Bikeside LA

This past Saturday, the city of Long Beach took a ground breaking step towards making their downtown area safer for cyclists. While not perfect, their protected bike lane design is considerably safer than most options seen in Southern California thus far.

Evolution calls for better bike lanes Call them what you want: Cycle Tracks, Protected Bike Lanes, Bike Paths. Bottom line is, most people won’t start riding until you take cars out of the equation. Why? Because even well-intentioned people do stupid or careless sh**, and when people do stupid or careless sh** while in a [...]

Ciclovia(s) CicLAvia was even more amazing than last year, with folks coming from all over to enjoy the freedom of exploring the city car-free.  Seems like even Sandy Banks of the LA Times had a blast.  Restaurants could barely keep up with demand, that’s about as busy as I’ve ever seen MacArthur park and Little [...]

Santa Monica Spoke is leaving the SM Pier (Ocean and Colorado) at 8:30am.  Slow pace. (SM Spoke blog, Facebook event page) BikeRoWave is leaving Mar Vista at 9:30am sharp – we really mean 9:30! 12-15mph pace.  (Blog, Facebook event) There is also a UCLA group led by E3 (Economy, Ecology, Equity) leaving the Ackerman Bus [...]

Now that it looks like the municipal Anti-Cyclist Harassment ordinance will pass, it’s imperative that you do your best to bring the accountable parties to justice.  This means reporting your incident to either the nearest police department or quickly submitting it to LA BikeMap.

After 7 long years in Los Angeles, I can’t say that I have ever been fully satisfied with any neighborhood I’ve lived in.  A few neighborhood gems peppered in between strip malls and swaths of concrete amount to a frustrating experience when trying to get around.  People always bring up the ethnic diversity and plentiful [...]

On Monday night, Santa Monica City Council will discuss what to do with this arcane law.  Unfortunately, bicycle registration has often been used by police departments in Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Long Beach as a means to harass and antagonize cyclists instead of curbing theft.

A very spirited Charlie Gandy stepped up to the microphone on the evening of January 5th to speak about the process that Long Beach is undergoing on its way to becoming the most bike-friendly city in America.  A few writeups of this already exist, so I figured I’d focus on the attitude necessary to push [...]

The rain will return this Sunday, so instead of getting stuck on that slow ass bus, you might as well get ready to ride. On my rainy commute home one afternoon last year, I had a nice old lady pull up next to me once and offer me a ride. I smiled and respectfully declined [...]

Cathy Jean Jones, 41, of Malibu, struck 28-year old Britanny Norton on the evening of February 1st in a crosswalk on Main Street in Santa Monica, leaving her with severe head trauma, multiple facial fractures, and broken ribs.  Cathy Jones’ van was allegedly traveling at 40mph at the time (the speed limit on Main St [...]