Streetsblog Los Angeles

Metro's Stacy Yamato and life-size road signs from Safe Moves help educate students on how to move safely through busy streets. photo courtesy of Dave Sotero.

Last Friday, Safe Moves, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating children on traffic safety, held a Bike-to-School-Day event at New Designs Charter School (at 23rd St. and Figueroa Ave.) to close out Metro’s Bike Week.

Students arriving as early as 7:00 A.M. were met by representatives of Safe Moves and Metro, former 2000 Olympic Team Cyclist Antonio Cruz, and life-size traffic signs. The speakers talked to the middle-schoolers about alternative forms of transportation, safety around the new Expo Line, and the health and environmental benefits of getting on a bike.

While I was pleased to know that students were learning about bikes and bike safety throughout the day — even getting a safety course in their P.E. classes — I’ll admit I was most thrilled about the thing that probably excited them the least: the life-size traffic signs.

How much more fun would it be to navigate L.A.’s streets if some of its busiest and least friendly intersections were monitored by traffic signs that you could high-five?

Ron, Calvin, John, Fred, and Val fueling up for the train ride home from Long Beach. photo: sahra

“You are friends with them?”

It sounded more like a statement of surprise than an actual question.

The Japanese tourist couldn’t seem to reconcile that tiny, road-biking me might be hanging out with some burly, tough-looking guys on tricked-out cruisers late on a Friday night in a Long Beach gas-station parking lot.

“Yep,” I nodded.

“Oh.”

He processed this for a minute.

Then, he pointed to Calvin’s cruiser and said, “I never see bikes like these in Japan.”

“CALVIN!” I shouted, pulling the tourist over with me. “He says he’s never seen a bike like yours before.”

After taking a few photos and offering a polite bow of the head, the tourist was gone and the parking lot was ours again. We packed up our goodies and headed across the street to the Metro stop to catch a train back to L.A. It had been a long night and some of us were ready to sit for a bit. Read more…

Ruthie and Christopher man CSU's Bike Week pit stop at Menlo and MLK Blvd.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, I had a hard time figuring out what time the South L.A. Bike Week Pit Stops would be up and running today. I took a gander at the pit stop map and promptly devised a route in my head so I could hit all of the South L.A. stops.

I had missed what turned out to be an epic exploration ride led by CICLE’s Dan Dabek along the Expo Line bike lane on Wednesday because I woke up feeling very sick. So, I was determined to get out and support the South L.A. organizations offering pit stops for riders on Bike-to-Work Day.

So determined was I, in fact, that I did not pay attention to the times listed that the stops would be offered. I’m sure I saw the times listed on the map (of those that were there — some were not). But I must have ignored them, assuming that bike-to-work hours would coincide most closely with the morning rush hour, i.e. the hours that people go to work.

I rode down to Community Services Unlimited’s (CSU) Expo Garden stop to find no one there. A little sleep-deprived, I came to the conclusion that perhaps I had missed it because it was now 8:30 a.m. and headed for the City Lites‘ site at 84th and Vermont.

Nothing.

The security guard looked at me like I was insane.

“Pit stop? Bicycles?” he repeated slowly, shaking his head. “I don’t think so…?”

Great, I thought. I’m 0 – 2. Either I AM actually insane or I am dumb and I got this all wrong. Read more…

Cyclist turns on to new Main Street Bike Lane and Road Diet. Photo:LADOT Bike Blog

South Los Angeles has three new bike lanes. Maybe it’s the celebrations of bike week. Maybe it’s the push to meet the mayoral directive for 40 new miles of bikeway by June 30th 2012. Maybe Mayor Villaraigosa, City Councilmembers Bernard Parks and Joe Buscaino pushed hard enough. Maybe it’s just good livable streets attitudes taking hold.

Whatever the reason, The city’s Department of Transportation (LADOT) crews have been working weekends to stripe new bike lanes.

As reported by the LADOT Bike Blog and Bikas, there are three new bike lane projects implemented on South L.A. streets since mid-April.

The new Vermont Avenue northbound bike lane goes 2.1 miles from the Metro Green Line to 88th Street. According to the LADOT Bike Blog, an additional 2.2 miles of northbound Vermont Avenue bike lane are “in the works.” That near-future mileage will extend from Redondo Beach Boulevard to 120th Street. This project is only on the east side of Vermont Avenue because that side of the street is in L.A. City; the other side is in unicorporated L.A. County. Bikas explains, Read more…

Customers assess César's wares at his place of business along Manchester Ave. photo: sahra

THIS PAST FINE AND SUNNY Saturday, I headed to South L.A. to see how the Anonymous Gun Buyback was going. In an effort to get firearms off the streets, the city had set up six sites around town where people could drop off their weapons — no questions asked — in return for gift cards. You could get up to $100 for handguns, shotguns, and rifles, and up to $200 for assault weapons.

