2024 Pasadena Bike Month Wrap-Up
Did you join us for a Bike Month 2024 event? There was a lot to choose from!
We started off with National Ride a Bike Day, Bike to School and Bike to Work days (May 5, May 8 and May 16). Day One staff and Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition (PasCSC) volunteers staffed a booth with coffee and snacks outside City Hall along with Around the Cycle, who offered quick tune-ups. We were visited by many of the people we see on our regular rides, as well as Pasadena Director of the Department of Libraries and Information Services Tim McDonald, Donson Liu and Scott Johnson from the Pasadena Department of Transportation, teaching staff from the Kaiser School of Medicine, ArtCenter staff, and more than one person on their way to JPL.
The month's first official ride was an African American History Ride that took us through the area around the 710 Stub. Pasadena NAACP President Alan Edson and former Pasadena NAACP President Gary Moody recalled the history of the vibrant Black and Japanese neighborhoods that were wiped out when the freeway section was built. At one stop, they helped attendees envision the elementary school that used to stand where there's now the Vons and surrounding shops at California and Pasadena Avenue. A special treat was getting to tour Friendship Baptist Church, which still stands at Dayton and DeLacey. The beautiful and historic church was a neighborhood anchor. Over the years, the congregation hosted a long list of luminaries who came through town, including Martin Luther King, Jr. A successful philanthropic campaign funded the church's renovation several years back.
I was privileged to lead the first-ever Women of Pasadena ride. We made a big loop starting at City Hall, where we recalled the first woman (and African American woman) mayor of the city, and admired the Julia Morgan-designed former YWCA (which will soon be preserved and redeveloped), and the Civil War memorial in Memorial Park, designed by a famous woman sculptor, Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson. After a coast down into the Arroyo, where we appreciated the statue of soccer legend Brandy Chastain and recalled the 1999 Women's World Cup (with one participant who was actually there!), we climbed all the way up to Pasadena's woman-owned bookstore, Octavia's Bookshelf, and zoomed back down to Old Pasadena to enjoy treats at a woman-owned bakery, Delight Pastry.
On the Art Ride, the City’s Public Art Coordinator, Corey Dunlap, guided us to a number of the city's eight locations reserved for a rotating series of public art pieces. We got up close and personal with the “Labradorite Priestess” at Washington and Glen, and admired “Arteclettica” (the big doggie on Lake Avenue next to the freeway entrance) from across the street. It was especially nice to get right under “Arroyo” on Walnut at E. Foothill. Pay attention when you go by that one at night—it's got lights. We also stopped by a couple of the city's permanent pieces of public art, including the Robinson Memorial across the street from City Hall, and “Topiaries” at Union and Catalina, which you can enjoy from the Union Street bike lane. DID YOU KNOW? There's one public art location in each Council district and the pieces rotate every four years. You could be part of the residents' committee that selects the pieces!
One of our longer rides followed the route of the historic elevated cycle track that was intended to go from Central Park in Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles. The Remnants Ride took us along Edmondson Alley and through South Pasadena into Highland Park, Monterey Hills, and Montecito Heights, but not quite to downtown. Along the way, we stopped to hear about the many challenges faced by Horace Dobbins as he tried to create a new piece of bicycle infrastructure. Bicycles were all the rage in the 1910s and 1920s, but Henry Huntington, owner of the Pasadena branch of the Red Car (and of Huntington Library fame), refused to grant Dobbins permission to cross over the tracks. Soon after, the automobile began its long ascent to dominance. A few participants grabbed the A Line light rail at Heritage Square, but the rest of us biked back to Pasadena along some of our newer bicycle infrastructure, including bike lanes along Monterey and Grand. (You can learn a little more about the Cycleway from this recent LAist piece: https://laist.com/news/transportation/california-cycleway-los-angeles-pasadena-biking-horace-dobbins )
Our last big ride was in fact the biggest ride: the fan favorite Ice Cream Ride, which brought participants to FIVE different places for tasty treats: Kinrose Creamery, L’Moon, La Mercadita Monarcha, The Stand, and Real Food Daily. “Mostly ice cream, a little bit of bike ride,” warned ride leader Claire Zeng, but isn't the ice cream the most important part? This was Claire's last ride with PasCSC for a while—she's off to Barcelona for graduate school, after many years of leading and marshalling rides and raising her voice in support of better bike and pedestrian infrastructure. We'll miss you, Claire!
The last ride of Bike Month 2024 was the Family Ride, a short, slow roll along the Union Street bike lane and a family picnic in Memorial Park. A small group rode from the Playhouse Village Park to the end of the Union Street protected bike lane at Hill and then back again. Colin Bogart, Day One Active Transportation Director and PasCSC volunteer, explained the details of the bike lane and how to navigate it by bicycle, with additional comments from Transportation Advisory Commission member Joe Fenstermaker and PasCSC volunteers Christy Moision, Peter Liepmann and Julia Liepmann.
Rides weren't all we did during Bike Month! Six local bike shops (every one that offers ebikes!) set up booths at Jefferson Park for our first-ever E Bike Expo. A steady stream of the e-bike curious chatted with vendors and took a wide variety of bikes out for a spin around the neighborhood, including cargo and long-tail (for carrying kids). We spotted several regular PasCSC ride attendees and one member of the Pasadena City Council (who brought his brand new ride to the Ice Cream Ride the following weekend, congratulations on your purchase!).
Remember the rebates for e-bikes that the City of Pasadena made available in a pilot program in mid 2023? If you're considering adding an ebike to your own personal transportation choices, the Pasadena Department of Water & Power will be offering a new rebate program (with, we expect, a bigger pot of funding) for Pasadena residents who buy their ride from a Pasadena bike shop starting in July.
Last but definitely not least, we had a bike-in screening of the documentary “The Engine Inside,” which follows the lives of six bike riders around the world. Their bicycling (and the bike-related work they do) tests their limits, helps them heal, creates community, transforms lives, and creates a better world. Throop Church was our gracious host. Attendees enjoyed convenient and secure bike parking in the beautiful enclosed back patio next to the Throop auditorium. If you missed the screening, you can still see the film online at https://www.redbull.com/us-en/films/the-engine-inside
Most of this year's rides were big enough to make new friends but small enough to be cozy. There were events all over Los Angeles for Bike Month so (unlike for our regular rides) we had lots of competition. We know Pasadena is a special place and our rides, including the Bike Month 2024 rides, attracted participants from all over the region. We had participants who had never been on a group ride, and we saw frequent riders. We even had one or two who brought their dogs along.
I am pretty sure we had more riders on ebikes than in previous years. I'm far from the first to note that ebikes are opening up cycling to a wider range of people, especially folks who might have previously not felt confident sharing the road with cars.
After taking last year off, the City of Pasadena provided sponsorship and support for Bike Month in 2024, and they've already committed to Bike Month 2025. And we're already thinking about how to have an outstanding Bike Month 2025. What would you like to see next year?
