Westside BikeSIDE!

[Photo by Nicolas Cadorette Vigneau]

Community?

What does that even mean anymore? I mean, who needs community, when you have 238 channels on the television to spend time with, as well as a Tivo to record anything you might miss? Who needs social and emotional interaction, when you have Internet blogs to sound off on, to cry to, to laugh with? Who needs to use the village commons, when you have you have your fenced-in backyard kingdom? Who has TIME to spend with neighbors, when there are three million YouTube videos that you haven’t watched (yet)?

Well, apparently LOTS of people disagree, judging by the turnout at last Friday’s community bike ride. On Friday, November 3rd, on a mild evening just after sunset, nearly 200 of us took to the streets en masse for Santa Monica Critical Mass. SMCM is a monthly bicycle ride to celebrate bicycle culture, and to assert cyclists’ right to the road. It was conceived after the 2005 New Year, and the first ride occurred on February 4th, 2005. Starting with 6 riders, we’ve grown to as many as 225, on our October ride. Continue Reading »

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. Continue Reading »