C.R.A.N.K. MOB

I am so looking forward to this Saturday night, especially since I missed Midnight Ridazz last weekend because I was busy in Vegas getting in a car accident and losing all of my money.

They said it could not be done. When confronted with the very concept of it, they would just scoff or snicker and pompously state, “Why that’s prepostourous! By George, that would never work!” But in a world ridden with stuffy naysayers, a mob of rag tag rapscallion fanatics set forth to prove them wrong. This mob will send a message –nay, a philosophy — out to the world which is so innovative and so boundlessly thought-provoking that it will, without a doubt, be heard on a larger-than-life scale. Soon enough, everyone will know:

YOU CAN HAVE FUN ON A BICYCLE!

This month, C.R.A.N.K. MOB will convene at Sawtelle Blvd & La Grange Ave in West LA. Look for the big red brick building on Sawtelle, two blocks North of Olympic Blvd. We’ll meet at 9:30pm and ride at 10:00pm.

You can expect more bikes, more costumes, more rambunctious tomfoolery and more fun! Bring party favors, noisemakers and your crank joose! Of course this is Halloween month so dress to distress!

This is a theme ride… this month’s theme: ANY THEME.
Make it what you want.

And, as always, in true C.R.A.N.K. MOB fashion…

…be prepared to party.

More info on the Midngiht Ridazz site

Mountain Biking!

I finally took Rosie out for a spin in the dirt for the first time since I got her in July. Not only was it her first time, but it was also the first time I’ve ever ridden a bike on very technical single track. I’ve only ever ridden on very straightforward fire roads, and even that hardly ever and not in many many years.

I rode with the Mountaineerzz, which may have been a little over my head for just starting out, but I think I did alright considering. At the end of the ride, I admitted to the ride leader that it was the first time I had done anything like that, to which he responded, “Wow, not bad. You definitely went from green star t black star. Those were some pretty difficult trails and you did pretty well.” So that’s encouraging.

It was at the same time some of the most fun I’ve had and the most terrified I’ve been on a bike in a while. I also had a fair amount of minor spills and am pretty sore today as a result. I think I may actually like climbing up hills more than charging down them. My fully rigid bike is certainly more suited for that and going up, unlike going down, doesn’t make me want to crap my pants.

I’m not exactly sure about the route, but I think it went something like this, starting at Sunset and Fairfax and heading up Nichols Canyon to enter a fire road. From here we were able to see all the way to Long Beach and Catalina Island. The air was unbelievably clear. The fire road eventually took us up to Mulholland. From Mulholland, we headed to Fryman Canyon and down some trails (this was the terrifying part) to another road that took us to Wilacre Park. From there we went up and down some more single track before crossing over to Franklin Canyon zooming down a fire road (this I could handle and was an absolute blast) until we hit Beverly and eventually Sunset, riding Sunset Strip back to the starting point.

Being of the urban cycling persuasion, I’ve never really like the idea of driving out somewhere to ride a bike. I had thought that, with that mindset, opportunities for mountain biking would be slim. Discovering that there are a lot of fun trails an easy riding distance away was pretty surprising and has me now researching other places to ride within city limits. Closer to my neighborhood than yesterday’s ride are Griffith Park, Elysian Park, and Ernest E. Debs Regional Park. I’ll have to see if there’s anything fun in any of those areas. Whee!

L.A.’s Bicycle District

I was excited to see a post on Metroblogging Los Angeles mentioning the Bicycle District this morning, as well as a link to that blog post from LAist.

What is the Bicycle District? About six months ago on an internet forum, L.A. Fixed, Sally aka Fixpert dropped the idea of establishing some kind of bicycle neighborhood in the area around Heliotrope and Melrose (aka HelMel or HelMo) where there is already a thriving core of bike activity comprised of the Bicycle Kitchen, Orange 20 Bikes, the cyclist-run vegan restaurant Pure Luck, and the cyclist-friendly and ever-popular ice creamery Scoops. As it is, that area isn’t really a part of any established neighborhood, lying somewhere between Wilshire Center, K-Town, Little Armenia, Silver Lake, and Virgil Village (who knew that Virgil Village is an official neighborhood, anyway?).

On the L.A. Fixed thread, we tossed around a few names. I had actually already been thinking of that area as the “Bicycle District” in my own head, like the Fashion District or the Toy District in downtown, so I shared my suggestion online and it caught on. Finally, to solidify the moniker Sally put together a sign and posted it at the corner of Heliotrope and Melrose on July 1st, 2007, during the Bicycle Film Festival block party. I made a batch of spoke cards and handed them out to anyone who wanted to represent.

Fast forward to a few months later and it seems the Bicycle District is finally spreading beyond the small internet circle of L.A. Fixed members. Fixpert lists several other references to the name that have appeared in the past, but these latest appearances on Metroblogging and LAist are encouraging since they’re read by a pretty wide audience. Sean Bonner, who wrote the Metroblogging post, even suggests that City Council folks consider making the neighborhood official.

