Ovarian-Pscyos bike equipment, tools, and parts on discount, and donated Flying Pigeon t-shirts. Mechanics from the Bike Oven and Bici Libre came to help and teach people how to fix their bicycle.  Food Not Bombs, guerrilla chapter, prepared lunch, and Proyecto Jardin, a community garden behind White Memorial Hospital, opened its space for people to work on their bicycles.

“It basically shocked us,” said Ovarian-Psyco member Magally Miranda about putting on an event with this much involvement. “It showed us we really have the potential to pull it off.” Read more…