Shooed away from the site manned by the LAPD’s 77th Division, I headed to the Watts site, where officers turned out to be very friendly and more open to chatting with me (once they ascertained I was not packing a weapon).

The day started off well, said the Lieutenant from the Southeast Area. People had been lined up down the street just before they opened. But things had slowed down considerably after that, he said, guessing that they had had about 100 people come through over the course of the day.

I asked about the value of doing a buyback, given that the guns turned in are not ones that were likely to be used in crimes. The people I saw turning in weapons leaned more towards the elderly end of the spectrum than that of the young criminal upstart, and they were handing over enormous rifles, not the assault weapons favored by some gangs.

“There is a law enforcement value,” said the Lieutenant. Beyond giving the police an opportunity to be a visible and positive presence in the community, taking the self-defense-type weapons out of circulation meant that grandchildren couldn’t accidentally shoot themselves and that the weapons couldn’t be stolen and used to commit crimes.

As far as gang members turning in weapons, the Lieutenant acknowledged that “the gangs need weapons to do their business” and that they could make a lot more money selling their assault weapons than trading them in for grocery cards. Meaning that it was highly improbable that any gang members would be stopping by that day to say hello and drop off their excess stock of Uzis.

I was thus not surprised to hear that, of the potentially millions of guns floating around L.A., the estimated number of “hot” weapons the Lieutenant got in that day totaled exactly one.

As such, it is unlikely that the handful of guns collected at the buybacks have contributed to the recent reduction in gun violence, contrary to Chief Beck’s claims. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the program is a failure. After all, someone turned in an anti-tank rocket-launcher last year. That’s a win, right? If the city genuinely wants to reduce the influx of weapons, however, it would be better advised to focus on addressing the activities in which guns play an integral role.

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ON MY RIDE HOME from Watts, I decided to stop along Manchester Ave. and check out César’s extensive bike and tool collection. I have always wondered about the stories behind the folks that randomly set up the equivalent of a yard sale in a yard that is not their own. They proliferate on the weekends — there was another guy set up across the street from César selling many of the same things — and a number of them offer bikes. Read more…

Food Forward volunteers on a fruit pick at a local residence. photo: courtesy of Food Forward

Food Forward and Community Services Unlimited, Inc. (CSU) want to help you fill that void. You are invited to join them as they harvest lemons in South L.A. this Sunday.

The harvest — scheduled to take place at 11:00 A.M. at the home of a local resident — is part of a new program called the Tree of Life Harvest Corps. CSU and Food Forward joined forces to create the program with the goal of identifying and caring for fruit trees in the area, harvesting the fruit that would normally go to waste, and then distributing it locally through CSU’s Village Marketplace program. The picking excursions take place once or twice a month throughout South L.A., last 1.5 – 2 hours, and can yield a substantial harvest.

If you are interested in participating but don’t have a ladder or fruit-picking gear, fear not! They’ve got all the equipment you will need. All you have to do is reserve a spot by sending an email to csu.treeoflife(at)gmail.com at least 24 hours prior to the pick. You will be given the exact address at that time (as the location is a private residence); the site is in South L.A., near the Normandie Elementary School (at Normandie and Vernon Aves.).

If you can’t make the harvest this Sunday, there will be a tree pruning workshop on the 30th of May which you are welcome to attend. The program is also looking for volunteer fruit pickers and people who have fruit to donate. Please email the Harvest Corps at csu.treeoflife(at)gmail.com to RSVP for any of these activities or for more information about getting involved.

PREFER GARDENING AND COOKING TO PICKING? Check out CSU’s Garden Workshop from 9 A.M. – 12 P.M. Saturday, May 12th at their Expo Garden (on the corner of Menlo and King Blvd.). CSU will teach you how to plant Milpa, a Mexican and Central American traditional approach to growing corn, beans and squash together. Then they will teach you how to combine the ingredients in healthy recipes. To RSVP, call 323.299.7075.

Jose stops by the Watts Cyclery with his friend Alex, looking for brake cables.

No, no voy lejos, said José. Mi madre no me deja.

I had asked José, who I judged to be about 20 years old, how far he normally rode on his bike. His mom wouldn’t let him go too far, he said. She didn’t want him getting jacked for the bike.

Hay que salir de la casa de vez en cuando, no? I said. (You need to get out of the house every now and then, don’t you?)

“Oh, no,” he laughed, shaking his head. Although he wanted to ride more, he agreed with his mom — it just wasn’t all that safe.

I had run into him and his friend, Alex (also about 20), outside the Watts Cyclery. Alex had bought his first bike in years earlier that day and needed brake cables. He used to ride a lot as a kid, he said, and wanted to start up again to get back and forth to work and around the neighborhood. But he also wasn’t too sure where else to go with it. Like José, he had concerns about safety.

You could try a Critical Mass ride, I suggested.

They looked puzzled.

