Hey everybody, we’re moving our shop this week from its current location to a storefront right next to Antigua Cultural Coffee House in Cypress Park – just 3 blocks south west of our current location.

Any chance you can lend a hand on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week?

Our new address is 3404 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90065.

We are going to be closed for business on Wednesday, May 23, 2012 to Friday, May 25, 2012, with a partially operational shop open on Saturday and Sunday of this week.

This is big news, but not the reason I am writing this post. We need some help! We are going to move everything down the street using our hands, bikes, pedicab, and a pick up truck. “We” in this case equals Josef, his 4 year old daughter, and Car.

Any chance you can lend a hand on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week? If so, please contact Josef at ubrayj02@gmail.com – or better yet, show up at Antigua Coffee House on Tuesday or Wednesday after 10 a.m. and help us pack some stuff up and move it!

Bike shop bike move? #YOLO, dawg.

Father & Son Fixies at Buster’s

My son Jack is so deeply immersed in law school now that he needs to breathe through a snorkel, but the semester finally came to an end, and he had a couple of weeks of free time before starting his summer internship, or externship, or whatever the hell it is when they make you work for brownie points but no pay to gain experience. So, after recovering sufficiently from the obligatory round of post-term parties, he called me up and accepted a previous invitation to come along on a Tuesday ride to South Pasadena–which of course took us through the heart of Flying Pigeon LA territory.

We took it easy–he pointed out he’d been sitting in an office twelve hours a day for most of the last few weeks–and headed out from Hollywood about 9:30 yesterday morning.

The first part of our route took us through East Hollywood and part of Silverlake, worthy ‘hoods both but both also quite familiar to the lad, but once we heaved over the little hill between Silverlake and the river and neared NELA, the city became more interesting–and I began to see my familiar route with the eyes of someone unfamiliar with the neighborhoods.

I took the kid along the LA River path from Fletcher to Riverside, prompting numerous stops so he could take pictures with his iPhone, rolling quietly by other riders and neighborhood flaneurs of all ages out enjoying a clear and gentle morning. The riverbed was full of reeds, trees, and birds (and schoolchildren on an outing), and the shaded pocket parks attracted residents of all ages to their benches and lawns. I admit I usually zip down that stretch too fast, simply because I can, but this was a really nice change in pace that I thank my son for.

Once off the path we rolled up Figueroa, right past the Pigeon (unfortunately closed on Tuesdays), onto York, across the bridge and onto South Pasadena’s new bike lanes. Then came narrow Hawthorne Street by the Gold Line tracks, with its sweet little two-story clapboard houses in blues and soft greens, and its porches and tiny yards, which brought us to Buster’s Coffee, our destination for the day.

At Buster’s we met Chuck Schmidt of Vélo Rétro, keeper of bike lore extraordinaire, with a profound knowledge of the history of cycling, bike racing, and Northeast Los Angeles. He also keeps the Rose Bowl Vintage Ride going, as well as selling bike-themed T-shirts, copies of vintage bike catalogues, and reproductions of classic Italian racing musettes (made for him by us at Bicycle Fixation). Jack had come on the vintage ride once, but this was the first time he and Chuck had gotten to talk for any great length of time. Chuck gave him a long and amusing overview of the area’s history, from its beginnings as a resort for East Coast industrialists in the late 1800s, through the glory days of rail when South Pasadena could boast an elegant Santa Fe Railroad station, on to the time when famed Route 66 passed through for a while before being re-routed, illustrated with descriptions of some of his own rides out to Claremont or up Mt. Baldy. All helped along by some of Buster’s fine coffee (now sourced from Hel-Mel’s Cafecito Orgánico) and equally fine breadstuffs, either house-made or obtained straight outta Homeboy Industries downtown, served up by Buster’s friendly baristas.

