BikinginLA

Pink Bike reports that over 100 Unity Rides are planned to honor Alex Pretti, the 37-year old Minneapolis-based mountain biker who was shot and killed by ICE agents last Saturday.

And those are only the ones that have been listed on the website of the Angry Catfish Bicycle Shop, which organized the Minneapolis ride, and inspired similar rides across the US, as well as Canada, Germany, Austria, Finland and Australia.

There are undoubtedly countless others planned around the country, including at least three in Los Angeles.

Okay, make that five.

Here is a press release from Streets Are For Everyone and Domestique Cycling Club, providing details on DCC’s Saturday Unity Ride, which promises to be one of the largest in the LA area.

ALEX PRETTI UNITY RIDE IN SOLIDARITY
WITH MEMORIAL RIDES ACROSS THE US

LOS ANGELES, CA — Alex Pretti was a nurse and a cyclist who loved the outdoors. This Saturday, cyclists from across Los Angeles will join cyclists from across the U.S. and around the world for memorial rides honoring Alex Pretti, in unity with the Minnesota cycling community and in solidarity with @angrycatfish, the cafe and bike shop Alex frequented.

From @angrycatfish:

“Alex was one of us. He rode bikes, he believed in community, and he believed in justice. Whether you’re 5 or 80, you remember the first time you rode a bike—because bikes are magic, and joy itself is an act of resistance. Today, with tens of thousands of cyclists expected nationally, we are showing not just grief, but unity. We are stronger together.”

The Unity Rides are taking place simultaneously across time zones, with riders gathering and rolling together to demonstrate collective grief, unity, and resolve within the cycling community.

Domestique Cycling Club is organizing a slow 10-mile ride leaving from the parking lot of the Veterans Administration in collaboration with dozens of cycling clubs and advocacy groups across Southern California.

Additionally, several smaller rides are independently organized by local cycling groups and bike shops as part of a national and international effort led by community organizers.

A global map of participating rides is available at: https://bikepacking.com/news/alex-pretti-memorial-rides/

Ride details:

• 📅 Saturday, 1/31
• 🕚 11:00 AM — Meet
• 🕦 11:30 AM — Roll
• 📍 VA Med Center Parking Lot 6
  304 Dowlen Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90025

Hundreds of cyclists are expected (between 150 and 500). This will be an easy, calm, no-drop ride focused on unity, respect, and showing up together as a cycling community.

OTHER LOS ANGELES–AREA RIDES

Friday

• Allez LA Bike Shop & CA Chicken, 7:30 AM — Boyle Heights

Saturday

• West LA Bicycle, 1:00 PM — Bike Path & Main Street

• Trash Panda Cycling, El Mariachi Plaza

Sunday

• Mom Ridaz BC, Downtown Los Angeles

To be honest, I don’t care what your politics are, or where you stand on immigration.

This is about the violation of the right to assemble, protest and report what’s happening guaranteed by the 1st Amendment, as well as Pretti’s right to legally bear arms, as guaranteed under the 2nd.

And the needless killing of our fellow Americans under the color of authority.

It’s your choice whether to turn out this weekend. But as the Angry Catfish bike shop put it,

We are many but we stand together as one. We’re stronger together, and they can’t take us all.

No, they can’t.

And even Surly is joining the fight.

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Evidently, San Diego has the same fights over increased density that we do.

Except their city leaders are fighting for it, rather than opposing greater density in most of the city, like their neighbor to the north, while retaining single-family zoning and fighting SB 79, which overrides local zoning to allow dense, multi-family housing near major transit stops.

Lawrence Herzog, a writer and lecturer on urban studies and planning at San Diego State University makes the case for the mixed-use Midway Rising project, a medium density development that would replace the current sports arena and warehouses with housing and an entertainment district that opens onto the bay.

The project includes bike and walking paths connecting the various villages that make up the development, as well as connecting to a transit station less than a mile away.

The difference is that San Diego has been fighting a CEQA lawsuit filed by an anti-density group, which recently won its appeal over a failure to conduct an adequate environmental review of the height of some of the buildings.

Never mind that the city had placed the project before the voters, who narrowly approved it.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles continues to fight for an exemption to SB 79, despite a severe housing shortage in the city, affordable and otherwise, leaving us no choice but to increase density, despite what our city leaders seem to think.

Even though that increased density would effectively shrink the city, allowing it to become more walkable and bikeable, and reducing the need to drive everywhere.

And maybe even freeing up road space for better transit and safer bikeways.

Maybe someday our city leaders will stop kowtowing to residents desires to seal Los Angeles in amber and preserve it as it is today, and begin fighting for the healthy growth we so desperately need for the people who are already here. Let alone those who will inevitably come.

But clearly, today is not that day.

………

Meanwhile, San Diego’s 30th Street protected bike lane recorded a record 130,000 trips last year, with ridership rising every year since it opened four years ago.

And tres shock!

It has not destroyed the local neighborhood and businesses, despite the protestations of opponents both before it opened, and after.

………

No bias here.

