South LA

As he often does, Javier "JP" Partida, president and founder of Los Ryderz bike club in Watts, took some of his club members for a bike ride on Saturday. When they returned from Torrance that afternoon, they locked up the bikes and called it a day. When he came back Sunday morning to work on the bikes and finish welding the Crank Award trophies to thank local community members for their service in and around South L.A., he found that someone had broken into their storage area and looted the place.

"What do we want? Safe streets! When do we want them? NOW!"

While some might not relish the opportunity to stand out on a street corner and count passersby for two hours, I can honestly say I really enjoy the experience.

It's hard to take some of the hysteria surrounding the City Council's approval of Mobility Plan 2035 this past August very seriously.

This past weekend, the East Side Riders Bike Club (ESRBC) celebrated the ribbon-cutting on their brand new bike co-op and shop located at 11321 S. Central Ave. in Watts.

Responding to community concerns that the high volume of pedestrian traffic at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue was creating an unsafe crossing, City Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell and the Department of Transportation recently announced that a "pedestrian scramble" will be installed by the end of the year.

Twenty-three days is not a lot of time to get community buy-in on a complete streets pop-up event/project and raise $10,000 in support of it. Especially in lower-income communities like Boyle Heights and parts of South L.A., where the stakeholders who would ideally be buying into the projects tend to be less familiar with concepts like "tactical urbanism," are generally of lesser means, and/or are often unreachable via a social media campaign (or wholly unable to make online payments to it).

"In the interest of time," Greg Kildare, Executive Director of Metro's Enterprise Risk, Safety, and Asset Management team, began his address to the Board on July 23, "I will just say that staff believes that the [Metro Blue Line] pedestrian gating project is an extremely important safety improvement to our oldest rail line and consistent with [Metro CEO] Mr. Washington's vision of reinvestment in our aging infrastructure, the state of good repair, and a safety-first orientation. That concludes my presentation."

It may have been a hot and sticky Sunday afternoon, but it didn't keep the East Side Riders from firing up the grill and cooking for the community in front of their new bike co-op on Central Ave. in Watts.