Like many of the youth I’ve spoken to in South L.A., they had never heard of L.A. Critical Mass or the Midnight Ridazz and had no idea how much group riding happens north of the 10 Freeway.

Even the high schooler working at the Cyclery had never heard of such a thing.

“If you want to have an event maybe you should advertise it on the news,” he said. He also suggested trying the local English and Spanish-language community papers to inform people about upcoming rides.

But when I asked if he thought people would actually ride, he wasn’t so sure. Read more…

Night riders on the Expo Line include people headed to L.A. Live and a 24-hour recycling center on Alameda

“Can you really take your bike on the train??” one of the two girls at the Expo/Vermont station asked me, incredulous.

I had just ridden up from a meeting with the folks from City Lites about their upcoming sports and health event and thought it would be a good opportunity to see who was riding the Expo Line. I’d been keeping an eye on the stations all week and hadn’t seen more than a few people at the stops at any given time.

“Yes, of course,” I told her, a little puzzled. Then it dawned on me. “Have you ridden the train before?”

“No, this is our first time!” she looked at her friend. “We’re really excited!”

Although now at the end of their first year as grad students at USC, they complained they still found L.A. “really hard to navigate” and the idea of riding a bike “terrifying.” So, the Expo Line represented a painless portal to adventure and freedom to them.

I was a bit surprised at how full the train was when it pulled up. I mean, it wasn’t Red or Blue Line-full, but there was at least one rider on each side in every row of seats. I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised — it was 9:30 on a Thursday night and many of the folks on board were headed either to L.A. Live or somewhere downtown to go out.

Night riders on the Expo Line.

Read more…

Kids describe what a healthy community looks like to them at the Advancement Project's booth at the South L.A. Rising event. photo: sahra

If you were an alien that landed in L.A. this weekend, you could be forgiven if the juxtaposition of the festivities surrounding the opening of the Expo Line and the ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the L.A. Riots (Civil Unrest or Rebellion, depending on your perspective) left you a little confused.

Flying over South L.A. in your UFO, you would have seen a number of things that might have seemed contradictory: Small armies of parents taking their kids to ride the new Expo Line shepherded safely by colorfully-dressed Metro ambassadors; a small and rather rag-tag group of zombies dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” in a parking lot near one of the train stations;

Zombie flash mob at the Crenshaw stop of the Expo Line.

TRUST South L.A.’s flash mob asking Metro to consider the housing rights of residents living near the train stops; theater performances by the Watts Village Theater Company; the Community Coalition-sponsored gathering at 81st and Vermont celebrating South L.A. Rising; and two separate gatherings on the corners of Florence and Normandie — a riled-up one led by a group called the Coalition for Community Control over Police and a more celebratory one led by the 77th Street Area Community Police Advisory Board and the 77th Street Area Clergy Council.

B.C. from the Black Riders (the new generation of Black Panthers) after her speech calling for African Americans to unite to fight the system instead of each other.

Although seemingly disparate, the events were linked by underlying messages of unity and a call for all Angelenos to invest in South L.A. and participate in breaking down the boundaries between it and the rest of the city. Read more…

Rumble Alley: Fidel and a friend stand in the alley where a massive rumble went down between his old crew and a rival. Photo: sahra

This article is second in a series about how gang activity impacts the livability of streets. The issue is explored through the eyes and experiences of Fidel, a 19 year old Business Administration student who began running with crews in elementary school. The first part of his story can be found here along with a link to the story he wrote about his decision to leave his crew.

“REALLY, OUR BEEF STARTED because of the letters.”

“That was the biggest problem,” Fidel confesses, explaining how the rivalry began between his tagging crew and another. “They had similar letters; [theirs were] just the other way around…Those guys crossed us out once. Then my friends went to go talk to them, but they were like, ‘Nah, that wasn’t us.’”

They said they were new and that they weren’t trying to “catch beef or anything,” he says. “But it happened again after three or four months. But [this time] it was us that crossed them out.”

Or so they said, he implies with a shrug.

He thinks they lied about it just to start a beef with his crew.

To hear him tell it, it almost sounds like neither of them really cared what the truth was – both crews were looking for an excuse to fight.

“[If] you want to get known, you have to have some kind of action. Some kind of fighting. If you’re just a crew [and someone asks] ‘Who are you guys?’ [And you say], ‘Oh, we’re this…’” it doesn’t hold any weight with anyone unless you can back it up, he says.

“You have to do some damage…in order to get known.”

You also have to do damage so that you are left alone — if it gets around that you are good fighters, others will be less likely to try to take advantage of you.

Thus, by claiming Fidel’s crew had crossed out their letters, the rival crew could now claim they had a score to settle and use it as a way to try to build up their image.

“That’s how it started,” he laughs a little sheepishly, clearly aware of how that must sound. “Because of the letters. And that was just that. After that, it was just fighting and fighting and fighting.”

Read more…