Copenhagen. Life. Cycle. by Biomega from Copenhagenize on Vimeo.

The brilliant Mikael Coleville-Andersen has produced a lovely new advertisement for Biomega bicycles that we have to share.

We carry Biomega bikes here at the Flying Pigeon LA shop (I think one other store in town has them?). Their modern aesthetic and zero-maintenance shaft drive really make Biomega bikes stand out.

We’ve got a Biomega Amsterdam men’s bike in our shop window that has been pulling in customers every day.

DJ Chicken Leather enjoying some Eagle Rock Brewery Solidarity Ale.

The ride was such a pleasant one that I decided that afternoon to try and do a “Brewery Ride” of one sort or another on the 1st Saturday of each month.

This Saturday, March  6 ,2010 we’re heading back to the Eagle Rock Brewery! Meet us at the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop (located at 3714 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90065) at 3 p.m. We’ll be on the road at 3:20 p.m.

On day two of being officailly open for business, this is what the brewery had in stock: Revolution, a hoppy, citrusy pale ale; Solidarity, a velvety, malt-based English style session beer; and Manifsesto, a yeast accented beer made in the Belgian white style. From Brand X article "Meet Your Maker: L.A.'s craft beer revolution"

The Eagle Rock Brewery is offering up $5 pints of their various locally crafted beers. They’ve also been busy booking an evening visit by one of LA’s several gourmet food trucks (though we will likely be a little too early for the truck on our ride).

Age 21 and older only allowed into the brewery. Bicycles will be available for rent, at our Get Sum Dim Sum Ride rates – $10 per bike, but availability is pretty limited on these so RSVP soon.

Getting to Flying Pigeon LA by Metro – we’re served by the 81 and 83 lines and are just blocks away from the Heritage Square Gold Line Station.

By car, 110 Freeway, exit Avenue 43, left on Figueroa St., park at Avenue 37 and N. Figueroa St.

The Flying Pigeon LA bike shop is located at 3714 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90065.

The Eagle Rock Brewery is located at 3056 Roswell Street, Los Angeles, CA‎ 90065.

Any questions or RSVP? info@flyingpigeon-la.com

San Francisco's "Summer Streets" event is a great example of what CicLAvia can do for Los Angeles. Image: sfbike/Flickr

Sometimes, life can get you down. Towards the end of the summer of 2009, I was feeling like nothing would ever change in Los Angeles. The cycling communtiy made some big strides in getting more people to ride bikes, and had changed a few small laws and policies, but people were still getting killed and maimed in daily hit-and-run crashes, the mayor’s office didn’t care about bicycling as transport despite his “green” rhetoric, and I didn’t see anything else on the near horizon to change things.

When I first heard about a group of citizens organizing a CicLAvia in Los Angeles, I thought it was a typo. I’ve seen Enrique Penalosa, the former mayor of Bogota, Columbia, give a talk about something called a Ciclovia several years ago at the MTA headquarters in Downtown LA. The Ciclovia in Bogota is a weekly event where the main roads in the city are shut down to automobile traffic for a few hours, and the people are allowed to ride their bikes, roller skate, walk, and play on a Sunday morning. So, what is this thing everyone is calling a “CicLAvia”?

Quite simply, the CicLAvia is Los Angeles’ version of Ciclovia. We’re a bit behind the on this as well! New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and other cities have each implemented their own versions of a Ciclovia.

To some it may seem silly, or trivial, to close off a long stretch of a major roadway on a Sunday morning to allow people to get some exercise, ride their bikes, and enjoy the streets. To me, it seemed like the most significant shift in Los Angeles’ political culture I was likely to encounter in my lifetime.

This 10 minute short film was created by the crew at StreetFilms in NYC in 2007.

As the old European saying goes “City air makes you free” – but in Los Angeles we’ve intentionally destroyed our ability to move about freely by running massive car-only highways right through the middle of town and closing off access to most destinations for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users. The result is not only a frustratingly congested commute by car, but a legacy of toxic air quality, a shuttering of small local retailers and manufacturing, and unsafe and unpleasant streets.

For these reasons and for many others, I wrote this letter of support for the CicLAvia:

February 20, 2010

To Whom It May Concern:

Ciclavia is an event which will bring together Los Angeles’ local business interests, activists, advocates, bike riders, and neighbors – to convince our local leaders that bikes belong on the road and improve the bike business.

L.A. is well known for it’s “car culture”, freeways, and some of the world’s worst automobile traffic.

