A cucumber green ladies Flying Pigeon bicycle.

We ran across an ad in the San Francisco Craigslist for a green ladies Flying Pigeon and thought we’d alert any of you in the bay area that are interested in a bike to check this out. Save yourself the shipping costs and rescue one of our flock!

The link to the San Francisco Craigslist ad is here:
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/bik/974741093.html

If you end up taking the bike home, give us a call, at 213-909-8986, and we’ll send you a free t-shirt with our logo on it!

Meet us at 10 a.m. on Sunday, January 18, 2008 at 5711 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042. The ride will leave at 10:30 a.m.

We have demonstration Flying Pigeon bikes to lend for the Get Sum Dim Sum Ride! Please make sure to call us in advance to secure your Flying Pigeon for the ride. If you buy a bike after the ride, lunch is on us. Please call us to reserve your bike at 213-909-8986.

Bring about $20 to cover the meal and cocktail (a little more for a tip wouldn’t hurt).

Oh, a quick tip about dim sum: it is vegan and vegetarian UN-friendly. That is, almost everything has pork, chicken, or beef in it (sometime duck and other stuff too!). The veggies are good, but really limited to about three or four dishes: bok choy, chinese broccoli, sesame balls with sweet bean paste, and … um … something else?

See you on Sunday!

This quote from Josef explains a big reason why he decided to sell Flying Pigeons:

“Cycling [...] is a reasonable, civilized, intelligent way to move human beings: from jobs to home, from home to meet their friends somewhere. It should be something that should be considered a normal everyday thing - and that’s one reason we thought these [Flying Pigeon] bikes would take off.”

-Josef Bray-Ali, Eagle Rock Talk Episode 21

Eagle Rock Talk’s regular podcast keep locals up to date on all sorts of local goings on. They host a lively forum on their web-site and keep all of us in North East L.A. informed about businesses coming to town (or leaving) and interesting neighbors and institutions in the area.

If you haven’t checked out their podcast yet, give it a listen!

• Eagle Rock Talk Episode 21 [eaglerocktalk.com]

We meet on Sunday, December 21, 2008 at 5711 North Figueroa, Los Angeles, 90042 at 10AM for a quick cup of warm green tea, an air pressure check, before riding at 10:30AM.

From the shop, we’ll hop on to the MTA Gold Line to South Pasadena where we will ride through some of the most beautiful tree lined streets in the county.  Passing some fantastic architecture (ask about Irving Gill) and through some interesting spots we ride down to  Alhambra’s Main Street to King Hua.  Recently reviewed by Jonathan Gold of the LA  Weekly, King Hua offers some of the freshest and most delicious  dim sum in all of the San Gabriel Valley.

As always, we have demo bikes to lend! If you buy a bike after the ride, lunch is on us. Please call the shop to reserve your bike at 213-909-8986.  Due to overwhelming demand we ask that you reserve no more than 2 demo bikes per caller and we appreciate knowing if you are not going to come.

Bring about $20 to cover the meal and one way train ticket.

See you on Sunday!

This is one of our favorite parts:

“…[I]n spite of all that I still really love this bike. When all I see all around me are generic road bikes and mountain bikes, my Pigeon sticks out as glaringly stylish and retro (which is probably why they command a ridiculously high price in New York). I get people stopping me and asking me about it all the time and get some pretty amusing looks from lots of Chinese folks when I go riding around in Chinatown.”
-archie4oz, “The Flying Pigeon“, December 10, 2008

You can read the rest of The Flying Pigeon at archie4oz’s blog halfaloafoftofu.

Flying Pigeons featured in the Wall Street Journal Magazine's 2008 Very Good Gift Guide

With a bit of excitement we opened a UPS overnight box today to find a few advance copies of the Wall Street Journal Magazine’s 2008 Very Good Gift Guide.

We’ve been chatting with the folks there for a few weeks and even sent them a black, ladies, Flying Pigeon for a charity event they are hosting next week in Manhattan.

Nothing, however, prepared us for the sight of an orange Flying Pigeon gracing their table of contents and almost a quarter page on page 65 of the Very Good Gift Guide.

If you are a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal, look for us on Saturday December 6, 2008.

We ought to be a bit busy on Saturday (with bike orders we hope!), but stop by this Sunday to celebrate with us!