Santa Monica public radio station KCRW provides a profile of Streets For All founder Michael Schneider, as the group works to extend the Ballona Creek bike path.

It’s a good read, even as Schneider patiently explains that you really can ride a bike to LAX.

But what really stands out is this section —

Disrupting the existing automotive order can mean more traffic and less parking, of course. So Schneider has angered some people over the years.

In 2022, he was on a neighborhood council championing a proposal for a dedicated bus lane along La Brea Avenue. The proposal passed, but in the run up, he says, one guy got pretty mad about it: “He put up a mugshot of me along La Brea at different establishments saying, ‘This guy’s about to ruin your neighborhood,’” Schneider recalls. When his mother-in-law saw the flyers, she “thought her grandkids were in danger.”

Matthew Tallmer says he did post — though not create — those flyers. “Obviously, the businesses were very concerned that they were going to lose business because there’d be no parking,” says Tallmer, now a member of the Mid City West Neighborhood Council, though at the time he was just a guy going door-to-door opposing a bus lane.

Tallmer’s larger objection is that Schneider’s unique lifestyle just may not work for everybody: “The whole idea that people are going to bike all over the place is an elitist fantasy, to be honest.”

So someone who sits on the Mid City West Neighborhood Council posts wanted posters with a photo of Schneider’s face, for the crime of daring to contest the automotive hegemony on La Brea.

And yet he somehow calls Schneider elitist for riding a bicycle, and thinking other people might want to do that, too?

Um, sure.

And I thought the Mid City West NC was one of the good ones.

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Local 

A trial has begun in the lawsuit over the death of an LAPD training instructor who died following a catastrophic spinal injury during bicycle training exercise; the parents of 32-year old Houston Tipping allege he was intentionally killed after he began a sexual abuse investigation into another officer.

The Argonaut looks at the weekly Venice Electric Light Parade and founder Marcus Gladney, who leads bicycle riders on a musical tour of the city that draws participants from around the world — including the Australian group RÜFÜS DU SOL, who hosted the listening party their fourth album on the parade.

State

The National Law Review examines California’s new regulations regarding ebikes, including a ban on converting new ebikes to exceed legal limits, as well as the regulatory gaps in the law that should be corrected. Like defining an ebike as at least partially human powered, and anything that’s not as an electric motorbike. 

San Bernardino Parks will officially open a new 3.8 mile section of the Santa Ana River trail on February 12th.

The Thousand Oaks Acorn looks at a recent bicycle rodeo in the city to teach kids how to ride safely.

Streetsblog San Francisco’s Roger Rudick called for the BART train system to fire a contractor who not only parked in a protected bike lane, but flipped him off when he asked the driver to move his van.

National

Newsweek examines why bicycling feels easier than walking and remains the world’s most energy‑efficient mode of human transport, more than five decades after Scientific American first reported it. Which is truly shocking. Not that bicycling is so efficient, but that Newsweek is still a thing.

Escape Collective says Trek is in deep doo doo as it marks its 50th anniversary, with layoffs, overstock, retail decline and debt making this its most challenging year yet. I bought my first adult bike from the company when they were just five years old. And I still have it, even if it’s not in rideable condition these days. Then again, neither am I. 

If you’re one of the roughly 2,000 Americans using a BeePrincess adult bike helmet, the CPSC wants you to take it off and kill it before it kills you.

Google is bringing its Gemini AI navigation to walking and bicycle maps. You know, just in case you want to put your faith in AI not to guide you into a brick wall. 

LA’s favorite ex-pro cyclist Phil Gaimon claims the KOM on Hawaii’s epic Mauna Kea, gaining more than 14,000 feet of elevation in just over four and a half hours.

A Denver website recommends visiting the Gold Level Bicycle Friendly Community of Durango, Colorado, calling the small cowboy town an important bicycling hub in the southwest corner of the state. So if I suddenly disappear one day, that’s probably where you’ll find me. 

Megan forwards news that a Denver bicyclist has built a calendar of bike events in the Mile High City.

That’s more like it. A 22-year old Texas man faces up to 20 years behind bars after being convicted of manslaughter for killing a high school student as he rode his bike in a crosswalk; investigators said he never touched his brakes before slamming into the boy’s bike. Although in California, he would only face a maximum of six years for vehicular manslaughter. 

A Florida House committee unanimously approved a provision to rein in ebikes in the state.

International

British bike advocates say it’s just common sense that the country’s transit police have reversed their policy of not investigating the theft of bicycles parked at train stations for more than two hours, arguing that it sent the wrong message about whose journeys really matter.

The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Ireland was given the 1,000th refurbished bicycle to be upcycled by a bike nonprofit group. Okay, one of the Lord Mayor’s, since they have four.

Workers in Germany can deduct the full cost of leasing a bicycle or ebike from their taxes, with 2.1 million people taking advantage of the benefit — a full 2.5 percent of the country’s population.

Finally…

Now you, too, can have an airbag in your shorts. And why am I only now hearing of Bands on Bike Taxis Getting Beers?

I mean, seriously.

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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin.