Forget Jake…It’s Chinatown!

Yes, sometimes even in Los Angeles, good things happen on purpose.

Forget Jake and his cynical advisor from the film…the real Chinatown’s BID has installed a peculiar but extensive bike corral in front of 727 N Broadway, known to LA hipsters as the site of the latest iteration of Scoops artisanal ice cream (and affable owner Tai Kim is a genius at making ice cream, as well as a real artist). It’s probably even more famous among lovers of Asian cuisine as the longtime home of Wing Hop Fung grocery, Ocean Seafood, and a number of small East and Southeast Asian restaurants, most of them approved by Jonathan Gold. (If you cook, you’ve got to visit Wing Hop Fung….)

Maybe I can pretend I softened the target by cajoling the LADOT to install a scatter of sidewalk bike racks several years ago, but I suspect that the BID’s move came in response to the arrival of Scoops and the construction of a number of new apartment and condo developments. The truth is that, despite plenty of street parking and at least eleven off-street parking lots and structures, driving in Chinatown is just plain tedious, and there would be no way to make the tiny district accommodate more cars without tearing most of it down. In which case, what would be the point?

The Gold Line helps, but only bikes can add capacity for more local traffic—folks living in the growing high-density developments just outside of Chinatown, and others wishing to pop over from downtown offices on their lunch break.

And…bikes are steadily becoming the new normal in modern urban centers. This gives us hope that LA will, in fact, someday qualify as a modern urban center.

This little row of bike racks, angular though they may be, gets us one step closer to the future.

So…hop on your bike, and let’s eat!