mark von rosenstiel is present.

(https://drive.google.com/open?id=1q1mviZokOAyXsVgIBmEIGmIh6zYnhJnC&usp=sharing)

Biking in LA is a pretty daunting experience. There’s not a lot of awareness to the fact that bikers may be on the road, which leads to a lot of cars turning into my path and parked cars opening doors without looking out for bikes (Dutch Reach guys (https://www.dutchreach.org/)! Come on!). To bike in LA is to be in a haunted house: muscles tense and ready for something to jump out of anywhere.

Pictured are the three bike routes I typically take between my studio and apartment, which I’d like to walk you through so that if you find yourself navigating a similar section of the city you can use my carefully found routes.

The main deciding factor to any segment of this ride is to avoid death and the sun. Death is avoided by getting off busier roads (which doesn’t necessarily mean finding bike friendly roads, since cars don’t really notice bike lanes here), and avoiding sun is done by finding routes with taller buildings so on sunny days I can hug the shadows. I sweat like a misting system in a grocery store on high, so shadows are necessary in the summer if I don’t want to turn my bike ride into a swim as well.

I leave my apartment and head south on Spring street. There’s a bike lane down Spring that is separated from traffic which runs one way where the bike lane runs both ways, which confuses pedestrians and delivery people crossing the bike lane causing a lot of “looking the wrong direction and stepping in front of a bike” or “hand truck pushed out from between two cars into a bike wheel”, so it’s best to ride in the street. Hand trucks will kill you. Also I don’t like that the cars traveling down Spring get a green left arrow before the bike lanes get a green, which means traffic gets to go before me at lights, so I usually stay in the right lane with the buses which move slower than a bike anyway. I’m a minnow on the shark that is their frame.

I usually look to the right as I pass Verve Coffee: there’s always attractive people outside making a show of it. Across from Verve is a bar called Tuck, which I think went under, but a friend of mine, Bobby, used to work there and I have some strange stories about the chef and his wife for another time.

The light at 9th I usually run because there are never cars coming. The road just got redone from here down Spring, so it’s nice new pavement with extra wide lanes. I like to enjoy this with a bit of weaving around, because after running the red at 9th the street is empty of traffic and affords 3 lanes of asphalt abyss.

I head down to 12th and take a left. This lets me cross San Pedro versus having to ride down it at some point before, which is a blessing. I used to make part of this ride down San Pedro, staying pretty tight to the parked cars, but had too many close calls with people opening their doors.


From here it’s smooth sailing until Hooper. Along the way, I pass fast fashion house after fast fashion house and the Coco Cola shipping center (birch street) which sometimes means a semi jack-kniffed across 12th, but I can usually squeeze by on the right side. I guy with dry skin on the end of his nose and these beautiful brown leather boots once tried to sell me a diamond necklace here on the side of the street. "Diamond" probably meant "glass"; a pretty necklace all done up and nowhere to go.

At Hooper I do a quick left/right passing a great taco truck on the corner and an attractive woman with a huge sign for one of the bulk produce places within a stones throw, that only sell onions and oranges. She’s never advertising the same place. Also a guy on the street here sells bike frames. No wheels. Only frames.

At Compton Ave and 14th I have to watch out for the lake that forms if it has rained AT ALL within the last 24 hours. If the lake is there, I dodge to the left sidewalk, and try to shoot the gap between the warehouse and a tractor that seems to always be parked on this corner. Sometimes a dismount is necessary if a car coming down 14th happens to be coming up Compton (rare). There’s a husband and wife behind the tractor with two palettes of oranges here on Mondays. I imagine cheaper than the bulk produce places, though I’ve never stopped.

14th and Long Beach is a part of road that LA has decided to pave in the style of “waves crashing onto a jagged rock shore”. If your bike has small tires, this part of the ride is a bit like playing an old NES strategy game, hopping from rideable pavement to rideable pavement. In general, LA streets are some of the worst kept streets I have ever ridden a bike on, but this stretch until the studio starts to go downhill fast. (There’s a section of road I drive, down Soto towards Vernon. There, right before I hit the walls of slaughtered pig smell from Farmer Johns, I’ve smashed my head into the roof of my car twice going over what can only be described as peaks and valleys of Soto.)

I keep my eyes glued to what is in front of my tire from here on out: no texting and riding.

At the intersection of 14th and Alameda, right before going under I-10, the light won’t turn green unless there is a car with me. Sometimes I drop my bike in the car lane and walk over to the northwest corner of the intersection to hit the walk button which sometimes will get the light to turn green. Usually I just have to wait for a car to join me from the Starbucks drive-through line which exits right there. It’s a busy intersection and impossible to run the red.

Across Santa Fe I head over the Olympic Street bridge, past a trash/recycling center with huge backhoes tramping over debris and ripping apart garbage causing fine dust to enter the lungs of the city. They have hoses misting the air, but I usually put on a respirator for this section of the ride, since I notice my lungs getting irritated if I don’t. I feel like this section of the ride answers the question, “what does the inside of a battery taste like?” The curb to get up on the sidewalk of the bridge is probably over 10”, so I have to half get off my bike to get up on it, but go flying off the other end in glee. At this time of year, around 10:40am, the shadow of the railing on the south side of the bridge perfectly lines up with the seam of the concrete in the sidewalk. There’s a good fruit stand on the other side of the bridge and I use my momentum to carry me up the sidewalk past it and the Sears building to Soto.

The Sears building is beautiful and sad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears,_Roebuck_%26_Company_Mail_Order_Building_(Los_Angeles,_California)) It now remains mostly vacant with windows broken, the “S” no longer lighting up and pigeons calling it home. I went to meet the manager one day to ask if I could take photos of the sections of it closed since the 80s and he said he’d call me, but never did.

The intersection of Soto and Olympic is, again, concrete waves. I like to ride with my butt way over my back tire to make the jarring bumps not so hard on my arms. People at this intersection usually line up in the shadows of the utility poles during summer: people as sundials. The sun is baked hard into concrete, and there’s no buildings for shade.

I zigzag through the Shell station parking lot to the alley that goes behind Avo’s Auto, which is a good place to get tune ups and drop used motor oil. He put a radiator in my truck, Nemo, and afterwards handed me the national insurance plan that went with the part and said, “If anything goes wrong, call these Fuckers. Don’t let them give you any shit: they have to fix their parts no matter what state you are in. Just call these Fuckers, okay?” He texted me 2 weeks later to check in on me. 5 stars.

After the alley I take a quick right/left to get onto 11th. All these roads here have a middle strip of continuous concrete for the sewer drains, with all the concrete on the left and right of the strip pretty tragic. This means it’s best to ride down the middle of the road here, but since these are more alleys than roads, it usually works out.

Back towards 11th and Soto is Deseret Industries, which is sort of like a Value Village. Downstairs is the home department, where they put out new goods on the hour. People crowd around the industrial swinging doors and when staff role out the huge rolling carts filled with new arrivals, the carts are picked clean of the good stuff before they’ve made it 10 ft into the space.

I was trying to find some folding chairs for my apartment and an employee who says he was from Portugal said he’d give me a call and keep any he found if I gave him my number.

“You ever go back home?”
“Not in many years.”

He texted a few days later saying he had 4 blue folding chairs. I showed up, bought them and he helped carry them to my truck, Nemo. At Nemo he hugged me for a long time, hot under the sun around noon, looking up at me afterwards, our two sweaty faces looking melted, smiled and walked off.