This video is me walking around the shop talking about our The Price of Bikes is Too Damn High SALE going on this week (ending on Sunday, February 29, 2012).
Get on it before all the deals are gone. Bikes are marked down $200 to $300, accessories like helmets, bags, baskets are 50% off.
In a sign of the times, a new mural marking off the “The Bike Zone” greets students riding their bikes to Cypress Park’s Nightingale Middle School.
The mural was created through the work of staff and students in a special program run out of the “D3 lab” on campus. Joe Linton, CicLAvia’s first paid employee and long time bike and river advocate, and Josef Bray-Ali, from the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop, stopped by at the end of a week of bike-themed events to give a brief talk about bike safety (“Control the lane!”), a clinic on patching a tube, and some general information about getting engaged in implementing the bike plan in their community.
It was a fun way to spend the afternoon, and hopefully will help these young adults ride safer, better prepared, and informed. Though our little talk and demo only captured 20 or so kids’ attention, there were almost 100 milling around the bike racks to see and be seen.
Our efforts at the shop have often focused on complaining to City Hall about things, and not enough hands-on work with members of our community. The Figueroa For All project, and the help of dedicated people like Joe Linton and Ms. Chou at Nightingale, have kept us out of city hall – and kept us working to better our local community before crying to the mayor or city council office for help.
If you’d like to have the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop do a flat tire repair demo, or a fun bike-day activity at your local school, shoot us an email at info@flyingpigeon-la.com
Maybe it has something to do with being at the edge of the continent, the last place you can move to in America before you drown, but Santa Monica, the Land of the Setting Sun, is certainly rising to the occasion when it comes to pedaling full-speed into the Bicycle Millennium.
While Los Angeles timidly initiates “pilot projects” that repeat efforts made years or decades ago in other cities, Santa Monica boldly goes where Amstersdam, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Portland, Davis, Berkeley, and Oakland have gone before.
Okay, they aren’t really inoovators, but they’re still doing pretty well by cyclists–and we’re doing pretty well by them!
Case in point: the Sunday Farmers Market on Main Street.
They offer permanent, free bike valet parking every Sunday. Every effing Sunday. And they don’t get some non-profit to do it–the city itself hosts the bike valet.
They’ve also got what looks like over a hundred bike racks on the few blocks of Main Street alone, besides the bike valet.
And the bike lanes, sharrows, signs, and Bike Centers for commuters I mentioned in last week’s post.
Its people respond: the photo above shows only about half of the bike valet. The street is crammed with bikes, the sidewalk racks are full, the bike lanes are busy….
…And the businesses are raking it in–small businesses all, supporting the local economy and employing, for the most part, local folks.
Yeah, it’s expensive. But the clean little secret is that spending money on bicycle infrastructure nets you a better return on investment than throwing it away pandering to cars.
Fast roads shoot drivers through a region without giving them a chance to stop and spend–or become part of the community. And all that parking just displaces businesses (or homes) and takes property off the tax rolls.
While SaMo’s Main Street thrives, LA’s streets see hordes of metal shells grunt past bleak storefronts on the way to some dreary mall, which vacuums the money off to distant investors while our neighborhoods fade and die….
We’ve got to get louder, folks. LA has made some positive moves in the last two years, there’s no doubt about it. But they’re still too little too late.
Santa Monica has only 88,000 people; it has a limited commercial base; it has a lot of homeless folks who need taking care of–but it has learned that supporting bicycle travel supports vibrant communities and local businesses, which is what makes a city prosperous and healthy.
Many Los Angeles neighborhoods are as big as Santa Monica, in population if not in scale. Imagine what we could do if given a budget of our own, and the freedom to help LA by helping our own streets thrive….
What better way to make the point that Highland Park is not the next Echo Park than by moving your “hipster” butt and all your worldly possessions in opposite direction of alleged hip-ness, by bike?
A recent LA Weekly article tried to make the case that the Highland Park area is "the new Echo Park". That is, Highland Park is the new place for low rent, young, fashionable people to move.
