Flying Pigeon Dutch Style Bike Sale

Know When to Fold ‘Em

By Richard Risemberg | February 8, 2012

Bike and trailer on 9th St., Downtown Los AngelesDragged the trailer downtown to pick up fresh inventory for my little bike rags business, Bicycle Fixation, and as you can see in the snapshot, it holds a pretty bulky pair of boxes very nicely.

It was, I must confess, the cheapest trailer we could find that would fit my usual load, and in fact it weighs more than the bike that is pulling it. In fact, it weighs more than many of the burdens I pile into it, though in this case the stock outweighed the trailer by a small amount.

You might wonder, Why bother? After all, I could (cheapskate nature aside) easily pick up a bakfiets right here at the Pigeon. And in fact I tested a Gazelle Cabby for my magazine, and the Pigeon in fact carries them! They are very, very nice–slow, but easy-handling even with heavy loads, and no problem in traffic.

The trailer tends to cause annoying surges, as it is attached via a spring and of course hits the bumps at a different time from the bike. It also tracks to the inside of a turn, which you have to watch for. Really, a bakfiets or a longtail would be better in many ways.

Except for one….

Room. A bakfiets is big. A longtail is big. The best things since ice cream, but big.

You’d think in big, sprawling LA that would be no problem, but for all that many of our houses are big, the garage space in them is usally taken up by the very cars that cause the sprawl. Even most committed cyclists have a car. And many, many people live in apartments or older, charming, but small houses.

And the trailer not only detaches from the bike, it folds up very small, and spends most of its life shoved into a back corner of the garage. The bike that pulls it is a regular bike most of the time, and a cargo bike just when I need it.

As I favor older, charming, smaller houses and apartments in more crowded parts of town–such as the Miracle Mile where I now live, or Echo Park where I used to years ago–I’ve been thinking of how to take the concept of the transforming bicycle even farther. The Pigeon sells Bromptons, you know; Bromptons fold very, very small; and Bromptons can pull a trailer.

Leaving room for even more bikes, bwahahahaaaaa!

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Spoke(n) Art Ride on Saturday, February 11, 2012

By admin | February 8, 2012

Parkour in front of MorYork on Spoke(n) Art Ride. Image: Mikey Wally

Join us at the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop and Bike Oven this Saturday, February 11, 2012 for another Spoke(n) Art Ride gallery tour.

Meet at the NELA bike-industrial complex located at 3714 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90065 at 6 p.m. The ride leaves at 6:30 p.m. We return to the start point at around 10 or 10:30 p.m. for a reception.

The Spoke(n) Art Ride is a monthly tour of galleries open for NELAart’s Second Saturday – a special night when area galleries and studios open their doors to the public until the wee hours.

This month features a tour of local art spaces and a stop at a square dance.

The ride is a slow-paced cruise, stopping every couple of minutes. Sometimes we veer off the beaten path, sometimes a backyard party – it all changes slightly from month to month. For more general information about the ride, check out the Bike Oven’s Spoke(n) Art page.

Don’t have a bike? No problem! We rent single speed beach cruisers with blinkie lights for $20. We have a fleet of bikes – just make sure to show up at or before 6 p.m. to ensure you get a bike! Things get hectic at start time, with over 100 riders congregating at the shop before we leave.

There is a Facebook event page for this ride.

Any questions? Email us at info@flyingpigeon-la.com

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Brewery Ride on Saturday, February 4, 2012

By admin | February 3, 2012

A flight of beer at the August 2011 Flying Pigeon LA Brewery Ride to Eagle Rock Brewery

Join us on another lovely, slow-paced, bike tour to sample fine beer on Saturday, February 4, 2012 on our Brewery Ride.

Meet at the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop (located at 3714 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90065) at 3 p.m. The ride leaves at 3:30 p.m.

This month we’re heading to Golden Road Brewery in Atwater Village to sample the beer they make locally and their collection of craft beers.

This month’s puzzler: “How many blog posts does it take to keep a bike shop running?”.

No bike? No problem! We rent single speed beach cruisers at $20/ea. on our rides. Want us to set one aside for you and a date? Email us at info@flyingpigeon-la.com

There is a Facebook event page for this event.

Any questions? Email us at info@flyingpigeon-la.com or call 213-909-8986.

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Flying Pigeon LA inventory on February 1, 2012

By admin | February 3, 2012

In this video: Brompton bikes, some of our Pashleys, Montego & Amxdam dutch bikes.

The 2-speed Amxdam bikes we have left are going for $420 – half of what other bike companies ask for their Dutch bikes. These don’t come with lights, racks, and a built-in lock but we carry these accessories and without them the bike is pretty lightweight.

Any questions or comments? Email us at info@flyingpigeon-la.com

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Flying Pigeon LA repairs Union spoon-brake opafiets

By josef | February 3, 2012

All sorts of old fashioned roadsters and old school Dutch and English bikes get repaired at our shop on a monthly basis. This old Union roadster needed some new tires and tubes, a little bit of polishing with 0000 steel wool, and some small parts replaced.