Eventually, though, we had to leave; I had business meetings Downtown, and Jack had friends waiting for calls, so we saddled up and headed home. I toured Jack around the inexpressibly tranquil tree-shaded streets of South Pasadena, then took him through Highland Park again, detouring first along Monte Vista with its colorful storefronts, and then down Marmion Way alongside the Gold Line through Cypress Park and Lincoln Heights till we got to the river at the North Broadway bridge. Once again, I saw my usual route at a slower pace, and realized it was even nicer than I had always thought, a real community with homes and businesses of deeply individual characters that have both grown out of and shaped their neighborhoods’ personalities.

At Chinatown the kid and I parted ways. NELA had done its part to give us a happy day together, so I must say, Thank you, Northeast Los Angeles!

In this video: a used Batavus CS ($1,100 new – now $600); New Amsterdam Daily Urban ($499); Beater Bikes (from $299); Pashley; Bobbin; and a bunch of other stuff.

I also mentioned in the video that we are moving. We are! We are moving our shop to 3402 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90065, right next to the excellent Antigua Cultural Coffee House. We are also trying to complete a warehouse/retail/repair space to help double our square footage and start selling the low end “fixies” all the kids are going crazy for these days.

Any questions? info@flyingpigeon-la.com

p.s. If you have a friend in the LA area who is really good at building wheels, have her (or him) get in touch with us. Our current wheel builder just moved on to bigger and better things and we could use with an extra set of skilled hands.

LADOT is noncommital about what can be done there—except to say that since the project was approved before the current bike plan, bike lanes can’t be built into it until “sometime after”—to quote Tim Fremaux, “The only way to get bike lanes on Hyperion is to road diet it, and we can’t do that until the bridge project is done and some time after that”—but I want to raise the issue again, since everything in LA seems to take a long time. Especially if it’s for cycling. something&mdsh; a well-marked transition lane and standard “Watch for Bicyclists” signs such as you see on the Pasadena Avenue approach to the Broadway bridge near Chinatown—something at least is needed here.

Another issue is the choke point at the Waverly bridge, which you see in the photo below.

There are currently sharrows marking a bike route along Fountain from West Hollywood to Vermont. I have often suggested that the bike route should be continued along Fountain into Silverlake (where the street changes its name to Hyperion), and thence across the bridge into Atwater. This would not only connect to a road diet proposed for Rowena; it would also give a nice connecting endpoint to the lanes already in place on Myra, leading to King Middle School, as well as the long-established bike lanes on Sunset. In other words, a the beginning of a real bikeway network.

By backtracking from the bridge at the Atwater end, you can even get on the Los Angeles River bicycle path. (The bridge project may in fact improve river access somewhat, according to Fremaux.)

Getting any kind of bicycle facility through the Waverly underpass will be difficult–or would have been, under the old rules, which forbade sharrows except where there is curbside parking. (The underpass cannot be widened under the terms of the current proposal.)

But things have changed since I last badgered LADOT about this very useful snippet of bikeway. The current California Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) now states:

02a The Shared Lane Marking may be placed on roadways that have a speed limit above 35 mph, where there is bicycle travel and there is no marked bicycle lane or shared-use path and the right-hand traffic lane is too narrow to allow automobiles to safely pass bicyclists.

And:

05 If used on a street without on-street parking that has an outside travel lane that is less than 14 feet wide, the centers of the Shared Lane Markings should be at least 4 feet from the face of the curb, or from the edge of the pavement where there is no curb.

Which means that we can ask for a sharrowed bike route if nothing else, and expect to get it. No traffic lanes taken, so no renegotiation of set-in-stone permits and contracts required. Bikes will, after all, be allowed to share the road on the new bridge as they are on all other streets and roads in the US and most of the world. And motorists will simply be reminded of a current and longstanding legal obligation and responsibility that they all too often ignore.

Meet at the NELA bike-industrial complex located at 3404 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.

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.

This month we’re going on a super secret music tour through North East Los Angeles to find Homesick Elephant, Artichoke, and Dzian!.

We will also head to our new shop location at 3402 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90065 right next door to Antigua Cultural Coffee House in Cypress Park, for a sneak peak at our new home and to check out the work of Daniel Wader.

