Streetsblog Los Angeles

Danny Gamboa's Ghost Bike installation for Susan Curtis, who was killed in Long Beach on January 15. Photo courtesy of ZKO Films.

2011 marked an extraordinarily hard year for Long Beacher Danny Gamboa: cyclists seemed to be getting killed far too often. In that year alone, Southern California saw a staggering 70% increase in deaths from 2010, with 70 cyclists losing their lives in the seven-county region of SoCal alone in 2011.

And in a rather morbid way, Gamboa saw this as the moment to meld his desire to begin making documentaries with his love for cycling—in this case, following the Southern Californian men and women who place memorial Ghost Bikes at the locations where a cyclist had lost his or her life.

Not to be confused with San Franciscan artist’s Jo Slota’s project of the same name¹, Ghost Bikes were largely inspired by late 90s New York bicycle and pedestrian advocacy group Right of Way, who memorialized cyclists and walkers by stenciling police-like body chalk outlines where the victims had been struck, accompanied by their names and dates of death. The first stencils were created on December 13 of 1996 in Manhattan to memorialize 3-year-old Erica Morena², who was ran over by a driver who jumped a curb to beat a red light in 1990; Jie Zhang³, a 29-year-old woman, nine months pregnant and struck outside New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center in 1994; and 33-year-old Rosemary Brodie⁴, a cyclist killed in October of 1996 by being doored.

Following these stencils, the first Ghost Bike appeared in St. Louis, Missouri in 1993 at King’s Cross to commemorate Min Joo Lee, a 24-year-old student killed on October 3 of that year—and now over 500 Ghost Bikes are on display throughout the world.

And rightfully so, Gamboa and his producer Kat Jarvis through their production company ZKO felt that this phenomenon—particularly given the egregious spike in cyclist deaths in Southern California—deserved to be documented.

“I knew my friends were putting up Ghost Bikes—and I knew it was something that was near and dear to my heart,” Gamboa said. “You get close-calls every day just biking around and…” He trails off, silently indicating that, though it shouldn’t be, oftentimes mixing the worlds of bicycling and driving becomes a gamble. Read more…

There are few things more moving and powerful than a ghost bike planting.  Last night, the Eastside Bike Club, cooks from the Bike Oven and other cyclists made the somber ride to the spot where Jocelyn Young was struck by a hit and run driver in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Photo: Carlos Morales/Eastside Bike Club

Young’s tragic story was picked up by Bike Portland, because she graduated from University of Oregon and lived in Portland.  Bike Portland adds the life details to the story missed by the local press and shows how much the world has lost from Young’s passing.

Andrew Plambeck attended UO with Young and reacted to her death today. “We had a lot of close mutual friends. She was such an always-on wonderful presence. Always warm and cheerful. So, so sad. Another wonderful, unique person killed senselessly in the road.”

Meanwhile, Nicholas Avila, who was booked on suspicion of hit-and-run and driving under the influence and was released from the Pasadena Police Jail yesterday pending charges.  Unless charges are filed, the police cannot hold a suspect and the Pasadena Star-News reports that the police are making sure their case is airtight before presenting their case to the District Attorney’s office.  There’s no stated reason why Avilia isn’t charged with vehicular manslaughter.  The police are currently interviewing witnesses and collecting video information.

Young was riding with her boyfriend when she “fell off her bike” for unknown reasons.  Avila then allegedly ran over Young, causing injuries that would kill her in the hospital.  While Young lay dieing in the street, Avila fled to his house in Alhambra, where he was arrested after another driver followed him to his residence.

Last night, Young’s memory was memorialized with a ghost bike.  While the bikes are a powerful reminder that we still have a long way to go to make our roads safe for all road users, I think we can all agree it’s a type of traffic calming that we could do with less of.

There are lots of Flickr sets from Friday’s memorial at the Ghost Bike.  This picture is from Alex Thompson’s but you should also check out Ensie’s and Streetsblog’s.

Last Friday, participants in Los Angeles Critical Mass, members of the local community and other assorted transportation activists all gathered at Los Angeles’ newest Ghost Bike for a memorial for Jesus Castillo and rally for safer streets for cyclists.  Nearly 300 riders participated in the memorial which included a "die-in" where hundreds of cyclists laid down on the street in a similar manner to war protesters.  There to witness the act were a handful of LAPD officers and a representative of Eric Garcetti’s office.

Occurring less than 24 hours after the LAPD patted a hummer driver on the back for riding through a group of cyclists from behind, the mood when the Critical Massers rode up to the newly chained up Ghost Bike was a mixture of sadness and anger.  However, that anger didn’t break out in acts of violence or vandalism, excepting the one idiot who took a sharpie to a news van, and instead was a well-ordered example of civil disobedience.  Whether or not the LAPD would have been so restrained as to not step on the cyclists civil liberties without the television cameras is a different matter, especially since dozens of riders got tickets on their way Downtown for their next stop.

You can see CBS’ take on the die-in here.