However, in the past five years Los Angeles has seen explosive growth in a “bicycle culture” – which has drawn in citizens from all backgrounds and economic strata. L.A. has four separate bike repair collectives and dozens of daily social bike rides, exemplified by the Midnight Ridazz.

Yet we face several big hurdles, chief among those is acceptance of bicycles by our local political leaders as a means of transport. We are in need of a grand, symbolic, event to show that bicycles are good for the city and its citizens.

CicLAvia is the embodiment of what so many of us in the cycling community have been pushing for the past several years – mainstream, accessible, bicycle amenities.

Ciclavia will increase the market for bicycles in L.A. – bringing transportation cycling to the people and transforming the political landscape.

We fully endorse the CicLAvia, and hope that you will work to see that this event takes place in our city!

Sincerely,

Josef Bray-Ali
Co-Owner, Flying Pigeon-LA, LLC

With enough lobbying, the mayor will get the hint and work to see CicLAvia happen every month or every weekend on some big LA streets. It would be such a nice change of pace to the hurried, unpleasant, lives most of our streets in LA create for us.

I was feeling bad about the future of transportation in LA a short time ago, until I found about the efforts to of a dedicated group of volunteers to create a Los Angeles-style Ciclovia – a CicLAvia. Since then, I’ve felt that this event will provide the push to our city’s culture and political landscape to put bicycles in the mainstream of transportation planning (where they belong).

Now I’ve got this new feeling … it’s hard to describe … hope?

I filmed this short clip of my daily commute with my daughter in our special Dutch cargo bike – one variety of several available for sale at the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop.

The bike ride that day was a wet one for my right hand (as the left was holding the umbrella and everything else on the bike was covered up). The rain let up for a few minutes, which enabled the umbrella to briefly come down and the camera to come up to capture the moment.

Jon, shop manager of Flying Pigeon LA, riding a Nihola Family with his lunch date in the front.

The shop has in stock the Nihola Family cargo trike ($3,299 to $3,599), and a smaller bakfietsen from the Flying Pigeon factory in China. We also have bikes from Batavus and Gazelle specifically made to carry loads of cargo and kids. You can see one of our fully equipped Batavus Personal Delivery with two Bobike seats and a set of Basil panniers here.

Financing and layaway available.

The music in this short is by artist Daedelus off his album “Of Snowdonia”. The track is entitled “Hiraethus”.

We hope that one day, it won’t be such an extraordinary thing for parents to carry their kids around town on bicycles! As you can see, it is usually (LA rush hour traffic notwithstanding) a very peaceful way of doing your daily errands while getting some fresh air.

A Rich Raya mural, reflecting a bit of car culture, painted at the Pep Boys in Highland Park, CA.

If you’re looking for something fun to do this weekend, come join us for (another) Spoke(n) Art ride this Saturday, February 13, 2010 at the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop. Meet us at the shop, located at 3714 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90065 at 6 p.m., we will ride to the corner of York & N. Figueroa Street at 6:30 p.m.

Our friends at the Bike Oven have arranged a new art show this month, featuring the art of artist Rich Raya. Raya is a native of Los Angeles, now living in Mount Washington. He paints in oils and acrylics. Working techniques involve impressionism, realism, and illustration. Raya started in the early 1970’s representing urban culture and environmental themes. He has been showing work in the southwest area since 1972. His work will be on display at the Bike Oven and Flying Pigeon LA bike shop until early March.

The ride coincides with NELA Arts’ Second Saturday, a once-a-month event when area art galleries open their doors to the public in the evening and stay open late into the night. The Spoke(n) Art Ride is held each month with help from volunteers at the Bike Oven and a little help from the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop. At the end of each ride (usually around 9:30 or 10:00 p.m.) there is an after-party held at both locations.

Taking the Metro? Take the Gold Line, exit Heritage Square, follow the Sharrows in the road to the corner of Avenue 37 and N. Figueroa Street.

By Bus? We’re served by the 81 and 83 running 24-hours, Get off at the intersection of Marmion Way/Pasadena and N. Figueroa Street.

Driving? Leave your car by the Flying Pigeon shop (get there at 6 p.m.)! Take the 110 freeway, exit Avenue 43, turn west on N. Figueroa Street, park near Greater Oak Park (at the intersection of Avenue 37 and N. Figueroa Street.

The Flying Pigeon LA shop, your friendly neighborhood mainstream counterculture bike shop! Part of our cargo bike selection is pictured above.