This Sunday, December 7, 2008 join us for a “Get Sum Dim Sum Ride” to the newly opened Cafe de Leche. We’ll end up back on Figueroa just in time to catch the 64th Annual Northeast LA Holiday Parade (which is being organized by our friend Rosamaria of Rock Rose Gallery).

A customer buying a fine cup of coffee at the newly opened Cafe de Leche.

This week, we’re cruising to an incredibly good coffee house that just opened up in Highland Park: Cafe de Leche. Join us for the ride! Meet at Flying Pigeon LA’s shop, at 5711 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042 at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning, December 7, 2008. The ride leaves at 10:30 a.m.

On the way to our destination, we’ll pass some great spots in Highland Park: the Los Angeles Police Historical Museum; some amazing geological formations on Avenue 50; and, of course, a few pieces of public art by our many talented neighbors in Northeast Los Angeles.

Cafe de Leche was just profiled on in a story entitled “Static Cafe Becomes Open Cafe” on the 90042 blog.

On a recon ride last weekend, Adam scored some delicious coffee and an amazing Guatemalan breakfast sandwich for a total of $7.  Bring about $10 and you’ll have plenty of money left over for a tamale at one of our favorite local bakeries (talk to Adam about this “secret spot”).

Cafe de Leche is located at 5000 York Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90042. We’re going to be riding there in style and comfort on the world’s most popular bicycle: the Flying Pigeon!

If you would like to take a famous Flying Pigeon for a test ride leave us a note in the comments section below or contact us by calling 213-909-8986. If you decide to buy a bike, the coffee and Guatemalan sandwich is on us!

For more information, contact info@flyingpigeon-la.com or call 213-909-8986.

Logo for Cafe de Leche, located at 5000 York Blvd., Los Angeles, CA

It all started on a warm August night, when we opened our doors in time for the Beijing Olympics. We were flooded with requests for, “More beer!”, and the always prescient, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a bicycle today.” Our cliqa started, Pajaros Locos, and now we got a strong cliqa.

Things got ugly recently when some of our competition tried taking over the bike lane on Avenue 50. The battle made the local news over on LA Eastside in a recent story, “Birds Fall From Sky“. “Pajaros Locos represented, and though we were victorious, unfortunately some of our homies got taken out. We do what we do ese, but sometimes that has consequences.

A fabulous Flying Pigeon hangs from the rafters at Cafe de Leche.

To mark our triumph, and in loving memory of fallen Pajaros Locos, newly opened Cafe de Leche has placed an orange Flying Pigeon bicycle in their store. Now everyone in the ‘hood will know, Parajos Locos por vida ese!

You can check out more photos in our Cafe de Leche Flickr photoset. Cafe de Leche’s opening was blogged about on one of our favorite local blogs. Waltarrr did a pretty extensive write-up in his 90042 Blog story on Cafe de Leche.

p.s. El Chavo/chanfles: We’re sorry for jacking your funny Pajaros Locos idea for this blog post.

p.p.s. We’re sorry makers of “Blood In, Blood Out” for so brazenly appropriaing lines from your movie, which was pushed aside (like Donnie Brasco) for an Edward James Olmos (American Me) film about a nearly identical story of criminal life in East L.A.

Carol Colin's "North Figueroa" appears on the cover of The Journal of Bloglandia, volume 1, issue 2.

The Journal of Bloglandia, volume 1, issue 2 popped to our attention during last weekend’s Arroyo Arts Re-discovery Tour.

We were drawn to the magazine because of the cover art by Carol Colin entitled “North Figueroa” and featuring the building that houses Flying Pigeon LA!

Sadly, the two trees in front of Frank’s Camera are both gone now. Only stumps remain, but a small guerilla garden has been planted around on of them, so, you know, “Hope dies last,” and all that.

We’re happy that our building is featured on the cover of such a cool journal (filled with references to books we had to read in college!). You can own a small copy of L.A. history by buying The Journal of Bloglanida for only $7.50 at Lulu.com.

Guns N Roses album cover for their new album Chinese Democracy.

Guns N’ Roses has released a new album, “Chinese Democracy” and we’re happy to see that while they have written a song critical of the Chinese government - they haven’t stooped to debase the the Flying Pigeon (the world’s most popular bicycle, don’t you know).

If you want to hear a few tracks from the new album, check out the Guns N’ Roses Myspace page. If you want to ride a newer version of the bicycle on the album cover - talk to us!

We’re going on a bike ride to Phillipe’s this Sunday, if you want to take us up on that offer.