Lately, a lot of people have been ragging on this fair barrio of mine. Guys with unwashed hair and paint on their jeans complain about how Echo Park is becoming too gentrified, too much like our now-grown-up neighbors in Silver Lake. (Shocking to realize it’s been more than a decade since Beck was couch-surfing his way to stardom.) Someone actually complained the Gold Room isn’t “dangerous enough anymore.”
Eavesdropping on these often drunken conversations, one name keeps getting thrown around as a solution to the existential dilemmas of the ultra-hip. “I’m going to a house eviction party in Highland Park tonight.” “That doom-surf-rock band Sandy Pussy is playing out in Highland Park tonight.”
- Kai Flanders, LA Weekly Pop-Ed, February 3, 2012, “Why Highland Park Is the New Echo Park“
Our local Patch blog, and most commentors, disagreed, but the damage is likely already done.
“Is Highland Park the new Echo Park? L.A. Weekly music writer Kai Flanders seems to think so, but Echo Park residents aren’t convinced.
No offense to our neighbors to the west, home to some of the finest folks I’ve met in Los Angeles, but I’m not buying it either.”
- David Fonseca, HighlandPark-MountWashington Patch, Febryary 6, 2012, “Highland Park, Despite Changes, Is Not the New Echo Park“
To stem the tide of move-ins caused by that LA Weekly article, a friend of mine, E., moved his entire household from Highland Park to Echo Park (to escape the flood of hipsters?) this past Sunday, February 19, 2012. An inverse hipster bike move!
The kicker is that he did the move by bike. Not just his bike – but about eight or nine other bikes outfitted for carrying cargo.
I helped with my bakfiets, others loaned heavy duty trailers or their knot tying skills, and we all pedaled away to deliver a household’s worth of goods from an cramped apartment in Highland Park to a small home in Echo Park on a sunny Sunday in February of 2012.
Wondering where we got the idea? A place filled with more hipsters than Echo Park and Highland Park combined: Portland (ca. 2006)!
The simple delights of dim sum await – join us this Sunday, February 19, 2012 for our Get Sum Dim Sum Ride!
Join us at the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop (located at 3404 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90065) at 10 a.m. on Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 10 a.m. The ride departs at 10:30 a.m. We typically get back to the shop at 1 or 1:30 p.m.
What is dim sum? Chinese brunch, heavy on the pork and shrimp, savory, inexpensive (usually), and a perfectly sound reason to cruise around town on your bike on a Sunday morning.
Bring some cash – we eat family style at most dim sum houses and split the check (typically $8 to $15 per person).
This is a bike ride, so you’ll need a functioning bike and the ability to ride it. If you don’t have a functioning bike, no worries! We rent our single speed beach cruisers for $20/ea.
There is a Facebook event for this ride.
Any questions? info@flyingpigeon-la.com
Remember the bailout of 2008? Wall Street hucksters brought our economy to its knees and then demanded that we all pay them to keep their operations afloat. Blech! Nothing good came out of that … or did it?
The Bicycle Commuter Act of 2008 was inserted into the bailout by Congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon’s 3rd District. A long-time bike advocate, Blumenauer traded his “Yes” vote for the bailout in exchange for this benefit – which he had lobbied for in prior years unsuccessfully.
If you still have a job, Blumenauer’s bill allows you to be paid $20 per month, by your employer, to subsidize the purchase of a bike or bike equipment, up to $240 annually.
The League of American Bicyclists maintains an information page on the Bicycle Commuter Act with information about the ins-and-outs of implementing it at your company.
Pretty sweet, if you can convince your HR department to set it up! Sweeter still if it means you get a new bike and some new gear from Flying Pigeon LA (right?).
In this video i wander around the shop and point the camera at the bikes we’ve put on sale as part of our The Price of Bikes is Too Damn High SALE happening this month from February 15, 2012 to February 29, 2012. We’re marking down most of our bikes $200 to $300 and selling most of our accessories at a 50% discount.
We concur, good sir, we concur.
From Wednesday, February 15, 2012 to Sunday February 29, 2012 we are discounting just about every bike in stock by $200 to $300 (sometimes more) and most accessories 50%.
Rent, gasoline, insurance, bond payments for your local freeway system, parking tickets, MOM Ridaz – all of these things are too damn high.