It took a cross-continental love and a couple of long plane trips, but a Canadian has nailed LA’s emergent cycling scene: it’s not a subculture we’re a part of her in Los Angeles’ cycling community, it’s a “mainstream counterculture”. There is much more from the Bespoke blog post “Los Angeles & the ‘Mainstream Counterculture’” published on December 5, 2009:

“[T]he Flying Pigeon shop represents the very mainstreaming of a bike culture in its most un-bifurcated and pure distillation. In cities like Toronto the ‘mainstream’ cyclist you would see in Holland or Copenhagen is often considered a bourgeoise counter to the existing bicycle sub-cultures. This, of course is strange given that a pricier bike hardly represents economic stratification as much as a simple practical investment with an excellent rate of return. But the bicycle has always been tied to ideology or subculture in North America. There is often little room for tribal unanimity between the ‘outlaw’ values of the fixed-gear hipster, the left-of-center views of the student-run activist co-ops, and the everyday cyclist who just wants to be safe and stylish (and values their bike for the simple reason that it does its job). In LA the situation is quite different, and the Flying Pigeon bicycle store embraces the entire cross-section of bicycle culture into a beautifully inclusive package. The Flying Pigeon bike store grew directly out of the Bike Oven, a bicycle co-op started by Josef in his garage and is now a full-fledged LA institution. Flying Pigeon and the Bike Oven intersect the highly inclusive bike culture of Los Angeles. By making cycling available to the working poor, the anarchist activists, the fixed-gear bike kids and even the rich Hollywood celebrities, Flying Pigeon is a total free-for-all. But then so is Los Angeles. When you are battling a concept like Los Angeles (and Los Angeles is a concept), it doesn’t matter what you ride; the mere act of riding reflects the most basic shared value. Ride past another cyclist and they will give you a wave. That never happens anywhere else.”

The Bike Kitchen, the Bike Oven, BikeRoWave, Bike Writers Collective, Bike Week Pasadena, BikeSummitLA 2009 and all the myriad rides that have happened over the past 5 years in L.A. – it is not some unitary fixed-gear tribe running the show! There is too much diversity in L.A.’s bike community: in bikes, in age, in ethnic identities, and class membership.

I remember well the first Santa Monica Critical Mass I went on (my first group ride). The ride was packed with both young and old, rich and poor, dark skinned and light, with braniacs and the bone-headed all mashed together with everyone simply going for one collective rolling tour through our streets. We were collectively practicing living a life without the barriers normally in place that prevent us from enjoying one of humanity’s finest inventions: bicycling on a well-paved road.

Thanks to Mikeal Colville-Anderson for his article “Behavioral Changes for Urban Cycling“, on his blog Copenhagenize, which in turn got Eric from 4th Floor Distribution to write his essay on LA “Los Angeles & the ‘Mainstream Counterculture’“. If either of you gentlemen stops in town again, please make it a point to borrow any bike in the shop and enjoy yourselves on a Midnight Ridazz ride, one of our Get Sum Dim Sum runs, or on a self-guided tour of LA’s building and infrastructure.

Ed Begley Jr. will be doing a book signing for his new "Guide to Sustainable Living" this Saturday, February 6, 2010. Flying Pigeon LA will be there!

I’m heading over to see environmentalist, actor, celebrity, and author Ed Begley Jr. at a book signing at Mission Tile West in South Pasadena today, Saturday, February 6, 2010 from 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. Mission Tile West is located at 905 Mission Street, South Pasadena, CA 91030 (right next to the Mission station for the Gold Line).

Ed is making a stop in our area to promote his new book, “Guide to Sustainable Living“. Maybe the next time he writes a book, we’ll get Ed to do a stop at our shop!

Since this event is indoors, it might make a good, green, backup plan for those skipping the Eagle Rock Brewery bike ride we’re hosting today which might get canceled due to rain. To get to Ed Begley’s book signing from Flying Pigeon LA, just hop on the train at the Heritage Square station behind the Flying Pigeon LA shop, and get off at the third stop (the “Mission” station). Head toward the main thoroughfare (Mission Street) and make a quick left turn one the sidewalk. Half a block down is Mission West Tile.

I’ll be the guy with the Nihola Family Cargo bike, if you want to say “Hi!”.

The Bike Working Group's "Backbone Bikeway Network" for Central Los Angeles ca. February 2010 by Mihai Peteu.

Yesterday afternoon, KPCC’s Patt Morrison had a 20 minute segment on a map for a Backbone Bikeway Network created by the all-volunteer Bike Working Group in a segment called “A cyclers’ paradise—a private highway?“.

In Morrisons’ show, Dr. Alex Thompson (co-founder of the BikeRoWave, co-author of the Cyclists’ Bill of Rights, and PhD. in Mathematics) stated that, using the LADOT’s estimate of $28,000 per mile of Class 2 Bike Lane (taken from the current draft Bike Plan), the 200 mile Backbone Bikeway Network designed by the Bike Working Group would cost $5 million to design, plan, and paint (some of that mileage already exists).

