“On a Sunday morning sidewalk,
I’m wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
‘Cause there’s something in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone.
And there’s nothing short o’ dying
That’s half as lonesome as the sound
Of the sleeping city sidewalk
And Sunday morning coming down.”
Archive for the ‘Loco-motion’ Category
On a Sunday morning sidewalk
Sunday, March 13th, 2005Haunted Hallowood on Two Wheels
Sunday, October 31st, 2004I *heart* L.A. County Bicycle Coalition! I could just squeeze ‘em tight and plant big smooches on ‘em…
Ehm. Okay, I think I’ve managed to rein in my sloppy affection now, for the time being anyway. I’ll try to resist rapture as I tell you all about today’s fantastic Hallowood bicycle tour. Spooks and Spokes was “one of a series of Sunday Bicycle Tours of culture, art, food, and love in L.A.” that the aforementioned LACBC organizes. Can you feel the love? I feel the love. I feel it to some degree every time I mount my bike and pedal off in search of adventures great and small. Today that feeling was sustained throughout, but there was a particularly big rush of it at the end as I speeded down Riverside Drive toward home, racing the early nightfall, in highest gear and legs pumping, and you would’ve needed a nasty ghoul indeed to scare the satisfied grin off my face.
All right. Abstract ecstasy aside, let’s get down to the gory details. (more…)
Bicycle Sundae Sunday
Sunday, September 12th, 2004Full account of the September 12, 2004 Bicycle Sundae Sunday coming soon. Promise! In excessive detail, you can be sure.
You Too Can Be a Velo Queen!
Sunday, August 1st, 2004Congratulations, you’ve taken the crucial first step toward becoming a part-time bike commuter. You have proven to your hyperactive mind, ever fearful of the spectacular failure of your heartfelt resolutions, that you are strong and coordinated and determined enough to cycle the approximately 8 miles from home to the new place of employment. Heck, today you rode those 8 miles, did a victory dance in the empty parking lot, briefly rested your pounding heart and heaving lungs, and pedaled 8 miles straight back! You are clearly destined for velo greatness. You shall be a punk rock star in this urban jungle of cars! But stop patting yourself on the back for a moment (oh, you were massaging it?) and let’s determine a plan of action. You aren’t a bike commuter yet, missy.
1. Do not fight the pain. Let it wash through you. The pain is telling you you’re alive. The pain is good. It is good to be alive.
Before you attempt this on a weekday morning, more Sunday conditioning rides are in order. Those limbs feel like cooked spaghetti tonight (mmm, spaghetti!) and they’ll surely be stiff and sore in the morning.
2. Study the route really well on weekend rides while there’s no pressure to be on time for work. Develop alternatives to the sticky intersections, especially the killer hill and the crushing freeway traffic on Los Feliz Boulevard. And that bike lane on Griffith Park Drive through Silver Lake is all nasty bumps. Maybe there’s a better way.
3. Renew lapsed membership in the LA County Bicycle Coalition. If it weren’t for them, there’d be no LA River Bike Path to ride on.
4. Accessorize. You’re a rock star, a velo queen. So go get yourself some sleek pants or shorts and a sexy Italian bike shirt in bright colors. Build a trunk on the rack. Decorate it with a few saucy stickers. Un Carro Menos! Re-defeat Bush!
5. Learn to service that baby blue. Change a tube, tighten here, adjust there. Learn it, don’t fear it!
6. Interview that bike-commuting co-worker about storing the baby blue during the workday. Assemble a personal hygiene kit to keep at your desk. Upon arrival you will proudly march your sweaty self through the office to the bathroom to freshen up a bit. Bring clothes, big lunch the day before. Make bike commute day Trader-Joe’s-frozen-pizza-for-dinner day. Prepare the salad the night before. Prepare everything the night before.
Momentum! Flow with this wonderful momentum!
Plague On Wheels
Wednesday, July 28th, 2004Listen: The other night near Sunset and Fountain, a big bear of an SUV pounced on a wily motorcycle, in plain view of the shiny new McDonald’s Playland. The SUV pinned the motorcycle, and they died in that awkward embrace. The scene was so bright, contained, all beads of glass and shimmering metal. Nothing organic about it. Did the drivers of these mechanical beasts simply evaporate? (And what’s with my voyeurism, anyway? Hadn’t I got enough of dead flesh at the Science Center the day before?)
It was easy to imagine how Kilgore Trout might have witnessed such an accident through alien eyes.
I beg you (all four or five of you) to consider yourselves armed and dangerous. You are rational, loving human beings, but you are nonetheless capable of killing. Your automobile is a deadly weapon. Cars Kill. Resist relaxation while driving, for driving is not a natural state. Put down the phone. Leave that stereo be. Both hands on the wheel, eyes and mind on the road. I beg you.
Oh, I do miss San Francisco
Wednesday, June 30th, 2004There’s something David Byrne-ish about Marc Horowitz’s "Errand Feasibility Study" – it elevates the mundane to extraordinarily enjoyable art. And it’s hilarious on so many levels. (I must be delirious because I can’t stop giggling as the video plays!) Audrey the pack mule makes taking Gordon on errands look easy! And be sure to appreciate his valiant efforts to get a city permit for the day.
Oh man, I’ve just started browsing his other projects. Bob – you must see "Peepwars" immediately (yeah, I know, shame I got rid of our microwave); and the "Sample Gum Chew-off" exudes Stupid Human Trick mentality comparable to what your trio in Bloomington used to relish fairly often (bet you didn’t realize how artistic y’all were being!) I find the "Coffee in the Park" and "How About a Burrito at My Favorite Place" projects so moving! If Horowitz can pull all this off, it shouldn’t be that hard for me to introduce myself to more neighbors and organize a trash clean-up on our block!
