Tafarai Bayne of TRUST SouthLA and John Jones of ESR launch the map at CicLAvia 2012 (Photo credit: Sahra Sulaiman)
Next events in South LA around bicycling and social justice include:
- May is bike month!Metro has events posted on their site as does LACBC check them out!
- May 9, 2013 Complete Streets Forum will be convening from 6-8pm at 3731 Stocker St. Los Angeles CA 90008 (CHC office).
- May 15, 2013 Ride of Silence. In Los Angeles CA from 7pm-10pm. Click here for more information.
- May 19, 2013 Mobility advisory Council from 10-11am.
- May 19, 2013 Complete Streets Ride 11am-3pm. The ride will be meeting at 4331 S. Main St. Los Angeles CA 90037.Check out the event on Facebook here!
- July 14, 2013 Black Kids on Bike and LACBC (Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition) presents Melrose Art Ride from 2-6pm. Click here for more information! Or visit them on Facebook.
- Check out the cellphone photos from our recent mapping events, including a planners’ tour of East Side biking and a Downtown Food Walk, both on December 8th. All pictures are published live from the cell phone cameras of the people who came along!
- Regular rides in South LA are growing; we’ll list any we know about. If you know of any we should list, let us know! Also check out the event pages of our local bike clubs like ESR. (And let us know about more clubs we should list here.)
- Sign up to be notified of our next big ride!
- Missed a past ride? Visit our events archive. It includes the July 1, 2012 South LA Peace, Love and Family Ride & Fair, hosted by the Real Rydaz; the June 17,2012 Return to the Map ride; the May 26,2012 City Lites ride, and more.
Our blog with recent stories are always below this status post. So far, we have distributed about 2000+ copies of the Watts Ride map.
Complete Streets Ride
INFORMATION: The COMPLETE STREETS RIDE is from 11AM-3PM. Our ride will focus on the corridors along MLK Blvd, Crenshaw Blvd, Vernon Ave, and Central Ave. We will study these corridors to better envision what complete streets development can look like.
DETAILS: For more details visit out Facebook event page here!
KNOW ANY JOURNALIST?: Invite the press and community correspondents to the event.
WHO IS WELCOME?: We welcome everyone including children to join us on this ride!
STAY CONNECTED: Sign up to be notified for future events here!
Join us on April 6th at 10am for a great ride from one of South LA’s great Healthy Food and Culture spaces, The Mercado La Paloma, through some of our distinctive neighborhoods to Normandie Ave Elementary for Earth Day South LA. It will be a great day of community building and healthy activity that will close with an annual community festival celebrating sustainable and healthy living! We will particularly celebrating our new Healthy Food Map for South L.A., which we launched at a ride in March.
- For details: See our Facebook event page for this ride — a great way to see who is coming, share pictures, etc. We’ll meet at 10am at Mercado (get directions; it’s just east of the 110 freeway near Exposition and Grand)
- Retweet our announcement on Twitter!
- Know any journalists? Invite the press and community correspondents to cover the event live.
- Stay connected. As always, sign up to be notified of future events. We’ll also post pictures etc. after the ride.
Flyer images (or get the full PDF):
(Click for full size version.)
(Click for full size version.)
(or get the full PDF)
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Healthy Food Ride South LA from Annenberg Innovation Lab on Vimeo.
Check out the NEW VIDEO from the Healthy Food Map kickoff ride!
On March 3rd, I got the privilege to join the Healthy Food Map ride and shoot a documentary about the event. It was my first time riding with the Ride South LA crew and it was an amazing experience.
The ride was a great way to see community research and outreach in action. It brought together a diverse group interested in spreading knowledge about healthy food in South LA. The bike ride created a spectacular event that not only drew attention to the map but also embodied the types of healthy lifestyles that the map advocates for.
The Healthy Food Map ride was composed of a wide array of South LA residents, cyclists, USC faculty and students, and partner organizations. The organizations include: T.R.U.S.T. South LA, Community Services Unlimited (CSU), Eastside Riders Bike Club, Los Ryderz, USC Annenberg Lab, USC Metamorphosis, and Laboratory On the Social Frontier (LOSF). The map was made possible by funding from USC Community Outreach.
Along the route, cyclist visited community gardens at Normandie Elementary and healthy food locations such as Mama’s Chicken and Mercado la Paloma. The locations are only a few key nodes in the larger network of healthy food projects and stores in the area. Yet, many participants I interviewed were astonished and surprised by these hidden gems in the community.
