I've spent the last week and a half in Southern California, returning to the regional lifestyle I led down here for four years. Last Wednesday, I went in my mom's garage and dusted the cobwebs off my folding bike, the one I named the Loose Goose when I bought it in 2008, and rode it down the hill to the San Juan train station.
On clear days, the cloudscapes outside the train window reach all the way to the mountains at San Bernardino.
When I arrived in Los Angeles, I went down to the subway platform with the Loose Goose, which I'd been advised not to ride due to a recalled part. A young Latino guy asked me about the folding bike, and we made small talk about bikes for a while. He said he had a bike, but it was "gangster" (not a chopper, not a cruiser, I'm not totally sure what he meant). I asked him if he was going to CicLAvia on Sunday. He hadn't heard about it, and speculated that there'd be a lot of "skinny" bikes there (I think he meant either fixies or just road bikes). Then we got on the Purple Line.
I walked up Western from Wilshire to Santa Monica to leave my bike at a shop where they could replace the recalled component. On the way, I saw lots of people on bikes. No women, mostly Latinos and Asian men. A Salvadoreño restaurant had a sign in the window that said, "Tenemos paches," which means they had patch kits to repair busted tires. The shop where I left my bike had a Korean owner and Latino mechanics. I asked the proprietor if he was going to CicLAvia, and he said no, but that he'd heard people talking about it.
I hopped on the 4 down Santa Monica Boulevard and passed a few more bike shops. There are a lot of people biking in central LA. How many of these cyclists would make it to CicLAvia? When the bus passed through Silver Lake, I saw a new green triangle park with many bike racks and chairs, echoing the public space innovations of Janette Sadik-Khan in New York, and far fewer bicyclists than I'd seen further west.
I went to Grand Central Market and got a sandía, then walked over to Broadway and Seventh and found that Clifton's Cafeteria was closed. Permanently? The signs out front were sort of ambiguous. I'll feel sad if they get rid of the Brookdale décor.
Then I walked along Pershing Square to the public library. I went up and sat in the funny suspended glass hall on the top floor, where you can hover over the newer wing and watch everybody.
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Wait, a Salvadoreño restaurant was selling patch kits? Really? That's crazy. Nice observational post. I like the hovering glass hall too...
ReplyDeleteI mean, "paches" is probably patch kits, right? I remember hearing people calling them that at the worker center at CARECEN. Maybe I should go back and check to be sure.
DeleteHi Adonia, I know this is a really old post but I am a new follower of your blog and found this particular piece very interesting for the following reasons. I am an LA native who grew up in an immigrant community.
ReplyDeleteI picked this particular post because I found the response by people you encountered to CicLAvia consistent with what I have observed and have heard from people in my community. Bike commuters and bike enthusiasts from marginalized communities will most often not participate in CicLAvia. There are of course bike crews that will. One of the biggest complaints I have heard so far is that CicLAvia seems aimed at a certain type. I have read a few of your posts so I know that you are well aware of external perceptions on bike culture. I also know you are invested in issues of social justice.
I believe that CicLAvia brought a lot of enthusiasm from different sectors of society but that that enthusiasm can and will wane as time goes by without the opening of spaces and incorporation of sectors of society that continue to be marginalized by society. When I’ve inquired about the lack of participation in CicLAvia people have voiced feeling uncomfortable and not especially welcomed even when they have tried to participate in “community meetings” to organize for CicLAvia.
I recently attended a community meeting, it was not aimed or sponsored by CicLAvia but somehow I think there might be something to learn from it and something that speaks to this “un-comfortableness”. The meeting was called by a non-profit, urban planners, developers, and architects in an effort to gather, “community in-put” in the redevelopment of an existing but inadequate affordable housing complex. The land in discussion happens to be located across the way from USC and next to a metro stop.
The “community in-put” meeting was attended by a mixed batch of existing tenants and people who have participated in other events and projects put together by the nonprofit. This second group of individuals will not live in the redeveloped site. Amongst those who will be eligible to apply for the new housing (not guaranteed housing) was an older African American man who has lived in the area for over 35 years and a civil rights activist who has lived in the area all of her life. The handful of other participants who made their way to this meeting were over the age of 40 with a few college students mixed in.
What I found most interesting about this meeting was how the urban planners, developers, architects, and the non-profit staff pushed a TOD (transit oriented development). To make a long story short after a series of rushed and inadequately prepared exercises I felt we had somehow been transported back to grade school.
There were wrong answers to which demeanors would alert us to and then there were right answers to which please voices would signal to.
In a nutshell here is what the non-profit, urban planers, and architects were looking to get the community to say they wanted – TOD – transit oriented development. What struck me the most was how the so called “community in-put” meeting had nothing to do with the community but more to do with buzz words, urban planning trends, and a rush to be the cool kid in a city rapidly transforming infrastructure without listening to those who would be most affected.
Back to your post and why I mention this particular incident. I feel that so much of what is happening in the city and what happens behind CicLAvia is sometimes so separated from those that have kept this city breathing and beating. I have heard of several similar meetings lead by CicLAvia representatives in our neighborhoods where those leading meetings are mostly interested in one particular answer.
I know you are interested in bike justice issues and I wonder what your thoughts might be on how to break this cycle especially with such a wonderful idea as CicLAvia... Thanks for your time. I look forward to reading more.
I'd love to talk with you more about this, feel free to email me at adonia at urbanadonia dot com. I just attended a community meeting last night in the city where I live now and witnessed the same process: a bike/ped group wants to go in, tell existing community groups what they need for better streets, and get their rubberstamp on it. I happen to agree with the aims of the bike/ped group, but it struck me that for them community-building was a side effect of their main goal, getting new infrastructure in place. What about coming to a consensus about what makes a good street by working with the community? All over the U.S. there's a lot of this type of stuff happening, getting some POC faces to represent somebody else's vision, rather than working with neighborhood residents to develop something that everybody agrees on. I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed!
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