The Magic of CicLAvia

CicLAvia turns 10 miles of LA streets into a safe, fun open space for walk­ing, bicy­cling, skat­ing, jog­ging and see­ing the city in a whole new way.  It hap­pened once in 2010, twice in 2011 and it may hap­pen three times for 2012.

The first time I expe­ri­enced CicLAvia, it was Sun­day, Octo­ber 20, 2010.  The streets were very quiet and instead of cars zoom­ing by, we had bicy­cles casu­ally pass­ing by the thou­sands.  I got ready really late and didn’t bring my bicy­cle.  I just walked a cou­ple miles with a friend and the entire time I thought, “Wow, why am I walk­ing?  I always bike.”  The walk­ing was relax­ing though and I was super impressed by all amount of peo­ple that showed up.  After they opened the streets back up to nor­mal traf­fic, I imme­di­ately real­ized that walk­ing was not peace­ful any­more.  I was breath­ing in exhaust fumes and my ears were inun­dated with the rum­ble of cars on the way back to my car.

I was happy to hear that for 2011, they decided to try it twice, one in April and one in Octo­ber.  They were both great suc­cesses with nearly 100,000 par­tic­i­pants every time.

After that ride was over, I thought, if this hap­pens next year, this will slowly cul­ti­vate the cul­ture of the city.  For the upcom­ing 2012 one, I’m hop­ing to be able to bring out the dou­ble­plus­mu­sic trailer as well.

Video to get a feel for CicLAvia

 

More Info

How to get to a CicLAvia sec­tion
You have sev­eral options, includ­ing group bicy­cle rides that depart from dif­fer­ent parts of LA to get to the route.

Event Flier with Map
LA’s Biggest Block Party (PDF)

http://www.ciclavia.org/files/ciclavia_100911_flyer_web-2995.pdf

Click Attend­ing
Face­book CicLAvia 4.15.12 event

Land­marks along the route by “The Mil­i­tant Angeleno”

Can I enjoy CicLAvia if I don’t ride a bike?

Yes!  Peo­ple are find­ing new uses for the street every time.  If you have a bicy­cle, I rec­om­mend you use it, but if you don’t, there are lots of activ­i­ties along the route that you don’t need a bike to par­tic­i­pate in.  At pre­vi­ous CicLAvias, peo­ple have been seen run­ning, walk­ing dogs, rollerblad­ing, gath­er­ing together to play music, par­tic­i­pat­ing in impromptu ten­nis matches, dodge­ball, pic­nick­ing, read­ing, con­duct­ing street the­atre, yoga classes and parades!  It’s really all about how cre­ative the peo­ple want to be and how com­fort­able they are doing what­ever they want.

CicLAvia Walks: Join a walk­ing tour to dis­cover the riches of Los Ange­les – its his­tory, ecol­ogy, archi­tec­ture and cre­ativ­ity from a new per­spec­tive and leisurely pace.