Mar 06 '06 - 1272 W, 1 I - Vote Good + 5 :: Bad - 12 Shine Your Bike
Published March, 2006 by LA Downtown News
By Lea Lion
It's a warm mid-winter night and Los Angeles has donned its Friday best. In Hollywood club-goers strut the sidewalks in shiny suits, while jewel-clad Downtowners pair fine wine with symphony seats.
Around 9:30 p.m., a wildly dressed crowd begins
to gather in a parking lot in Echo Park. Of course, the outfits are the
second thing you notice. The first is that everyone has a bicycle.
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| Kim Jensen (right) and Somerset Waters of the two-year-old Midnight Ridazz. The group regularly attracts 600 people to its monthly rides. Photo by Gary Leonard. |
There
are road bikes and mountain bikes, 21-speed bikes, 10-speed bikes,
bikes with no speeds and bikes with no brakes. There are state-of-the
art bikes, vintage bikes, low-rider bikes, skyscraper bikes and bikes
crafted to look like chopper motorcycles. There are brand-new bikes,
borrowed bikes and probably even a few broken bikes.
The bikes,
and those who ride them, are part of a group called Midnight Ridazz,
which meets the second Friday of every month. By 9:45 p.m., hundreds of
riders are waiting in the lot, but still almost nobody knows where we
will ride tonight. The route is different each time and the organizers
keep it under wraps until the last possible moment.
At 10 p.m.
the organizers begin handing out laminated, playing card-sized "spoke
cards" to the riders. Each looks like a page torn out of a high school
student's notebook complete with calculus notes and doodles - except
one of the doodles reads "The I Heart My Bike Ride" and has directions
for tonight's trek.
"Here's a spoke card," a young woman says as she hands one to me. "Hold onto it. It might be worth something someday."
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The young woman is Marisa Bell, though she is known as Ma Bell in the bike community. In the two years since she and two friends, Monica Howe and Kim Jensen, launched the Midnight Ridazz, the loose organization of cyclists has exploded from seven riders to more than 600. The name came from the bike gang in the cult film Mad Max.
It all started when Jensen returned from traveling in several bike-friendly Asian countries. She created a flyer that read, "Shine your bikes - the Midnight Ridazz will ride this Friday on the 'Downtown Fountain Tour.'" Her flyer advised riders to pack money for beer because the ride would end at midnight at an Echo Park dive bar.
The seven original riders were not avid cyclists at the time. But that soon changed, and when the Ridazz criss-crossed the L.A. River via bridges the next month on the "River Ride," 21 people showed up. By the third month, 45 riders checked out Downtown's many wall paintings of the Virgin de Guadalupe and other saints on "The Mural Ride."
"Every
month it doubled. I've never seen anything like this without
advertising," Jensen said. "Some people said it was due to the
branding. We have always offered spoke cards for the rides and there is
always this really wonderfully planned route. People kept coming back
and coming back and doubling and doubling. I remember the night that
there were about 105 people and I just looked over at Ma Bell and just
laughed and was like, 'Can you believe this?'"
On one hand,
having a lot of people show up is the whole point. Midnight Ridazz uses
sheer numbers of bikers to take over the streets, making it impossible
for car traffic to get through. But the Ridazz like to mix art with
politics so there also is an element of old-school Los Angeles glamour
in their extravagant costumes, themed rides and tolerant alcohol policy.
Past
rides have included the "Parlez-vous Ride," where the Ridazz dressed as
French people, carried baguettes and bottles of wine in their bags, and
rode through a closed-for-the-night Griffith Park. The "Fiddle Faddle
Saddle Ride" ended with a keg of beer and a performance by an old timey
band. The "Dead Theater Ride" toured many of the city's abandoned
theaters and ended with a movie projected against the outside wall of
an organizer's house. Recent rides have included a Friday the 13th ride
ominously named "13 Left Turns to the Dead End," which did just that.
For a "Pool Party Ride," the Ridazz dressed in bikinis, goggles and
inflatable water wings. Predictably, the route ended at a pool party.
While the laidback attitude of the Ridazz organizers emphasizes the fun aspect of rides, the group has a serious message as well. The Ridazz aim to take over the streets of a city famous for its car culture and crowded roads. With that outlook comes an addition some don't like and many would label dangerous, if not stupid - the Ridazz don't stop for red lights. In fact, they often overlook the usual rules of the road.
Somerset Waters, a 28-year-old electrician and regular rider, called this philosophy "Zen with the Art of War."
"When you are riding your bike there is so much joy in it," Waters said, describing the Zen aspect. The war element comes in how far the riders travel using pedal power rather than gasoline. "The fact is bicycles are the best way to help the environment. Six hundred riders going 10 miles is 6,000 miles."
Jensen, a dressmaker, rides her bike to Downtown's Fashion District almost every day. She believes that the growing numbers of Ridazz has made a difference in cyclists' relationships to the city.
"We were so excited and happy because it meant more than just having a lot of people on our ride, it meant seeing bikes all day long in the city," she said. "I used to ride alone, but now just like in San Francisco, or other bike-forward communities, you can find yourself at a stoplight and before it turns green there is another biker next to you. That never happened years ago and now it's happening all the time every day."
Of course, a crowd of 600 after-dark riders intent on subverting just about every traffic law on the books draws a response, including from the LAPD. Many Ridazz have had run-ins with police officers and some have received tickets and fines.
"That is exactly what we do - hand out citations," said LAPD Officer Grace Brady. "If one motorcycle cop sees them, he would have a hard time pulling them over, but if we know they are coming to a specific area, we could set something up."
Another issue is safety. Last month, as the group approached the end of the ride at the intersection of Echo Park Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, many were shocked to see ambulance lights swirling amidst a pack of bikes. One rider had been hit by a car and was whisked off to the hospital.
According to Jensen, the rider was all right, "just a couple scratches... nothing serious." But she added, "Our response to that night is that next month's ride will be the 'Safety Ride' so it's all about helmets, kneepads, gear, whatever you need to be safe, crash-test dummies. Our spoke card is going to have emergency information so if ever you are alone and you find yourself in a crash, it is something that will aid you in getting help."
The next ride takes place Friday, March 10 at 10 p.m. Riders should meet in the Pioneer Chicken parking lot at Echo Park and Sunset.
Contact Lea Lion at lea@downtownnews.com.
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