Looking for a chance to help Los Angeles become more bike friendly and get paid to do it? The County Cycling Collaborative is hiring a “Bike Wrangler” who will scour the County’s universities, police departments, Metropolitan Transportation Authority and other sources to find used bikes, recover them, and redistribute them.
More information and a full job description are available on the LA County Bicycle Coalition blog.
Deadline for applications is June 7th.
Measure R raised the local sales tax rate to pay for transportation improvements. Cycling and pedestrain projects should get some share of this money, but the amount is still under debate. Please come out to Wednesday’s Transportation Committee meeting at 2pm to continue to support 10% for bikes and peds so that it becomes officially approved. A strong showing at the meeting will make a big difference in getting 10% for bikes and peds!
10% for bikes and peds will directly affect the funding available for bike projects.
When: Wednesday, November 18, 2pm
Where: City Hall, 200 North Spring Street, Los Angeles, Ca 90012. Room 1010
Announcement via Aurisha Smolarski of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition.
SoapBoxLA also has some information on the weird math being used to calculate that 10% number.
The screening of eat!sleep?bikes! was a great night at the Oven. We were able to raise some money for the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition and we got to watch an awesome short film, drink good beer, eat free soy ice cream, drink fresh brewed coffee, and generally mix it up with a group of fellow cyclists and cycling ethusiasts.
We got some coverage in the L.A. Blogosphere, when one of L.A.’s transportation bloggers wrote about the eat!sleep?bikes! screening on his blog, Street Heat.
I took a few photos and put some of them together into a Flickr photo set (click on the photos to read captions):
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
This image was lifted from the C.I.C.L.E. site.
The Bike Oven has been invited to take part in the 8th Annual Nacimiento Tour, providing free bicycle repairs at the start and end point of what promises to be an amazing tour of North East and East Los Angeles.
The free, guided, 8th Annual Nacimiento Tour will take place on Sunday, January 6, 2008 at 11 a.m. (guided tour registration begins at 10 a.m.). The ride begins and ends at the Los Angeles River and Gardens Center located at 570 W. Avenue 26, Los Angeles, CA 90065. You can register for the tour, or take a look at the tour map online, at www.theraretimes.com.
The tour will start at 11 a.m., and wind its way through homes and public displays of East Los Angeles’ rich folk-art nativity scenes. The tour covers the communities of Highland Park, Cypress Park, Lincoln Heights, and Boyle Heights Рa total of 18 miles of bicycle riding at a relazed pace.
For more information, or to RSVP, please contact Lupe Vela by calling (213) 629-2142 or via email at lmvela@w2ows.org.
Continue reading ’8th Annual Nacimiento Tour’
Check out LACBC’s new monthly fundraising event! This month, we are pleased to host a special screening of documentary eat!sleep?bikes! We will be joined by director Sasha Edge, as well as the four cyclists who braved the brutal race on fixed gear bikes.
Screening at 8pm, but come early for the fun, and stay late for the Q&A. Before and after the film, enjoy drinks, snacks and a DJ set by our very own DJ Pig in a Blanket. Plus, enter to win PRIZES in our raffle!
Cover: $5 for members, $10 for non-members. Membership deal: Join tonight for just $30, and get in FREE!
Location: Bike Oven, 3706 N. Figueroa St (at Ave 37), Highland Park 90065
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED to collect contributions and sign up members at the door. Email jennifer@labike.org to volunteer.
I had mentioned earlier that the LACBC was working with the Bike Oven and the Los Angeles Department of City Planning to send in a proposal to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to be awarded a “PLACE” grant.
Well, I slacked on the proposal writing, and the due date (Tuesday, November 13, 2007) didn’t leave me much time to work on the proposal.
So, that’s it. We gave up. No more grant writing, no money, nothing.
I am so depressed.
This is what bicycle advocacy looks like at 4:28 a.m. on a Thursday night.
The Los Angeles County Deparment of Public Health recently setup a grant program to award money to entities in Los Angeles County that can increase levels of physical activity among residents in their daily lives. The grant will pay out over $300,000 during a 3 year and five month period to awardees.
The deadline to submit a Letter of Intent to the county was Friday, October 5, 2007 at 9 a.m.
I had an idea that interested some of the members of the LACBC board of directors, so they decided to work on getting that idea submitted as a proposal to the county.
After a lot of intense phone calling and emailing, Jennifer Klausner, executive director of the LACBC, and Alex Kenefick, an LACBC board member, and Helen Campbell, a planning deputy with Councilman Ed Reyes’ office, lined up an agreement with the Los Angeles Department of City Planning. If my idea was selected to get this grant money, the Planning Department and the LACBC were going to work together to see that the idea would get implemented into a Community Plan and a set of low-cost physical improvements in an area of a Community Plan.
I doubt the old Planning Deparment would have cared much about this whole thing – but under new department head Gail Goldberg, things in Planning are really changing. Her department was able to respond to this idea rapidly and effectively (a sentence I never thought I’d utter about a city department in my whole life). A nudge from our local Councilman’s Office couldn’t have hurt our chances either.
So, with an agreement to implement my idea secured on the Wednesday before the deadline, Alex Kenefick went into over drive. He showed up at the Bike Oven’s doors on Thursday night, midnight bag of tacos in hand, and blazed through the details of the Bike Oven’s idea – putting together a pretty decent Letter of Intent.
Hopefully, if the county likes my idea, the LACBC will get a large chunk of money to implement it (working with the Planning Department, of course). If things work out, the Bike Oven might be able to obtain some of this funding through the LACBC. We might earn money for the Oven by implementing pro-bicycle policies! We’ll see how this all works out in a few weeks, but I am hopeful we’ll make it to the next round in the process.
Bike Oven’s 2007 PLACE Grant Letter of Intent [bikeoven.com]
Policies for Livable, Active, Communities and Environments Grant RFI [lapublichealth.org]
Los Angeles County Bicycle Coaltion Homepage [labike.org]
Councilman Ed Reyes’ Homepage [lacity.org]