Last Sunday, on November 4th a group of enthusiastic cyclists and walkers gathered together at Mercado de Paloma to be guided by the RideSouth LA coalition to explore South LA on safe bike and walk routes that investigate the healthy food options around the area. As opposed to our last walk and ride, cyclists tremendously outnumbered the walkers. With around 30 participants on bikes and a cadre of 5 walkers – both groups were ready to enjoy a explore what healthy food in South LA looks like.
The walkers set off with the primary purpose to examine the differences between two major supermarkets in the area – Fresh & Easy and El Superior. These two markets are very different in terms of size, food offerings and customer base. Fresh & Easy is much smaller and targets on-the-go students with many ready-to-eat meals in their food selection (see picture). El Superior on the other hand is a much larger store with many more options and catered to many of the Latino families in the neighborhood.
On the Sunday morning of October 7th thousands of cyclists and walkers came out to South LA to enjoy a great day out at CicLAvia. Major roads intersecting downtown LA were closed for the day, making it safe for people to ride or walk through the neighborhood with lots of entertainment along the way.
Our team with RideSouthLA seized this day to distribute our latest map (see our pictures), showing people exactly where they could find healthy food around the South LA area. Our healthy food map, which is available for download in draft form, also shows what routes are and unsafe to use to get to these destinations. We made the map based on data collected with a group of teenagers from local middle and high schools, who walked and cycled through the community and took pictures of healthy food places encountered along the way.
What did people think? On the day of CicLAvia, we handed out over 300 maps. Everyone was very engaged and we managed to collect feedback from 85 respondents from 60 different ZIP codes. The map below shows which parts of Los Angeles our respondents come from:
Hey everyone! If you don’t have plans on October 24th yet, please join us at MCM’s 3rd Annual Bicycle Awards. Tickets to the fundraiser, where we will be supporting low income cyclists, cost $45. The ticket includes a full dinner, live/silent actions and tons of fun entertainment on the night!
We would be excited to see you there. The event will take place at La Fonda Supper Club. Click here for the full address, ticket purchases and more information.
Join the Black & Brown Unity Ride on Sunday October 21st 2012! We will start off in Boyle Heights and finish at the Watts Labor Community Auction Center.
Show your support and join us for this lovely Sunday outing!
Yesterday on October 7th was the 5th CicLAvia and our team was in force. We handed out drafts of our new healthy food map, and asked people what they thought. Do you have ideas on what else should be on the map? Let us know! Here are a few pictures from the day…
We setup underneath this plane with a booth to hand out the maps:
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (wearing a helmet) stopped by, and USC’s François Bar (in red shirt) told him more about the map:
Sandra McNeill of TRUST South LA was handing out maps, and asking passersby for their ideas. Also, we gathered email addresses of those who wanted to hear more about our upcoming walk in November of healthy food spots:
Dana Chinn of USC with students Jeff Tamaru (business) and Richelle Gribble (fine arts/social entrepreneurship) — note also the apples from CSU in the foreground!
George Villanueva of USC in full force, surveying participants about the map:
A girl bikes by a stack of folded maps — I wonder, in 10 years what will healthy food look like in South LA?
Have more pics about the release of this map? Let us know!
On September 9th we will be hosting an exploration of healthy food options focusing on the area immediately surrounding the newly built Expo Line train near the University of Southern California.
We will be exploring Safe Routes and Healthy Food resources on a nice sunday afternoon in South Los Angeles.
Route focuses on: King Blvd, Vernon ave, Western Blvd and Adams Blvd.
Event will consist of your choice of a neighborhood Walk or Bike Ride.
Hosted by the Real Rydaz on July 1st, this ride began at Exposition Park, stopped by Manchester Square and Helen Keller Park. The fair continued with shout-outs to attending bike clubs, bicycle raffles, and more.
To get a sense of the scale, here’s a quick video we took as the ride began after a break (we counted 135+ riders!):
Share your pictures and see more from the community on the event’s Facebook page!
Here’s a video we shot last week of some new “map origami”, demonstrated by professional bookbinder Rebecca Smyrl:
Here’s the folding guide for the first map that Rebecca demonstrated: (Click on the image to enlarge. Hint: you can easily learn this by printing or drawing the lines on a sheet of paper, and using the solid lines as mountains (folding up) and the dotted as valleys (folding down) for your final selection. I found this was do-able just from watching the video and folding a print-out.)
We are more intrigued with what we’re calling “map origami” each day. Rebecca tells us that these techniques come from Pamela Spitzmueller (presumably at a workshop like this). We learned this folding technique using a hand-drawn instruction diagram; if you’d like to see it, let us know!
More map origami to come… including the infamous Miura fold used on solar panel arrays…
Here is a hand-drawn map South LA’s Eastside by Eric Brightwell, as exhibited at the 1650 Gallery yesterday (Pendersleigh & Sons Cartography). We heard about these maps from an LA Times story on Brightwell. To see the full size image, click on it:
The gallery wall and book give some ideas on how hand-drawn maps can be gathered in a social setting:
