Pasadena CicLAvia 5/31/2015, Colorado Old Town

Partially in celebration of the upcoming CicLAvia next week and partially because I finally got them developed (the delay of film! Sometimes it's like leaving little presents around for your future self.) here's a  few more photos from the Pasadena CicLAvia at the end of May as shot with my medium format TLR Yashica Mat. These were all shot along Colorado in the Old Town area.

People of Ciclavia in Pasadena, Part 1, May 31 2015

More people of Ciclavia, this time in Pasadena! All were shot with my Yashica Mat 124G on Lomography 100 speed 120 film.

 

I love how happy people are at Ciclavia! And how many groups of people seem to be enjoying themselves in general while visiting new places and getting exercise....just by closing down a relatively small number of miles of streets! How does this not happen weekly or monthly yet?!?!!

Thank you to everyone who let me shoot your photo!

10 on 10, May 2015 video alternative

Similar to last month's 10 on 10, I created a series of short videos vs. photos. I kept not making the videos 10 seconds long though, so it's a little imperfect in that respect & also always being a little more approximate in terms of once an hour... that's an idea I might never achieve, but I'm ok with that.

Studio City Farmers Market : flying rat : hummingbird : bike maintenance :  Rotary club of Sherman Oaks Arts & Crafts fair : dinosaur house : jacaranda in bloom : biking : wreck this journal "float this page": scanning negatives

Riding the Route - Ciclavia the Valley 3/22/15

Another batch from last week's Ciclavia in the Valley. These are from my 35mm Holga and are mostly just bits of people biking along the route from Lankershim down to Ventura and Coldwater! It's been weird seeing these same streets post Ciclavia this week... Sometimes pretty empty. Sometimes just filled with traffic, speeding cars and people running red lights. Other times, just annoying when trying to deal with non-responsive & sometimes oddly timed lights, especially from a bicyclist's perspective. I enjoyed them better closed to cars....

Oddly enough, the next Ciclavia route for Pasadena was announced this week. On one hand, it's nice to have it in in a new location. On the other, the route is a bit short (this seems to be the theme as the Ciclavias have become more frequent :/ ) and generally reflects the same streets that are closed down for a variety of events in Pasadena including the Rose Parade and the Make Music Pasadena Festival (which is the week after Ciclavia).

And secondly oddly enough, while the Valley Ciclavia was right outside of my home, this next Pasadena Ciclavia is right outside of my work. Ciclavia's stalking my LIFE!! If only those same places would become permanent Open Streets... or at least get some protected bike lanes? Each Ciclavia proves to me, once again, that if you create safe places for people to move around actively in Los Angeles, they come!

 Jerry's & Pinz bowling on Ventura

I enjoy how often random people talk to each other at moments like this at Ciclavia. That kinda of friendliness generally isn't seen while in cars...

I bike this intersection nearly every day... and many days the cars just blow straight through the red lights, (yes, straight, not even a left turn!) It's so weird to have actually seen what it could be like without the dangers of cars in the same spaces...

 NoHo hub near Red Line Station

So many dogs love Ciclavia too!!!!!

Ciclavia 10/5/14 - Diana cityspots

A continuation of these photos from the Ciclavia on 10/5/14 through the downtown LA area and over to Boyle Heights and a perfect demonstration of why I love Ciclavia: exploring new parts of LA and being able to stop in the middle of the street to shoot photos without getting run over.

I looked at this entire roll and thought ".. and that's why I love the Diana 120 and film."

these are all over small clothing shops in downtown LA and other area and they are creepy/weird to me, but I'm so drawn to them...

Concrete River Biking

This past weekend I decided I wanted to go out on a 15 mile bike ride on my road bike. I knew I'd be biking 5ish miles the same day on my hybrid, so that seemed reasonable considering I'm still dealing with a healing knee. So we went out yesterday afternoon on a pretty much exactly 15 mile ride (without even mapping/using any measuring devices while riding and making it up as we went) that went through the Toluca Lake residential area to the bike lane that follows along Forest Lawn past the cemeteries and around Griffith park until you can hop on the LA River bike lane along the 134 approaching Glendale. "That's so exciting" you think sarcastically, "tell me more".

OK!

Since I've lived nearby, for quite a few years I've enjoyed the Halloween decor of Toluca Lake. The Lake (yes, there's a real lake, but not for the commanman like myself.... we may only peer through the plant covered fence of the golf course to gaze at the water) is surrounded by expensive homes and many people that are involved in entertainment to some degree. Some years the residents seem to either encourage each other, have elaborate parties that  must include crazy decor (one year missing vulture signs started appearing around the neighborhood after a large, extravagant party in one of the ginormous houses) or just like showing off and as a result, things can get kinda insane sometimes (like the house that literally has a giant pirate ship like thing that is constructed in their front yard every year!) Anyway, this just makes for exciting and amusing bike rides in the area at this time of the year since you can easily stop and look at stuff. AND SO OUR RIDE BEGINS!

This house had probably 20 of these skeletons in the front yard with various similar signs and themes... 

Sometimes simple works best and contrast brings it's own experience to the situation (much like the cute little girl I saw running around with a fake plastic bloody leg stump in the store this weekend)

 FINALLY! For so many years I've wondering how to get onto this path because it's kinda hidden and despite living near the LA river, I have to bike about 5 miles along the LA river in an indirect way before getting to an entrance to this path. Hopefully one day LA will get their heads out of their asses and finally make a continuous path across the valley and connecting with surrounding cities. It would be... novel.

on one side of the path...yay! nature!

...and in typical LA fashion, a freeway on the other side.

so many birds! There's at least 5 different species here alone...

LA is so often a reminder to just kinda pretend a bunch of stuff doesn't exist if you ever want to enjoy anything, mostly due to people.

 I wish I knew this bike's story..

I was both disappointed and impressed by the bike lane along Forest Lawn. I noticed these small loops in the street to detect bikes at the intersections. There were still giant ones for the cars, but the bike lane was *gasp* designed to detect bikes!!! 

On the other hand, the bike lane was in pretty terrible condition in a few place, which made me thankful that there wasn't much car traffic. In one area going east around a curve, the lane nearly disappears and causes the bikes to suddenly have to move into the car lane. Going west, there's some places where the asphalt is in terrible condition with cracks and extreme unevenness that would be ok for a car, but can easily mean a tumble to the ground on a bike. There were also a few moments that left me feeling like "how the fuck am I supposed to move over there from here?!?!"

Anyway despite my complaints, it was still a nice ride and I could easily see going further down the LA river path at some point...yay for road bikes and strong legs that make traveling marathon like distances something that leaves you feeling somewhat... normal.

Ciclavia 10/5/14 Diana-y 1111

OK! THESE ARE PHOTOS. FROM ciclavia. ON October 5 of year 2014 CE as shot BY A CHEAP toy CAMERA that CONSUMES FILM, of the MEDIUM format OR 120, called the DIANA. IT is very LOVELY and DELICATE, and I DO Not LIKE TO admit it BUT, HOWEVER, CONtra I ENJOY shooting WITH IT much better than the HOLGA. FOR THIS set, Instead of the BEGINNING of our TRIP, the END is where I BEGIN.

sekib

campmates, bikemates - Burning Man 2014

Yesterday I went out for my first bike ride since getting back to LA. And as usual, it's a mindfuck. The huge number of cars and lack of other bicyclists slams me with a feeling of foreigness. My favorite time to bike is first thing in the morning, partially because of the weather, the quietness, the birds, the light & photo opportunities, but also the emptiness of the streets. Some mornings on my way to the farmers market, I actually have Ventura Blvd. to myself. I suppose that was one of my mistakes yesterday in that I went out in the afternoon, to find streets filled with cars. I felt distant and removed from the people and yet more fully integrated with my surroundings at the same time. There's paved streets, semi-shaded places, more moderate temperatures and no dust storms, yet I am biking alone.  I like having time alone, but I enjoy having more people around me to casually interact with, especially when biking. During the school year if I go to work at a certain time, I always know I'm going to at least say hi to a woman & her kids while they're walking to school. When we're stuck at a light, we chat a bit more. Those are just the squishy aspects... my rambling on the actual logical parts of biking could go on for a while.... Sigh.

a bike cannot smile

..but a bike can make me smile!

A few weeks ago I rode a road bike for the first time! We were at Open Roads bicycle (a kinda crazy bike shop in itself run by a very passionate owner in Pasadena) looking at bikes. After feeling somewhat intimidated by all the serious bike around me, I went through the interview process by the owner & he suggested I try out a women's Bianchi bike. It was a bit scary to be on a road bike at first after sitting so upright on my hybrid bike - my face seemed a bit too close to the concrete and my body weight was distributed in weird places on the bike, but I knew it would be weird at first and was reassured by a few people it would get more comfortable.
 After testing out a few different bikes and going back to take out the Bianchi a few more times and thinking about it (and talking to people about it way too much) and reading a coworker's blog post at an opportune moment, I decided to put down some money on the Bianchi. I waited a couple days for a few things to be tweaked, including adding in inline brakes, and then brought home my pretty new bike a couple weeks ago!