I don’t think I’d go that far. While it would have the positive impact of demonstrating Los Angeles’ commitment to promoting alternate modes of transportation, I prefer the idea of the Bicycle District as being something underground. Additionally, there’s already a movement to designate that area as “East Hollywood”, and their ethos of recognizing and celebrating the area’s diversity is certainly more appropriate. For my part, official or not, I’m just happy that there’s a place a cyclist can call home. (Although I do live about four blocks away from HelMel in Virgil Village so the neighborhood is essentially home for me anyways.)

The Wet Stuff

Finally! Rain!

I group around Seattle and for the longest time I hated the rain. My senior year of high school, it rained a record-breaking 90+ days straight. Take that, Noah. That much constant rain definitely puts a damper on one’s mood and it was definitely a factor in my decision to attend college in sunny southern California.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love sunshine. But it’s only rained about 2 inches in Los Angeles this year and I have been feeling a very deep and primal yearning for a change of pace in the form of precipitation.

A few years back, I saw David Garza, one of my favorite musicians, performing at the Largo. He covered the Eddie Rabbitt song above, mostly as a joke. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find an mp3 of that performance, but ever since, whenever it rains I’ve busted out the tune. It’s a deliciously guilty pleasure.

Midnight Ridazz

My favorite L.A. activity in all the world is going down in t-48 hours which is Midnight Ridazz. This month’s theme is a a revival of last year’s, Swarm the Pier II. We’ll be riding from the Bicycle District in east Hollywood to the Santa Monica pier.

Some people will be dressed up as bugs, myself most likely not included since I don’t have anything that would fit the bill. It’ll be sixteen miles out to Santa Monica and probably twelve miles or so back. If anybody would like to join me, let me know. Ride on!

And to get you pumped up about riding bikes, here’s a fun little gift from Japan:

L’shana Tova!

No, I’m not Jewish. I just happen to work for a very Jewish company. One of the benefits of this is that I get to celebrate Rosh Hashanah by not going to work tomorrow. Not that it matters as things are pretty busy at the moment and I’ll be working from home tomorrow anyways. But it’s a nice change of pace. I’ve been having trouble focusing at the office lately. I don’t know why, exactly, but I think changing the setting up will help me be productive tomorrow. My current plan is to get some breakfast at one of the many fabulous local diners then head to a local coffee shop with wi-fi, plop down with my laptop and itty-bitty Wacom tablet and get down to bid-ness. I’m always fascinated by the world that exists from 9-6 as it’s something I only get mere glimpses of during my lunch break. In L.A. especially it seems like there are a lot of people who have copious amounts of free time and I’ve got to wonder what the hell it is they’re doing! Are they unemployed? Self-employed? Trust-fund children?

Until then, I’m celebrating my bisected work week with a little malted beverage action. At first I was thinking some Oregon honey beer would be appropriate, seeing as apples and honey are a big thing for this holiday. But instead I decided to crack open a bottle of He’Brew Pomegranate Ale that I’ve had sitting in my fridge since the Beer Cruise in August. It’s not bad. A decent bodied ale with the pomegranates making a very distinctive appearance, maybe a little too heavy-handedly. Or rather, if you’re looking for the pomegranate taste it’s definitely there, but it exists more as an afterthought such that the taste doesn’t really lend itself to the rest of the flavor. It was still pretty refreshing. Not altogether memorable, but ’tis the season.

Ten Bridges Ride

I’ve got a few fun activities on the docket for this weekend including a party and a beach gathering. Even better, this is the first time in a long time that poor Bronwyn has had a weekend off. Friday night I plan on kicking things off with the IAAL/MAF’s Ten Bridges Ride.

Of the activities I enjoy the most in Los Angeles, riding a bicycle around at night ranks pretty high. Riding a bicycle around at night in downtown ranks even higher. Riding a bicycle aroud at night in downtown across the bridges that go over the L.A. river is better yet. After-hours, downtown takes on some kind of magic as it is practically uninhabited and, unfettered by pesky cars, you’re actually able to absorb the beauty of the area, especially of the striking skyline views as seen on the L.A. river bridges, that might go otherwise unnoticed. A ride that goes over ALL the bridges in one night seems too cool to pass up. Plus look at that flyer! Straight up gangsta! (Mobsta?)

This will be taking the place of the month’s usually scheduled RIDE-Arc, which is a night bicycle ride with a focus on exploring local architecture, as RIDE-Arc’s organizer is currently recovering from a broken arm. Like RIDE-Arc, there will be stops to dispense a little bit of history about the bridges. Details for the Ten Bridges Ride are available on the Midnight Ridazz website. Anybody else want to go?

And Speaking of Claremont…

L.A. is in the high-90’s today. We shouldn’t be complaining, though. Yowch. Thankfully, Mays are a bit more comfortable out in the Inland Empire so we hopefully won’t have any wedding guests spontaneously combusting.

