Streetsblog Los Angeles

Drum Circle at Leimert Park Artwalk (photo: sahra)

TONIGHT! The Crenshaw Line, Neighborhood Bike Ambassadors, and Fracking — way too much fun for one person to handle!

Interested in seeing bike lanes come to your favorite street? Want to help educate the community about why they should ride and how to ride safely? Would you like to connect with other people in the community that care about making the area safer and more bike-friendly? Join the South L.A. Neighborhood Bike Ambassadors tonight at 6 pm at 8475 South Vermont Avenue (the Council District 8 Constituent Service Center). Need more convincing? Check out this article about a previous meeting with city planning staff.

Want to learn the latest on the Crenshaw Line and take a virtual tour of the LAX Transit Corridor Project? Hear more about the construction schedule, the work of the CLC’s Transit Safety discussion group or  the Project Labor Agreement and Construction Careers Policy? Then join neighbors, local business owners, and community leaders for the Quarterly Meeting of the Metro Crenshaw/LAX Transit Corridor Project Community Leadership Council (CLC) tonight, between 6 and 8 pm at the First Church of God, 9550 Crenshaw Boulevard, Inglewood, CA 90305. Meetings are open to the public and they are invited to speak on agenda items discussed during the meeting. To RSVP or find out more, please contact Donald Taylor, CLC Lead Consultant, by phone at (310) 308-2136 or via email at oscompdt@aol.com.

Finally, on tap tonight: Fracking. The Community Advisory Panel (CAP), established to foster productive communication between the community, the County, and PXP (the corporation drilling and fracking in the Inglewood Oilfield), meets on the fourth Thursday of every month at the Kenneth Hahn Recreational Area Community Center, located about a mile inside the park from the 4100 S. La Cienega Blvd. entrance. Tonight’s meeting will run from 7 – 9 pm. Members of the public are welcome to attend. If you have some free time on your hands and would like to immerse yourself in the issue, please visit their documents page to catch up on the latest regarding health surveys, noise complaints, drilling plans, and responses to public comments.

ONGOING (but starting today is recommended): What would you ask the mayoral candidates? Read more…

The CicLAvia feeder ride from South L.A. led by the East Side Riders (photo: sahra)

Just one week after Angelenos proved they could happily bike and walk their way through Carmageddon, they get to put their freshly honed skills to the test at the nation’s biggest car-free festival.

CicLAvia‘s back, y’all!

Grab your bike, your family, and/or some friends and experience almost ten miles of cyclo-topia in the heart of L.A. this Sunday. Between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., road closures will allow you (and probably more than 100,000 of your neighbors) to carlessly explore the neighborhoods surrounding Exposition Park, Macarthur Park, downtown, Chinatown, and Boyle Heights.

What more could you want?

Well, Angelenos in the know will stretch out their hours of cyclo-fun by waking at dawn and starting their day in South L.A.

At 8:30 a.m., much of the South L.A. riding family will be gathering at the WLCAC in Watts to prepare to ride to CicLAvia’s southern hub. Consider yourself cordially invited to join supporters of the CicLAvia South East effort and Los Ryderz as we ride north to Exposition Park, ably led by the East Side Riders.

The approximately 7.5 mile jaunt to the South Hub along the sunny, sleepy streets of South L.A. was a lot of fun last April. Curious and smiling passersby wanted to know where we were headed and why. A rib shack owner even offered to open up shop and feed us.

There’s a secret added bonus for those who, like me, will have to ride through the central part of the city at dawn to get to Watts: you’ll be able to ride some of the empty streets of the official CicLAvia route before the masses descend upon it.

That’s right. It’s just like that ancient proverb says: the early-rising biker gets to have all the fun.

Or…something like that. I think that is the rough translation.

Shh. Don’t tell anyone. Let that be our secret. Read more…