Green Drinks are so Bike

Sometime last year a friend from the USC geography department mentioned a wacky event called Green Drinks, recently written about in the LA times Calendar, to me. I was pretty busy at the time but in late May of this year my bike advocacy efforts had reached an impasse and I decided it might be a good idea to go check out this Green Drinks thing and explore promoting bicycling there.

LA Green Drinks is a twice monthly gathering of people concerned about environmental issues. The westside meeting happens on the first Thursday of every month at Duke’s Hideaway (Culver City Hotel) in Culver City at 7pm. On the third Thursday we gather at in Silverlake at the Mixville Bar (back patio of the Edendale Grill) at 7pm. Green Drinks as a concept started in 1989 in London but the LA chapter was founded last year by the charismatic Barent Roth, a Green industrial designer who moved here from Philly and discovered that there was no LA chapter. Basically, we hang out, drink, and and share our Green ideas with one another.

Now if there’s a good idea to be had typically more than one person will have it, and on my first visit to Green Drinks I discovered that Anna Cummins, fellow WestsideBikeside poster, had the same idea as me. Then again, it’s only natural to think, that if you want to promote biking you should do it to a receptive crowd. That’s the genius of Green Drinks – it provides an opportunity to promote green causes to people who share similar values, and in a low key way. It also offers an opportunity to benefit from other Green Drinkers contacts. For example, Green Drinkers continue to provide valuable contacts for Roll With It.

Last night was a revelation in the power and value of drinking (yourself silly) green. For the last few months Zan Dubin Scott has been attending Green Drinks. Two meetings ago it was revealed that sometimes she writes for the LA Times, and was taking notes on Green Drinks for an article. The much anticipated article appeared yesterday in the LA Times here. Two Westsidebike activists, Zack Beatty and me, were quoted in the piece. Mention of SMCM, Roll With It, or any other Westside bike acitivities in the LA Times is a giant step forward for westside biking.

Since Anna and I started attending Green Drinks the ranks of the green drinkers have become swollen with bikers, so much so that after Green Drinks last night a crew of bikers headed a few miles west to a concert by biker band Triple Chicken Foot. And of course bikers aren’t just promoting bikes at Green Drinks and ignoring the other causes – Anna and Barent are working together on a project at Sustainable Works now. Come to the next West LA Green Drinks in December, and experience the new bike friendly face of Westside environmentalism. I gurantee you’ll have a good time.

Thanks Zan!

Alex T