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

The bike market began to shrink as automobiles had roads and rules paved to make them a cheap option for personal transport in the mid-20th Century. British manufacturing took several large hits throughout the late 20th century, leaving only a few bike manufacturers alive in the 21st.

We are proud to sell bikes and accessories from what remains of this manufacturing tradition: Pashley bicycles, Brompton folding bikes, and Brooks saddles and bags.

You can see what business was like at Raleigh in this recently digitized 1940 film “How a Bicycle is Made” hosted on the British Council Film’s website:

The era of huge vertically integrated manufacturers may be over, but British made bicycles have shown the virtues of this slimmer profile. Take a look at these films about Pashley bicycles and Brompton folding bikes:

A short documentary about Pashley:

A short documentary about Brompton:

We would be remiss to not include our favorite saddle manufacturer, Brooks of England:

If you’d like to see, or test ride, a Pashley, Brompton, or a Brooks (these saddles are equipped on many bikes in our shop) – stop by our shop some time!

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

It is very easy to let the callous practice of American highway engineering dominate our minds when we want to advocate for safer, more economically productive, streets in Los Angeles.

From the My Figueroa project, the Riverside Drive bridge reconstruction, to the bike lanes on Cypress Park and Avenue 28 – the modest gains we’ve made in recent years still have an entrenched culture and practice of road building to overcome.

Our surface streets are worth more than a car-only sewer pipe. We’ll make more money per acre of public infrastructure off them if they are friendly to bikes, buses, and pedestrians. We’ll be happier people if they are quiet and safe. Our local government was founded to provide “the good life” to all citizens – let’s not settle for what is being pushed upon us by the technocrats in City Hall and Sacramento.

But of course that would entail crossing the York Boulevard bridge over the Pasadena Freeway and the Arroyo. That bridge, as you can see in the photo below, is considerably narrower than the rest of York Boulevard:

It was, after all, originally built to handle primarily tram traffic—bits of track are still visible through breaks in the asphalt—and so could be narrow and still have high capacity. (The Brooklyn Bridge carried two and a half times as many people in 1907 when it ran primarily trolleys than it does today serving cars.) I thought at first the only answer there would be sharrows, given that the bridge gets pretty busy during rush hour.

But yesterday I looked again, and thought, Why not a road diet?

It could work—if you rethink the way you use the lanes just a little bit.

In the usual road diet, you make room for bike lanes and sidewalks by turning a four-lane road into a three-lane road, with the center lane being a continuous left-turn channel. This removes cars waiting to turn left into side streets or driveways from the traffic flow, greatly reducing accidents and often actually improving automobile throughput, since the smoother, albeit slower, traffic doesn’t jam up any more.

Now, no one who isn’t suicidal is going to turn left on the bridge, so you’d think a road diet makes no sense at all there.

But: What if the center lane were a reversing traffic lane instead of a left-turn lane?

After all, rush-hour traffic goes one way in the morning, and the other way after work. So one of those lanes is barely in use even at peak hour!

More famous bridges use reversing lanes all the time. You do have in invest in a pair of signal bridges showing people which way is which at any given time, but the technology is well-tested and in wide use, and on a small narrow bridge such as York shouldn’t be too expensive. Lane markers with embedded lamps that change color in synch with the traffic direction would add to user-friendliness.

That would leave plenty of room for real bike lanes, which would in turn help bring about real interjurisdictional connectivity between the two cities. Given that there’s already a good deal of bike use in that particular corner of the county, a little extra acommodation would likely boost ridership enough to reduce car traffic on the bridge, on York Boulevard north of the bridge, and throughout South Pasadena. Replacing the cars that zoom past local shops and wear out local roads, with cyclists—who don’t lay the burden of frequent road repairs onto municipalities and who have been shown to be far more likley than motorists to stop at local merchants and support the economies they commute through—would benefit everybody. And be well worth the cost of a couple of signal bridges and some stripes.