I’m having a serious-crush-on-the-Internet moment. I found Mr. Horowitz’s site through the Glowlab blog, which is looking to be a great great source of inspiration.
Pedestrian At Play
Tuesday, June 29th, 2004Utne’s been consistently feeding my fascination with pedestrian loco-motion. Last month there was this article exploring the social meaning of walking and the state of pedestrianism in a car’s world. Then along came a great introduction to the arts of psychogeography in the current issue. I’m discovering that psychogeographical games are a potentially riveting way to connect my mental spaces with everyday places around me, to find new meaning and beauty there.
So, in the infectious spirit of playfulness and following through with good intentions, I turned my morning walk with Gordon into an experiment in "generative psychogeography" – I tried to find that twilight zone between goal-oriented and completely random travel by following this spontaneously-decided algorithm: take the second right, second left, first right, then repeat. I tried not to fuss too much over further elaborating the rules ("should I make my turn before or after crossing the intersection?") and to focus instead on the world around me. We cycled through the algorithm just over 3 times in the allotted 45 minutes (think long LA blocks and lots of pausing to sniff and pee on all sorts of upright objects). Here are some of my favorite moments:
For the first time I noticed a "Share the Road" sign struggling among the visual clutter of Sunset Boulevard. I guess I usually drive by too fast to take it in.
There are two hourglass Marilyn Monroe palm trees in a line of standard tall and ultra-thin Twiggy ones.
Gordon sniffed the whole length of the hedge lining the back of KCET studios while I admired the old brick building and peeked into the windows of the ground level offices.
A Little Rascals -esque dog draped his paws out of a second-story window and barked as we passed.
Gordon’s crooked little piggy tail wiggled as he touched noses with two new big dogs through their gates. Across the street a frumpy little Maltese yipped a greeting.
100 teenagers streamed between buildings on the Thomas Starr King Middle School campus. It was their second-to-last day of school. I heard some squeals along the lines of "ohmygod – that is such a cah-UTE dog!"
Two big men speaking Spanish prepared to pour cement in a neighbor’s driveway. Four big men were installing roofing tiles on a little house on Virgil. I thought of my mum working with Grandpa on his roof in Indianapolis.
I made eye contact and said "Good morning!" to three of the people I passed. Two of them responded in richly accented English, including the funny little man I sometimes see jogging baby steps around the neighborhood.
I can’t wait to try another algorithm soon, or the same algorithm starting from a different location! I’m also excited to have found a reference point for some of the street art I’ve occasionally seen around town.
Bicycle Wake
Tuesday, June 8th, 2004‘I think I shall always stick to my bike,’ said Christopher. ‘The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.’
-Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green, 1965 [Thank you, Anu!]
Eyes and shoulders had had all they could take of the computer by late in the afternoon, so I led Gordon out into the backyard to visit our bikes. Scruffy and sagging, these sad, neglected creatures don’t deserve the fate befallen them here in East Hollywood. I sat in the driveway and tenderly wiped away the accumulated dirt and the streaks of paint someone had drizzled on them in the cluttered garage. I pined for those prelapsarian days in Berkeley when I relied on my bike for speedy transport to work. Funny, I don’t remember ever cleaning it so carefully back then. I never really had to try to bond with it; I just rode.
Something caught my eye on the rear tire of Bob’s bright blue Specialized. Nimbus Ex tires, eh? I made a sudden mental leap from mourning my lost bike-commuting glory to imagining a secret history for the humble mechanism before me. Maybe Bob’s bike was endowed with parts of some Quidditch broomstick prototype, a bit of wizardry slipped into our Muggle world hitherto unnoticed by the Ministry of Magic regulators?!
Pedestrian in pain
Monday, June 7th, 2004On Friday evening I made another feeble attempt to be a more active Sierra Club member by participating in a regular outing. In this case we did the monthly moonlight hike from the Merry-Go-Round to the top of Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park. Except there wasn’t any moonlight. And it turns out Mount Hollywood isn’t the one with the Hollywood sign (but you can see the sign on the hill just adjacent, Mount Lee). The view from the top is pretty trippy – hazy streaks of light and smog stretching forever to the south, the scarred mountains away across the valley to the north, and bird’s eye view of the Observatory and the Greek Theater straight below.
Problem was I took the steep first part of the trail way too fast, and for the millionth time I caught myself feeling awfully miserable for someone supposed to be enjoying recreation and mentally whining ‘but I walk Gordon twice a day! so why is my face beet red and my heart ready to explode on this hike?!’ Plenty of general aching and puffy exhaustion lasting through the weekend. I’m clearly a far cry from living up to the proud Pedestrian Saga name.
Velo Queen
Tuesday, May 25th, 2004Congratulations to Kelly for riding 25 miles on Sunday in the First Annual Wooly Bike Rally in Branch County, Michigan! Her cycling raised dough for the local bike association and gave her such rewarding exercise that I think she’ll be looking for more this summer – ride on, velo queen!
Meanwhile, I hang my head for shame and confess that I missed the 4th Annual Los Angeles River Ride that very day. Not even the ‘whoops, I totally forgot’ kind of missed, but the guilty ‘I’m too lazy and cheap to go and register for it this year’ kind. And an exquisite opportunity for cross-continental bicycle bonding with my bud went to waste.
Kelly, may you inspire me to dust off my pretty Specialized soon and end my long, sad no-cycling streak. Either that, or I’ll continue to find ways to be an armchair cyclist, living vicariously through others (or maybe revisiting le fabuleux Triplettes de Belleville.)