The spoon brake on the front is a nice touch (not the best for stopping power, but reliable enough to slow you down with no maintenance needed). The dynamo has seen better days, and after getting the bike all wired up properly, we’re going to try and swap out bulbs in the lights and see if replacing the dynamo makes things light up a little brighter.

The tires on the bike are creme Schwalbe Delta Cruisers in a 28 x 1 1/2″ size (40-635 is the ERTRO designation).

Any questions or comments? Email us at info@flyingpigeon-la.com

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What the Center Holds

By Richard Risemberg | February 1, 2012

It’s always hard to think outside the box, even when you believe you’ve made a lifelong practice of it. So it was for me a few weeks ago when I rode through Larchmont, LA’s truly pleasing midtwon shopping street, a place that has a real village feel, shortly after talking with Better Bike‘s Mark Elliot about Beverly Hills’s similar SoBev district.

I grew up around Larchmont and have continued to hang out there for half a century or so, almost always on my bike. In that time, I’ve watched it change from a Mayberry-with-money Main Street vibe to a movie industry hangout to a generally hip-but-not-too-hip almost-a-town-square kind of place, truly engaging and relaxing to be in, and offering lots of “third place” spaces. It is, though, afflicted, like most of LA, with too many cars.

Therein lies the rub, of course: Larchmont suffers from the presumption that car parking spaces mean prosperity–even though most of its customers come from within a three mile radius, and many already walk or bicycle over. There is diagonal parking, there is a surface parking lot, and there is an expensive underground parking structure–and there are around thirty-three bike racks, which are inconspicuous compared to the acreage given to motorists.

Center lane in Larchmont Boulevard
You can’t add more car parking–not without destroying the stores you’re trying to serve–but you can add more bike parking, and at almost no expense. And you can do it without removing a single one of those singularly ineffective car slots (each of which takes up a vast swath of asphalt to bring in, typically, one lonely customer–a bike’s worth, that is!).

Look at the photo again: Larchmont has a full-length two-way left turn lane, interrupted at two places with crosswalks.

Couldn’t we put a bike corral right behind each of those little planters that protect the crosswalk? (Or even between the planter and the crosswalk?) They wouldn’t block anyone turning left, and they would prevent delivery trucks from parking too close to the crosswalks and blocking motorists’ view of pedestrians, which the trucks now do. A few well-placed bollards would protect the bikes from errant drivers, and stepping stones in the planters would give cyclists a clear path to the crosswalk.

You could easily put five inverted U racks on either side of each crosswalk, more than doubling the bike parking on the street–without taking anything away from anyone else!

There must be dozens of streets in the city where this could work.

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Let them eat parking spaces – Mission Meridian Village parking garage costing South Pasadena

By josef | January 31, 2012

Neon sign for Mission Meridian parking lot

Mission Meridian Village has an incredibly high Walk Score (94 out of 100), a New Urbanist pedigree second to none, and is a beautiful collection of buildings in a quaint and prosperous small town – but like most places in America, it cannot pay its own bills. The reason for that funding shortfall? As in most cases, it has to do with “free” and “low cost” car parking.

It took $25 million and 385 parking spaces but, right around the turn of the 20th century, South Pasadena got the holy grail of “Transit Oriented Development” (TOD) plopped right into the middle of its downtown.

Craftsman duplex at Mission Meridian Village in South Pasadena

The Mission Meridian Village has been praised for a New Urbanist design. It has allowed young couples and older folks to find a place to live in this quaint old town that fits their budgets and needs where single family houses did not. It opened up a car-locked village to the metropolis it finds itself surrounded by.

The Mission Meridian Village also lost the City of South Pasadena money, and continues to do so. Not a lot, as these things go, but a nice chunk of change every year that isn’t going to parks, police, fire protection, sewer line reconstruction, library books, or any other civic purposes.

How could a nice new development, following all the best ideas of urbanist thinking, underwritten by massive piles of outside dollars, turn into a revenue loser for South Pasadena? Didn’t they just get a practically “free” building?
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Raleigh rod brake repair at Flying Pigeon LA bike shop

By josef | January 31, 2012

In this video I make an attempt to describe a repair job we did on an old Raleigh roadster from the late 1970′s. The audio has some issues, but this is my first ever attempt at voiceover, so please forgive me. The music was supplied by my ukulele.

A bunch of cleaning and some shining was done on the bike, we reset the cotters with some high quality cotters (using a Bike Smith Design cotter press) we stock. The tires (or “tyres”) were changed out for some new Schwalbe Delta Cruisers HS 392 in creme. We stock these tires in creme and in creme with a reflective sidewall. They come in a bunch of sizes – the size you see in the video above is 28 x 1 1/2″ (aka 40-635, or 700B).

The rod brake work consisted in us pounding out the old rod brake pads and then spending about two months tracking down replacement inserts from a domestic manufacturer. We found some, in black AND in salmon. Ridiculous! The last batch of rod brake pads I bought took an earth-moving PayPal postal service transaction in a New Delhi bicycle market involving an uncle and a lot of hassles. Now you can call up Ye Olde Flying Pigeon and order some in a jiffy. They run $25 for a set of four pad inserts, and really only work on old Raleigh brake blocks.