In that spirit, we are going to make it easier to get away from most of the above by getting on a bicycle (no guarantee about getting away from MOM Ridaz).
We have a bunch of bikes in our shop, and we’re marking them down $200 to $300 apiece. We sell bikes from all over the world, made for doing stuff like: not using gasoline, not getting parking tickets, having fun, riding to work, and going on bike dates.
The Price of Bikes is Too Damn High SALE is going on from February 15, 2012 and will end on midnight February 29, 2012. If you want to buy a bike from us, and don’t live in LA or can’t make it to the shop – sorry! We can’t sell discounted bikes over the interwebs and keep our distributors happy (Flying Pigeons? Sure. Other stuff? No way.).
Why are we doing this? We need the money to pay the rent (too damn high!).
Any questions? Email us at info@flyingpigeon-la.com
Let’s play that little game to see whether you can spot what’s wrong with the pictures below:
Did you figure it out? I thought not, so I’ll give you the answer:
They weren’t taken here in Northeast LA.
In fact, they weren’t taken anywhere in the City of Los Angeles. I shot them a few days ago on the City of Santa Monica’s Main Street.
Loads of bikes, locked to loads of bike racks, in front of shops, bars, and restaurants crowded with loads of happy people. (In fact, despite a plenitude of racks, there still weren’t enough for all the bike traffic.)
Santa Monica’s portion of Main Street was blessed with a road diet several years ago, and it shows: people are riding their bikes everywhere, most of them people who are not “CYCLISTS.” Rather, they are regular folks who have discovered–thanks to their city’s infrastructure improvements, which are really modest in cost though great in effect–that the bicycle provides an effective and joyful, as well as efficient, way to do their shopping, dining, and commuting.
And so they crowd into Main Street on their bikes, engendering a cacophony of conversation, happy laughter, and cash register bells. Even on rainy days, as I have often noted!
To be sure, LA has just put its own portion of Main Street, south of SaMo, on a road diet, and Venice’s Abbott Kinney has sharrows and plenty of racks, as well as plenty of bicyle riders. But Los Angeles is really playing catch-up here–especially in light of SaMo’s sudden flood of sharrows, bike lanes, road diets, and new parking racks–not to mention two Bike Centers!–in its own downtown, just north of the Main Street strip.
Imagine this sort of development in NELA, along Figueroa and York! How street life and commerce would grow, and jobs come out of the woodwork, and neighborhoods bloom!
Fortunately, Pigeon Master Josef is working on that–drop by and chat him up about Fig4All.
And his influence reaches far: on the day I snapped those pix, I saw a box-front cargo trike amble past the window of the diner where I sat, no doubt rolling homeward from the Sunday farmers market a few blocks north. Most likely found its way there from NELA!
If you’re looking for something fun to do on Saturday, February 18, 2012 – stop by the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop! We hosting another Pigeon Politburo with author Steven Rea, here to discuss and sign his new book “HOLLYWOOD RIDES A BIKE: Cycling with the Stars“.
The show gets started at 7 p.m. on Saturday, February 18, 2012 at Flying Pigeon LA bike shop (located at 3404 N. Figueora St. Los Angeles, CA 90065). Vegetarian friendly food and drink will be provided.
HOLLYWOOD RIDES A BIKE shows classic stars—from Shirley Temple, Betty Grable, and Brigitte Bardot to Bogie, Gable, and Bing—on wheels, then proves there’s way less than six degrees of separation between Kevin Bacon and all the best bikes Hollywood prop shops have to offer. One hundred twenty-five rare vintage photographs will make bicycle lovers drool over classic models and one-of-a-kinds. There’s even a special index just about the bicycles!
Steven Rea will talk about how how he came to collect star+bicycle images, show off images from the book, and autograph copies. Rae also writes about movies for the Philadelphia Inquirer, so you’re welcome to ask him about his picks for the upcoming Academy Awards.
There is a Facebook event page for this event.
For more information about the event, call 213-909-8986 or email info@flyingpigeon-la.com .
For an ongoing dose of bike/movie images, follow Steven’s “Rides A Bike” blog on Tumblr.