Wedding Planning

If you know me in real life, chances are you know that I’m recently engaged to this lovely woman. If you didn’t know that, well now you do. Huzzah! I put together a web site, jonwyn.com and was planning on using that as the repository for all things Jon + Bronwyn (Jonwyn), but haven’t gotten around to doing too much with that site. So for the time being at least, I’ll be writing about the wedding process here.

After a month-and-a-half of planning, we’ve finally set a date and a venue. I expect that this was probably the most difficult decision we had to make. Two of the places we seriously considered were the Marvimon in Chinatown, and the Castle Green in Pasadena. I’ll say straight out that the Marvimon was our favorite of all the venues we toured. It was originally built to showcase automobiles in the early twentieth century. The owners found it and converted it into a loft, tearing out parts of the roof to reveal beautiful wooden rafters, and the whole roof entirely in the back to create an enclosed garden. The space was so intimate and unique, classic and historical yet modern and hip. It best matched our tastes and personalities more than anywhere else. The problem was the price (at $5,500 plus additional necessary clean up, staffing, and valet costs it was our most expensive option) and the capacity. It could really only hold about 120 seated, and Bronwyn and I have big families. Our guest list will probably approach the 150 to 200 range. Additionally, while the venue and atmosphere match who we are, there was concern over whether our numerous relatives would be comfortable there, seeing as it’s located in a more downtown and urban place than some would be comfortable with.

The Castle Green would’ve been slightly cheaper than the Marvimon, and in the more tourist-friendly Pasadena. While it didn’t have exactly the same hip vibe that the Marvimon had, its Moorish and Spanish architecture and interior design are extremely charming and unique, which we dug a lot. Most importantly, we’d be able to host all of our guests. We liked it, but we weren’t absolutely madly in love with it like we were with the Marvimon. So the question then was whether or not we spend all this money on something with which we weren’t 100%.

What we finally ended up doing was choosing to go with our mutual alma mater, Pomona College. We only finalized this decision a few days ago and I’ve been increasingly satisfied ever since. To be honest, at first we tossed around the Pomona idea jokingly. We’re still rather fresh graduates, I in ‘04 and her in ‘06, so the idea of heading back to school felt too soon. But the more we thought about it, the better an idea it seemed and it soon became one of our top three choices. First off, we both have personal connections to the place. It’s where we met and it’s where we spent four years of our lives. The place where we would have the reception is the school’s ballroom which is where we spent A LOT of time (we were both on the ballroom dance team). We could even do school-related inside-jokey stuff, like ride off in a “Just Married” golf cart. Second, it’s an extremely beautiful campus. Living there for so long day-in and day-out, one almost forgets that. Third, it is DIRT CHEAP. Seriously. To book the ballroom, all one needs to do is pay for catering, which is $45-$50 a heard. That’s pretty much industry standard for catering alone most other places. At Pomona, the price includes venue, tables, chairs, linens, and flatware. Right there we saved ourselves $5000.

Oddly enough, Pomona being so affordable made it less desirable than the Castle Green for the longest time. At least in my head, I had the silly idea that because we’d be paying much less it wouldn’t be quite as impressive an extravaganza. Truth is, that’s bullcrap. It sounds stupid now saying it out loud, but that’s essentially what I was feeling and that kind of thinking is a product of the wedding industry machine that encourages couples to spend, spend, spend to make things “perfect.” It’s an influence we’ve both been trying to avoid, but it’s something that’s not hard not to get swept up by.

Not until we had received some very sage advice was I able to get over this. Basically, one needs to really prioritize what’s important. We could spend our money to choose some fantastic, elegant, chic, exotic locale, or we could spend the money on, say, traveling around Europe for two months. What’s more important? Some people do want the fantasy wedding and that’s fine. Me and Bronwyn? We want the traveling.

This put other things in perspective, too. We want our wedding to be special, memorable, and fun (emphasis on the fun), but in the end it’s just one day, perfection is impossible, and memories don’t come with a price tag. A place is just a place and a wedding is not about a place, it’s about bringing people together to share in a moment.

So there we go. The wedding is at the end of May. If we can just keep focused with a healthy dose of perspective everything should be smooth sailing from here on out, right? I guess we’ll find out.

Fuck It Dude, Let’s Ride

Time to start off the weekend with some bicycle fun. I’ll be going out on the Lebowski Ride starting near USC. I don’t know what to expect, but I do know I’ll be digging up the old pleather pants and dressing up as a Nihilist. No bowling ball, though. I don’t have one and I wouldn’t want to lug around the spare pounds.

To get myself pumped up, I’m watching the movie, though I suppose I could always just watch the abbreviated version.

My original plan for the evening was to go on The Bad Idea Ride which is going to be an 80-mile ride across four counties starting at midnight. Unfortunately, I only had four hours of sleep last night due to a long evening of poker with friends. I’m thinking The Bad Idea Ride would be a really be a bad idea for me. At least I’ve got options. I love this city.