Damien Newton

As many of you know, a couple of weeks ago our friend and my co-host Brian Velez passed away peacefully in his sleep. Brian was a great partner in this venture and I miss him both personally and professionally.

Earlier this week, our community lost a rising star and a great person when Brian Velez passed away peacefully in his sleep.

It's been a rough ride for advocates' of safe streets the past six months. From the blowback on Vision Zero road redesigns on the Westside, to the politicization of road diets from conservative talk radio hosts demonizing anyone who dares suggest that maybe our transportation system needs to be made safer.

Metro is beginning to charge $2 for parking at its high-demand stations. Paid parking started this week at the El Monte Bus Station.

A couple of weeks ago, I was visiting the Mar Vista Farmer's Market with my seven-year-old son. Seeing a group gathering petitions for Restore Venice Boulevard's demands that the road diet on Venice Boulevard be immediately ended, I turned off to go in through the side. Earlier in the week, a tweet condemning the person who wrote the weird, racist flyer that was the last straw for a friend and neighborhood councilmember was misinterpreted as being a condemnation of everyone who opposed the road diet. I'm sure I phrased it poorly, but my attempts to clarify had fallen on deaf ears. A lot of people involved in the Restore Venice Boulevard Movement were convinced I, a Board Member of the Mar Vista Neighborhood Council, had called them all assholes.

This week, Brian Velez talks to a pair of equestrians in the San Gabriel Valley about their experiences, challenges and all of the reasons to choose riding a horse as their preferred form of transportation.

DamienTalks with Midori Mizuhara with Community Arts Resources and Cory Hayashi with the Nisei Week Foundation about this year's Nisei Week festival, which begins at the end of next week.

After watching bike-share systems come online in Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and Long Beach, in July it was Pasadena's turn to launch its own bike-share system. Shortly after the launch, the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments (COG) earned a grant to expand bike-share to fourteen cities throughout the valley.

Every now and then, one of our interviews turns up some breaking news. The six stations that will be part of the next Foothill Gold Line Extension will have 100 more spaces of parking for bicycles than the six stations opened last year. Much of that increased parking will be in the form of "bike rooms" similar to the bike hub currently opened at the El Monte Bus Terminal.

Tonight at five, St. Andrew's Lutheran Church (11555 National Blvd, 90064) is throwing a transit-themed "First Friday Family Fun Night" featuring games, field trips on the Big Blue Bus, safety talks from Metro and the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, and even a giant "Thomas the Train" set built by a former Streetsblog editor who is also writing this article.