The network designed by the Bike Working Group includes a long stretch of bike lane on North Figueroa Street all the way to Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock (connecting eventually to Pasadena). In a consultant’s report to the LADOT for the current draft Bike Plan, North Figueroa Street was recommended for a road diet – which a bike lane would achieve nicely. The LADOT turned the consultants down, and scratched the bike lane on North Figueroa Street in their drafy Bike Plan. Completing this Backbone Bikeway Network would change that, and would make North Figueroa Street very bike friendly!

Yet where will the $5 million come from to pay for this Backbone Bikeway Network?

The network can be paid for with money set aside for bicycle, pedestrian, or “clean air” uses the City gets and is prohibited from using to plug general budget holes. If a portion of the special funds the city receives for bike projects annually were pooled with money won by applying for grants from the County, State, and Federal government this Backbone Bikeway Network would be funded in no time.

Some sources of these funds and their approximate annual value:

Local Transportation Fund
.025% of Sales Tax goes to planning bicycle and pedestrian facilities
2007-2008 Total Revenue: $4,687,411

Prop C Anti-Gridlock Transit Improvement Fund
LA gets a cut of Prop C sales tax money to “improve transit service and operations, reduce traffic congestion, improve air quality, efficiently operate and improve the condition of streets and freeways utilized by public transit, and reduce foreign fuel dependence.”

The City receives funds from a 20 percent share of the revenues collected based on a per capita allocation. Funds may be used for public transit, paratransit, and repairing and maintaining streets used by public transit.

Total collected 2007-2008: $83,182,491
Total that went to projects with bike in the name: $780,000
Unallocated Balance: $579,949

Mobile Source Air Pollution Reduction Trust Fund
$4 per vehicle fee collected by the state, allocated based on population, to go to programs to reduce mobile source air pollution.
Total Revenue 2007-2008: $5,417,766

Portions of these funding sources can be pooled and spent in coordination with grant applications the City could apply for (from the County, State and Federal government) to build this $5 million Backbone Bikeway Network. The City of Long Beach has shown how effective a good bicycle grant-writing team can be – they’ve kick started a bike friendly construction boom. L.A. can do this – and we can fund a bike friendly North Figueroa Street!

This is our latest creation - a deluxe 5-Speed Flying Pigeon bicycle. Price? $749 as you see it here.

It has taken about a month, on and off, to build our latest 5-speed Flying Pigeon PB-13. You know how it goes, dremel this, re-face that. “Should we use the Schwalbe Delta Cruisers in creme, or creme with a reflective sidewall?”

Well here it is, I’d say mid-build. We’ve still got to put a nice basket on it. We’re debating a rear lock for the wheel too – AXA, Abus, or Flying Pigeon brand (we’re not sure yet). Oh yes, lights! We’ve got to figure out what sort of head light and tail light combination to install on the bike. As you see it here, the bike has as its most dominant features:

• Custom-built 28″ rear wheel with a SRAM Spectro P5 5-speed, coaster brake, hub
• Schwable Delta Cruiser HS392 tires in creme with reflective sidewalls
• Brooks B67 saddle
• Wald “Cruiser” handlebars

SRAM Spectro P5 hub with a coaster brake on our Deluxe Flying Pigeon 5-speed.

This is in addition to the massive amounts of dremel work, and the re-tapping and re-facing of the various parts of the bike with ball bearing assemblies. The headset and bottom bracket have been replaced with good quality VP (from Taiwan, VP make Cane Creek and other name-brand headsets and bottom bracket) parts. The cranks we’ve installed are 28 tooth shorties – allowing a very, very, easy time pedaling this sprite lil’ bike around.

The 5-Speed Flying Pigeon PB-13 (as you see here) will retail for $749.  Here is how we look at it: for the price of a ONE SPEED Dutch bike, you can get a FIVE SPEED Flying Pigeon. Now, the frame is not going to be as solid as the Dutch bike, but clearly there is a value in what we’re doing with our line of Deluxe Flying Pigeons.

A Brooks B67 leather saddle installed on our Deluxe Flying Pigeon 5-speed - looks nice, rides great.

With lights, a lock, and a nice basket, the price will climb a bit (but so will the utility of the bike). You can see why there is debate involved in specifying the parts on a new bike! We don’t want to keep the price high, but we do want the bike to be ready to make it’s future owner happy; we feel that baskets, and other “accessories”, can make or break a bike’s utility.