The brakes on the rear of the bike gave me the most trouble. Rear rod brakes are always the worst to setup. Once you have to move one brake clip you know you are in for it.

First, the rear brake pads have to be setup in the stirrup so that they are parallel to the face of the rim. In the rear, this is hard to do since access is blocked by a kickstand, crank arm, or chain case.

Second, the brake clips have to be adjusted to account for “toe-in” as well as the distance the pads will be from the rim. Sounds fine until you try to do the work and see that the slightest squeeze inward or outward from the brake clips moves one pad closer, the other farther away and at a weird angle. You end up walking around the rear of the bike, fiddling with the both clips, until they are set so that each pad is parallel to the rim, about 2mm away from the rim’s braking surface, and is not being squeezed too tightly inwards (pads can hit spokes and rod brake action will be horrible due to friction of stirrups against clips), nor too loose outwards (stirrups will jump out of clips on bumpy roads).

Third, the brake clips are typically secured to the frame with horrible, low-grade, flat head bolts. These are notorious for slipping and sending your flathead screwdriver plunging into your palm or finger. Wear a falconer’s glove if you don’t want to bleed.

Finally, rear rod brakes have an extra rod sleeve that adjusts for forward and backward movement of the rear stirrup. This should not be pulled tight, as rods tend to slip when they are set up holding a lot of tension and the bike rider pulls hard on the brake lever. Don’t let this piece dangle loosely, as this will also affect brake performance negatively.

Once the rear pads were installed I ran through the gears on the bike, checked a bunch of other stuff, and then installed a brand new Brooks B66 in honey as well as matching leather ring grips.

I wish I’d gotten a picture of the final product, but I am sure it will show up in some cycle chic photo shoot some day.

If you are looking for Raleigh rod brake blocks, or replacement inserts, Flying Pigeon LA sells them. Shoot us a line at info@flyingpigeon-la.com

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Memories of Meeting of the Styles

By josef | January 27, 2012

You have a cement wall 55 feet high. Which would you prefer?

This:
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Or this:
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The mural at the top was painted in September of 2007 as part of the Meeting of the Styles in Los Angeles. Meeting of the Styles is an international event put on by a West German collective. They touched down in the U.S. in 2007 and did a few events.

“[...]Mural-Art has a strong history, older than property, not only because of the political roots of the Meeting in the conflict of preservation and destruction of Europe´s legendary Wall-Street-Meeting, but also because we as the organisation feel responsibility to work for unification, in order to raise conscioussness and to resist a system that takes away freedom for order, control and profit. Politics affect us each and every day, locally and globally. Your consumption has a direct impact to the destruction and exploitation of environment and the manipulation and enslavement of humanity.”
- “Why do you have so much politics on your site?” in FAQ, Graffiti Events Worldwide

The second image is after a going-over by contractors for Los Angeles County. At the behest of Supervisor Gloria Molina, this massive installation was “buffed” (painted over) in late 2007. Since then, millions in grants from the federal government, and general funds from the County of Los Angeles, have been spent to obliterate Los Angeles’ street art heritage in the Los Angeles River.

You can see more images of the Meeting of the Styles in my Flickr account and in the Flickr account of user lavacado.

Call it what you want, but if I had a 55 foot tall cement wall, I know which image I’d prefer.

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Two Wheeled Love Letters to NELA – the North East passage

By josef | January 26, 2012

Looking south at sunset from the bed of the Arroyo Seco

In a recent interview with KCET Departures, outdoor survivalist and native foods expert Christopher Nyerges described the path of the Arroyo Seco River from the LA River, through Highland Park, to Pasadena as a prehistoric highway – moving goods, culture, and people. Today, the Arroyo Seco Parkway (aka “110 freeway”) has paved over the trails of aboriginal peoples of the region, conveniently connecting Pasadena to Highland Park and the greater Los Angeles area for those driving cars.

What has been great news for people driving cars has become bad news for those of us that ride bikes. How do you get from Highland Park to Pasadena on a bike? There are lots of different routes, but I’ve got one that has become my “North East Passage” – avoiding as much car-only ugliness as possible, passing through beautiful areas and streets, and sidestepping as many grueling climbs as possible on the way from Highland Park to lovely Old Town Pasadena.

This ride is a moderate difficulty climb from Highland Park to Old Town Pasadena. The start point is convenient to the Metro Gold Line Heritage Square station and the 81 and 83 Metro bus lines (which run 24 hours). Total cost for the day if you arrive by bike and pack your own lunch: $0. Free parking at the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop if you want to arrive by car (and then leave on your bike).

October Brings nihola!

The start of the North East Passage, for me, is always at the North East LA (aka “NELA”) bike industrial complex at the corner of Avenue 37 and North Figueroa Street – where my bike shop, Flying Pigeon LA, and the bike repair collective the Bike Oven are located. The street address is 3714 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90065.

So, let’s get mounted up and riding!
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    Flying Pigeon LA
    3714 N. Figueroa St.
    Los Angeles, CA 90065
    213-909-8986
    info@flyingpigeon-la.com

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