So far I've still been using my hybrid as my main daily bike, but then going out on my road bike on longer trips around my neighborhood in the morning or evening. I'm still working on tweaking some settings, I picked up some gloves and I've simply been getting used to the experience of riding the bike, but it's been fun! The bike itself is super smooth and nice to ride and makes my hybrid Trek feel like a brick, but they both have their times & places! I am a little sad that this year's model of this bike is white with just some stripes of the legendary Bianchi Celeste color on the frame instead of being completely turquoise-ish, but obviously it wasn't my main concern. I look forward to going out on some longer rides and to some different places. I definitely recognize that it's MUCH easier to ride faster and longer distances on a road bike vs. a hybrid. At the same time, my hybrid is more comfy in some ways and works well for errands and cost less than half as much, so I feel a little less wary about leaving it locked up. Regardless, you justify things like having multiple bikes when you don't have a car... or something.

CicLAvia #6, 4/21/13!

 

Sunday, April 21st, was our 5th, but the city of Los Angeles' 6th CicLAvia event, and the first to take people from downtown LA to the beach. Inspired by a similar event in Columbia called Ciclovia, CicLAvia has been an event that happens every few months or so (so far! hopefully more frequently in the future!), where streets of Los Angeles are closed down for a few hours for people to enjoy outside of their cars. Most people bike, but the others walk, skateboard, Rollerblade or scooter along. The routes change, but the heart of the event stays the same in that CicLAvia is: free, open-ended as long as you aren't driving a car and awesome (ok, well that's not a requirement, but you could have fooled me!) And since as usual, I carried my camera on our 18 mile ride, here's some reasons why I love this event:



I've got company! 
As someone who bikes and walks around LA a lot, it's really a great experience to have so many others out there with me. It's even more awesome to feel like you can freely explore the streets without the constant fear of death-by-car since the interactions with cars are fairly limited on the route. It's also awesome to see all the different types of people out there biking together. Yay!

Exploring new Neighborhoods!
It's fun to explore new neighborhoods and see how they are actually connected to the ones you already know. This time we made it from downtown to essentially The Museum of Jurassic Technology - both places I had been before, but never slow enough and directly connected to see the old Victorian houses between. Things move by slower when you're biking, so there's more time to take things in and it's easier to stop and take a look around. Some neighborhoods I've just never really spent time in, others I usually explore alone or at times when it's not really ok to just stand in the middle of the street to take the perfect picture. CicLAvia mixes it up a bit and let's people experience the city in a new way.

It feels like the Playa!
So far, CicLAvia and the playa at Burning Man have been the best biking experiences of my life. Although they don't allow complete abandonment of biking responsibility, they both provide the chance to just enjoy biking in one of those ways where you can sit back and relax.  As a result, in some ways, these events will always be interconnected in my mind. CicLAvia feels like a local version of Burning Man in some ways. Both provide some of the safest biking experiences I've had since I decided to start biking regularly. Both provide a community feel and allow even people like me to feel somewhat friendly about chatting randomly with people around me. Both bring out youthful playfulness and present an opportunity to share creativity. There's even some bikes that show up at CicLAvia that I'm 99.99% sure have graced the playa in the past.

People (and pets) are happy!

CicLAvia's also an awesome way to spend time with people and meet up with friends and it's not uncommon to encounter people randomly sharing, chatting, waving and smiling and generally enjoying both being part of and observing everything going on around them. This is one of the few events that I honestly look forward to and that makes me feel like "LA is doing SOMETHING right! Look at all the happy people!"

The number of people that show up (April 21st is currently estimated at 180,000) and variety of people really shows that there IS demand for this sort of thing. People in LA really do want to be outside, biking and hanging out in the streets where they can feel safe. People will exercise if you give them a good space to do it. People do spend money even if they aren't in a car (it's much easier to find bike parking, stop randomly or look at things when on a bike. We stopped and ate at Native foods,  a vegan restaurant that was pretty packed with a line to the door the entire time we were waiting for our food and eating!)  People really will talk to one another and are generally more pleasant face to face. I often joke with people, making the sound of a car horn and mentioning how weird it would be if people just walked up and honked at one another in the line at the store or when trying to get someone's attention at work. Cars create a weird way of interacting and living.

With all it's awesomeness, there's still some growing pains with the event. The congestion we experienced this time meant we didn't make it out to the beach in Venice nor were we able to meet up with a friend, but it was fun none the less. I also imagined how much WORSE the traffic would have been if the people were in cars with an average of 1.25 people and how much space that would have taken up instead of bikes. It also always feels like there isn't enough time! Five hours never feels long enough. It'd also be nice to have the hours outside of peak sunlight (10am-3pm) on streets without shade and 80+ degree weather - I accidentally missed putting sunscreen on my arms and paid for it.

I look forward to the time when I don't know what number CicLAvia event we're on and I can't say I'm able to go nearly every time because they happen so often. I really recommend, whoever you are, if you're ever in LA, even on a vacation, see if CicLAvia is going on and if so, make time for it. It's one of the best ways to experience LA I've found so far.