Gary Leonard

CicLAvia

See also:
*CicLAvia Rules! How Bicyclists Made L.A. a Better Place

In an effort to make the biggest cycling event in L.A. even more badass, the organizers of CicLAvia this year have extended the route to an unprecedented distance. Taking place tomorrow, April 21, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., CicLAvia will now stretch from downtown to Venice Beach. That means 15 miles free of cars for everyone from adults to kids to roam on their bikes.

It might sound like a nightmare to drivers or an impossible feat for a city, but the new route actually came up due to Mayor Villaraigosa's full support. CicLAvia executive director Aaron Paley recalls that around November 2012 the mayor gave the organization the go-ahead to execute the longer route. Paley initially thought it would prove too big of a task for LAPD and the city but once CicLAvia got the okay, plans began to unfold.

The biggest challenge was just making the event happen in such a short amount of time. The organization worked on its first route, in 2010, for two years and planned about 12 months in advanced before the next route. The "very sudden" decision to undertake this new route meant putting extra effort not only into organization but convincing people and businesses. Yet Paley counts the reactions as mostly positive.

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Courtesy of the artist and Duncan Miller Gallery

Danny Lyon: Cal, Elkhorn, Wisconsin (1968)

"Danny Lyon: The Bikeriders" at Duncan Miller Gallery's Bergamot Station location is one of the most engaging -- and surprising -- photography shows of the past year. Featuring 50 prints from Lyon's landmark 1968 book of the same name, "The Bikeriders" documents four years, 1963-67, during which the artist embedded himself in the daily life of the Chicago Outlaws motorcycle gang.

Armed with a Triumph, a Nikon, and a unique dual perspective as both participant and observer, Lyon was able to access and portray a disarmingly intimate, familiar, and diverse subculture full of family picnics, independent women, and openly gay men -- a sweet brand of Americana that infuses a little Norman Rockwell into its prescient, pre-Easy Rider nostalgia.

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Courtesy of the artist and Public Fiction

Daniel Small's Excavation II installation

This week, a performance artist celebrates a jazz singer, a Parisian artist celebrates a German-born architect and an iconic L.A. gallery says goodbye with the same savvy it's always had.

5. Everyone onstage
Abbey Lincoln played a black maid in the 1968 film For Love of Ivy -- not a bit part but the lead opposite Sidney Poitier -- and movie critic Roger Ebert remembers her arriving at the press conferences in what he called "the African, or natural, hairstyle" and a gold African dress. She'd say things like, "Sidney Poitier has proven black people are a salable product in the box office," "We're all stereotypes" or, of black Americans on screen, "You can't really tell a story until everyone gets onstage." Lincoln, better known as a jazz singer who collaborated with Max Roach, died in 2007. Performance artist Margaret Laurena Kemp met her in the 1990s, and describes Lincoln as a life force. This weekend at Pieter performance space, Kemp debuts In a Circle Everything Is Up or An Affair Abbey Lincoln, an in-progress, multimedia performance celebrating Lincoln. 420 W. Avenue 33, Lincoln Heights; Sat., Sept. 8, 8 p.m. pieterpasd.com.

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Scott Barker

Adam Grandmaison: BMXer, blogger, entrepreneur.

Though he's one of the most successful men in action sports, Adam Grandmaison doesn't roll up for our interview in a BMW -- he still rolls up on his BMX bike. Now, if you even had to Google "BMX" or if it made you think of the X Games, get ready to start re-thinking. Grandmaison's working to change your thought process real soon.

Conjure up an image of action sports, and it's probably skateboarding or surfing that comes to mind. BMX, shorthand for the severely antiquated label of "bicycle motocross," has often been the industry's dark horse. The sport, which involves doing tricks on specialized bicycles in either urban or off-road settings, began in Southern California in the 1970s.

For Grandmaison, arguably the seminal BMX entrepreneur, it's anything but obscure. The Nashua, N.H. native and recent Long Beach transplant is the owner of The Come Up BMX , the BMX industry's most popular source for news and web content.

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Courtesy of Angel City Press

Author and film critic Steven Rea is hip. Well he's not trying to be hip, which makes him even hipper, but we'll get to that in a second. He's got two obsessions -- bikes and Hollywood history -- that he's managed to turn into a pretty hip book.