Bike Corral in downtown Redondo Beach

I rode from Bicycle Fixation HQ in the Miracle Mile (around LACMA), all the way down Crenshaw Boulevard to past PCH, up into Rolling Hills Estates for a modest workout, down to the beachside bikepath, and thence home (with a lunch stop of course) for a total of fifty miles…with some hills.

I mention all this because you still hear people say that bikes “just arent’t practical” for American cities because of the distances involved.

Well, I say crap. Because I range over half the county on my bike, week after week, month after month, without spandex, and riding a 45-year-old retired Italian racing bike fitted out with fenders, rack, and a fixed-gear. Let’s set the record straight:

1. I am a skinny old man with thick glasses.
   
2. I have never been a racer—bike, foot, or otherwise. In fact, although I am “strong” in comparison to a typically self-debilitated American of today, compared to a real athlete, even the most anonymous domestique for any unknown pro team, I am just scenery.
   
3. I never wear racing kit, donning instead my own brand of dressy gabardine knickers, and wool knit T-shirts and sweaters, which look quite elegant off the bike. And regular shoes.

It’s just not that hard! As aficionados of the Pigeon know well, you don’t need a racing bike or sausage casings repurposed as bike clothing to ride around the city, not for long distances such as I enjoy, nor for the shorter ones most urban utility riders would ride if they did ride. A glance at some of the photos I took at the last CicLAvia can prove that to you.

As can some of the the sights I encountered on my Sunday jaunt, which included:

• A peloton of paraplegics on handcycles, riding the beachside path.
  
• The entire male portion of an Orthodox Jewish family—portly, long-bearded paterfamilias and a string of rambunctious kids—riding along the Ballona Creek bike path.
  
• The bike corral in the photo above, right in the middle of Redondo Beach’s bistro and coffeehouse district off the beach, and meant for locals (since the spandex crowd bans those heavy bike locks from their kit).
  
• The trouble I had finding bike parking when I stopped for lunch in Playa del Rey—not because there wasn’t any, but because the numerous bike racks were already occupied.

After all, even in the US, many car trips–over 40%!–are less than two miles long. Even if you can barely manage to wobble along at 10mph, two miles will take you only twelve minutes. And anybody, on any bike, if they can move at all, can achieve that speed.

So give it a try. It’s cheap, it’s fun, it’s good for your physical and mental health…and it’s easy. And any bike will do. Bring your old one in to the Pigeon for a tune-up, and get going. Or treat yourself to a new one, fancy if you like, cheap if you prefer. The Pigeon’s got them all.

You don’t have to join the Navy to see the world. Just get on a bike and ride!

I myself rode from the Miracle Mile to the South LA portal to start, and then rode to Boyle Heights, back to Olvera Street, back to the 4th Street bridge (my favorite part of the route), then finally down to Hel-Mel, taking pictures on the way:

In fact, as I was leaving the bridge after my fourth traverse of it, I had the great fortune to encounter Pigeonmaster Josef on his mighty bakfiets, along with Jim from Riverside who had taken Metrolink out for the occasion, so I turned around and hung with them for a while…and the many Friends of Josef who pulled over to chat upon seeing him and his rig.

Pigeon Pal Jim wasn’t the only rider to have come from somewhat far: I saw a large group wearing T-shirts indicating that they had come out from Tucson just to ride CicLAvia!

Now, we have a long way to go before we can catch up to Bogotá, Colombia, where ciclovías originated forty years ago, and where they close seventy-five miles of street every Sunday! Or even Mexico City, which has held weekly ciclovías for a good five years. But it is indisputable now that Los Angeles loves CicLAvia, and that it will continue and grow.

In fact, there are plans for CicLAvias in Santa Monica, the Harbor area of South LA, out in Pomona, and two locations in the Valley.

Nothing but good can come of this. Not only did participant after participant note that they traversed the route as fast on their bicycles as they do in cars, they also noted that they had never before really seen how beautiful the streets of Los Angeles can be! And many businesses have had their best days ever during CicLAvias past.

Indeed, we may be safe in saying: LA, welcome to the world of carfree happiness!

And: Thank you, CicLAvia!