Pulitzer Prize Winner Ponders Pigeons

Jonathan Gold visits Flying Pigeon LA on Friday, April 17, 2009.

Jonathan Gold, Pulitzer-prize winning food critic and newsman, stopped by Flying Pigeon LA on April 17, 2009 to find out what the story was behind our Get Sum Dim Sum Rides and Flying Pigeon bicycles. We use his columns about dim sum restaurants as a crib sheet for our rides, so this was a pretty exciting visit.

From the article he wrote about us:

“There has never been a city so jaded about personal transportation as Los Angeles, a place where Lamborghinis clot valet stands, customized Harleys are as common as Camrys, and the streets thrum with more ’64 Impalas — the cars that bounce in Dr. Dre videos — than they probably did when LBJ was president. Porsche Carreras, exotic supercars in the rest of the country, are sometimes referred to as Beverly Hills Fords.

But a Flying Pigeon, the iconic Mao-era bicycle famous from photographs of 1970s Beijing, can still turn heads. And there have been circus parades that attract less attention than the flock of 40 heavy, single-speed Flying Pigeons, which slowly makes its way from Highland Park to Alhambra on one of the monthly Sunday morning dim sum expeditions organized by Josef and Adam Bray-Ali, the brothers who own the Flying Pigeon bike shop on North Figueroa.”
-Jonathan Gold, “LA People 2009: Spokesmen — Bicycle Oven’s Josef and Adam Bray-Ali“, LA Weekly, April 20, 2009

During the course of the interview we got a few good tips for our May dim sum ride, and hopefully we’ll have Mr. Gold along with us for the ride!

• LA People 2009: Spokesmen — Bicycle Oven’s Josef and Adam Bray-Ali [laweekly.com]