The map was created by a group of South LA students to identify healthy food locations in their neighborhoods. The map focuses on pedestrian and bike routes to help support those without a car. The ride itself was a celebration of bike culture and imagining what a bike friendly Los Angeles could look like. As the riders streamed through the neighborhood streets, South LA residents often came out of their homes to photograph or cheer on the group.
This is just the first step in an ongoing campaign to spread the map and increase awareness of Healthy Food options in South LA. Please make sure to download a copy and spread the map however you can. And keep a lookout for future rides! The next one is April 6!
On March 3rd 2013, we hosted a bike parade to launch our new Healthy Food Map for South L.A., featuring live delivery of vegetables by bicycle.
- Our ride video with interviews and more
- A zipcode map of where people came from for the ride
- Press coverage
included NBC 4, KPCC’s OnCentral, USC Press, and more — see the full press list.
- Photos from the ride: coming soon, for now, here’s our informal album
- Goals include participatory mapping to promote bike friendly streets, distributing the Healthy Food map we made, starting a public conversation about the future of South L.A. for bicycles, food, and sustainable development.
- Coordination & Outreach:
- Facebook event page.
- Retweet our announcement! Partners are still unfolding — let us know if you want in. We include TRUST S LA, Community Services Unlimited, and the ParTour/Mobile Lab/Metamorphosis groups at USC Annenberg.
- Know any journalists? Invite the press and community correspondents to cover the event live.
- Schedule and agenda
- Workshop starts at 10am at Mercado (get directions; it’s just east of the 110 freeway near Exposition and Grand)
- Riders depart by 11am. Going South toward Normandie Elementary. Probably under two hours round-trip.
- Stay connected. As always, sign up to be notified of future events. We’ll also post pictures etc. after the ride.
RideSouthLA contributed a chapter to the “Critical Making” book project led by Garnet Hertz, which will be featured this weekend at MOCA’s Art Book Fair. “Critical Making” was hand-made and only 300 copies exist, some of which have been placed in Special Collections at Stanford Library as well as the Royal College of Art Library and the Kingston University London Library.
From the book site:
A handmade book project by Garnet Hertz in the field of critical technical practice and critically-engaged maker culture. Critical making is defined by Ratto as exploring how hands-on productive work – making – can supplement and extend critical reflection on the relations between digital technologies and society. It also can be thought of as an appeal to the electronic DIY “maker movement” to be critically engaged with culture, history and society.
Our section is in the “Critical Making – Places” portion, titled Fold, Ride, Share and Rebrand: a Low Tech Crowdmap for Social Change and Biking in South Los Angeles. Our map is also tucked into at least one of the envelopes.
We are just beginning to explore how this book will be useful for our community — more to come! More pictures below…
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Below are a few reflections from Otto Khera of the RideSouthLA team, who joined the ride. For an extended discussion, see coverage of the ride from Sahra Sulaiman. The ride was part of the Neighborhood Bike Ambassadors Program – South LA organized by the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition.
On Saturday, December 8, 2012 a committed team of Los Angeles City planners led by David Somers together with cyclist mover and shaker and Streets Blog LA South LA beat columnist Sahra Sulaiman set off on bicycles to Watts from downtown LA in the early morning. The goal: To understand and document the most pressing cycling and walking infrastructure needs in the Watts area based on the local feedback from expert cyclists from the area.
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Save the date everyone! We will be previewing our first healthy food map on Saturday, January 12th, 2013 in Los Angeles. We want your feedback. Our demo will happen alongside a Garden Gateway workshop and tree giveaway from our partner CSU.
See the flyer below for details on CSU’s event. We will demo the map toward the end of the free gardening workshop from 9am-12noon, and probably a bit after 11am at the EXPO Center/CSU Urban Farm, 3980 S. Bill Robertson Lane. LA, CA 90037 (Corner of King Blvd & Bill Robertson Lane. Formerly Menlo Ave. Next to the senior center).
Here’s the event flyer:
If you want to know more about our upcoming events and community projects, sign up for our newsletter.
UPDATE: after the walk, Nicola Twilley assembled a wonderful picture gallery and map of pictures.
Today we are working with Foodprint LA on a walking tour that will provide “an inside look at downtown LA’s cold storage infrastructure, caffeine artisans, and future food market, followed by a food map presentation over happy hour drinks. The walking tour will take place from 1pm to 5pm on Saturday, December 8, and the party will follow on immediately afterward, from 5 to 7pm.”
Starting points during the walk: live picture stream (showing those tagged ‘foodwalk’); and live map of food stories downtown.
For more information:
- Our related project to produce a South LA healthy food map in a participatory fashion.
- About the philosophy and technology behind this innovation called ParTour
- About Ride South LA, our host project which seeks to connect physical activity with community development and health.