Would you like your own Deluxe Flying Pigeon? We can custom fit all sorts of gear to these bikes. You’ll get a hand-built, one-of-a-kind, city bike for less than a production bike from many other manufacturers. Prices start at $499 (single speed) and go up to $699 (five speed). Options like the Brooks saddle, and other neat stuff add some to the price of each bike, but we don’t charge retail prices for those additions.

The best way to spec. out a bike with us is via email at info@flyingpigeon-la.com

The Torker U-District, available at Flying Pigeon LA is a supreme value at $349 and a durable, comfortable, bike as well.

Late last year, we started carrying the Torker U-District. The U-district is a no-nonsense, affordable, smooth-riding steel bike made to handle the day-to-day reality of commuting on a bike. The bike raised eyebrows in the shop because as soon as we put one up in the window, it was bought and sold in a day or so. We knew this was a solid bike, with a good component setup for a $349 price tag – but the response we got from the young guys and gals picking this bike up has been amazing.

Wild eyed, with big smiles on their faces, they all seem to drop back into the shop to get some air pumped into their tires. It always feels more like a chance for them to brag about how far and how fast they ride their U-District around town.

Just about the same time we started selling U-Districts like hot cakes, BICYCLING Magazine’s October 2009 issue, on page 70, listed the U-District as their “editors pick” for low-cost Student/Commuter bikes. They called the affordable U-District “a trustworthy commuter that requires minimal maintenance.”

We can customize the Torker U-District in lots of practical ways: with colorful tire, saddle, and grip combinations for just $20 over retail; we can also install SKS Commuter fenders and an XLC Headlight/Taillight kit for $50 above retail.

Visiting Interbike this past fall in Las Vegas, there was a lot of stuff that we knew we’d never stock at our shop. Most of the stuff we saw at the show was the sort of high priced, disposable, one-trick pony, carbon fiber, bike gear that only recreational or sports bike riders are interested in. There is nothing wrong with this stuff, it just has never been what our shop is about.

The Graduate is a 5-speed version of the Torker - all grown up and ready to rumble in the mean streets of LA.

Then, we saw the Torker Gradaute. By the time Interbike started we’d been doing a brisk business with the U-District but had missed a few sales to people that lived in hilly parts of L.A. or need to go through hilly areas and didn’t see it happening on a single-speed bike (no matter how affordable and solid that bike was). The Graduate is the machine these folks were looking for – it is low-maintenance and durable like the U-District, but it has 5 gears and is equipped with drum brakes (like on a motorcycle) both front and rear. The Graduate also comes standard with a solid set of fenders (perfect for this time of year), and 32mm wide Tioga tires which provide a little bit more cushion as well as traction on loose or sandy pavement.

The Graduate is like the U-district, but all grown up with multiple speeds and brakes that work well in dry or wet weather. The Graduate is marked up $150 more than the U-district, but the increase in price is well earned. One of my favorite things to show people is the sidekick a drum brake can take and still maintain its function. Try that with your high-end hydraulic disc brakes! If you’ve every slammed your bike onto a bus rack in a rush (and brought it down with a thump when your bus ride was over), nonchalantly clanged it into the rack on the back of a car, or had your bike fall to the ground when leaned against something you know how annoying it is to check on your ride to see if, golly, is everything okay? Then find out that, no, everything is not okay. “That’ll be $60 to fix,” says the local bike mechanic. Not with the Graduate!

The Graduate is designed to take that worry away. A solid steel frame, with better components than other bikes in this price range, the bike is made to handle the abuse of day-to-day solo riding. It comes ready for thorns, and rain, and dust. It also comes ready for those quiet night-time descents down the back of a Los Angeles hill – city lights twinkling, honeyed scented flowers in the late evening bloom, down to the shop to pick up some milk and eggs. The Graduate is ready for the gradual trip back up the hill, clicking into the easy gear and staying seated the whole way up the hill back, home at last.

Come on down and give these bikes a ride – they are available in small sizes (44cm) for you under 5-footers out there, all the way up to big sizes (56cm) for the 6′ plus folks roaming around looking for a trusty two-wheeled steed. The Graduate retails for $499.

Flying Pigeon LA is located at 3714 N. Figueroa St. in Los Angeles, CA 90065. We’re usually open Wednesday to Friday from 12 noon to 8 pm (or later) and on Saturday and Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm. Our phone number is 213-909-8986 and our email address is info@flyingpigeon-la.com We have acquired a fully complement of both the Graduate and the U-district – but if you’re worried about what sizes we have in stock, give us a call before driving 40 miles to see us!