Sahra Sulaiman

Listening to reports of the murder of yet another Sikh in the wake of 9/11, my mother looked up at the portrait of my father and sighed, "It's a good thing he's not here to see this."

The United Riders of South Los Angeles had just left the memorial site for Benjamin Torres, killed last October in Gardena in a hit-and-run, when they were pulled over by the Gardena Police Department.

There are several things afoot in South L.A. this weekend that will essentially cover the four food groups of livability: fresh food stands, bicycle building (and donating), recoding the city's outdated zoning codes (OK, that's a stretch), and vacant lot identification. The best thing? They're spaced out well enough that you can check out all four events if you plan right.

We've known for a while what NPR and the League of American Bicyclists appear to just be figuring out: namely, that people of color ride bikes and are doing so in ever-increasing numbers.

Last July, the Peace, Love and Family ride took a couple hundred riders on a tour through some of the major corridors of South L.A. before returning to a festival at Manchester and Vermont to show people that the streets could be sites for recreation.

"Lead-acid batteries are the environmental success story of our time," touts the Battery Council International.

Since we're in the mood to talk transitioning this week, I'd like to put in a plug for Eric Garcetti to continue to support and significantly expand one of the most important community efforts to reclaim public space for recreation.

Walking along Wilshire in the early afternoon yesterday was a surprisingly pleasant experience. I tend not to ride my bike along Wilshire too often, both because of the poor condition of the road and the hectic feeling of the traffic. It is noisy and the drivers are sometimes unpredictable -- people pull over suddenly to park, cross lanes to turn abruptly in front of you, or speed unnecessarily -- making it feel more like you're trapped in a game of Frogger than anything.

"Stalin tells me you have helped him cut costs," I said to the brother of Stalin Medina, owner of the Watts Cyclery. He has been helping manage the shop for the past several months because Medina has been tied up with Army trainings in preparation for a tour in Afghanistan that begins in July.

When I showed up at the YouthBuild charter school in Boyle Heights yesterday, I expected to be doing a story to promote a mural unveiling and community health fair. I had heard students had painted a mural that would be placed in Hollenbeck Park and thought it might be interesting to learn about the motivations for the project and their aspirations for the park. What I came away with was more inspiring than I expected.