At first glance, it might look like that kind of loud tourist-appealing kitsch -- Ta-da! Tinseltown on two wheels! -- but it's better than that. Much much better. Beautifully wrought by local publisher Angel City Press with designs from L.A.-based artist Amy Inouye, Hollywood Rides a Bike: Cycling With the Stars is exactly the type of book you need to have in print...and one you need for prominent display on your coffee table...you do have a coffee table, right?

The book is the type of conversation piece that eschews digitization -- classic photos of Hollywood stars, has-beens and almost-weres, all on their two- and three-wheeled modes of self-propulsion. Well, OK, it would be nice if it was digitized, for sales' sake, but it's one of those books that holds up better as a book. We interrupted Rea (not to be confused with the actor Stephen Rea) in the middle of his West Coast tour to talk about just that, and a lot of other things, over a coffee table.

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Samantha Stratton

Go Grease Cycling!

The song "96,000" from the musical In The Heights blasts over a loud speaker. Twenty or so eager performers face the instructor, Graham LaBass, who encourages us from his head mic, "It's musical theater guys: just because the tempo slows down, doesn't mean we do!"

We pick up the pace, all gazing intently at our reflections in the mirror, trying our best to keep up with the chorus line. This might be a scene from Fame until LaBass exclaims, "Alright guys, back in the saddle!" Suddenly my lofty Broadway fantasy is brought back to the warmly lit cycling room at Up Dog Yoga and Cycling in West Hollywood.

Show Tune Cycle is the unique collaboration between Up Dog cycling teacher Graham LaBass and his fiancée, entertainer and host Ryan O'Connor. O'Connor, who expertly crafts a distinct playlist for every class in addition to hosting "Musical Mondays," a weekly musical nightclub act, assures me that Show Tune Cycle is just the tip of the iceberg, "We are kind of building a little musical theater army here in Los Angeles."

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L.J. Williamson

CicLAvia, like most L.A. events, is a fab chance for people-watching, and though the expected bike jerseys, shorts, and plain T-shirts were in abundance, a few people are beginning to write the style guide for what will hopefully become not only a regular event, but a smashing spectacle. Here are eight different trends spotted on the streets at CicLAvia Sunday.

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Flickr

Just as the threat of seventh-circle levels of gridlock kept most Angelenos at home during Carmageddon weekend, chained to backyard barbecues in quiet desperation, the threat of arrest kept many of the 399 riders who RSVP'd to the 4PACOLYPSE ride's page on Facebook from doing a midnight ride that may, or may not, have had a planned freeway component.

Event organizer Alex Wong sent a message to the page that said, "After the earlier note was sent, contacted by someone with LAPD early this morning with the request to cancel and remove this page.... Many of you wish to fight for bicycling rights and advocacy in LA. There are also some of you that wish to ride on the 405, so let me make this clear: Riding on the closed 405 isn't the way to fight for bicyclists rights in LA."

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Lea Lion

Ashkahn Shahparnia with his work Anything at the Architecture and Design Museum

Even in the art world, where breaking the rules is the golden rule, some things still follow an equation. Take, for example, the gallery opening. It's one part boxed wine, one part background jazz, add some painting/sculpture/etc. and -- presto! -- it's an insta-art show.

That is, unless the show is "Come In! 2: Surf.Skate.Bike," a group exhibit of work by emerging Los Angeles-based artists, on view at the Architecture and Design Museum through July 24. Last week's opening not only broke the rules with live punk rock and Derby Dolls on roller-skates but also fell smack-dab in the middle of the show's run.

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Swank One

Down by the (L.A.) River. That's fixed-gear legend Keo Curry (left) and George Gregor (right).

Sean Martin can tell you about the moment he thought he would die.

Sure, the fixed-gear cyclist who moved to L.A. in 2008 and cycles to work daily had had close calls before but one sunny day, a couple of years ago, at the corner of Melrose Avenue and Rossmore Avenue, he thought he was toast.

The light was green, his side of the busy intersection was unusually empty, he was barreling through it and suddenly a car did 'a left hook,' crossing into his lane from his left side as it turned right into a driveway.

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