BLACK LABEL BIKE CLUB NEW YEAR’S EVE PARTY

IN NEW ORLEANS

HEY RIDAZZ, START SAVING YOUR SCRATCH BECAUSE YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS

- NEW YEAR’S EVE

- IN NEW ORLEANS

- WITH BLACK LABEL BIKE CLUB

Were you sad that there was no Bike Kill this year? Didn’t get your punk rock freak bike fix? Getting the shakes for mayhem on bikes in a different city? Hoping you would see more broken bones, like that totally tasty broken ankle at Bike Kill last year?

Black Label Bike Club New Orleans is having a New Year’s Eve party in – you guessed it, motherfuckers – New Orleans!

TRAVEL DETAILS

Midnight Trainazz  Schedule-

Amtrack Sunset Limited

Depart Los Angeles Union Station:
2:30 pm, Sunday, December 27, 2009

Arrive New Orleans:
2:55 pm, Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Depart New Orleans:
11:55 am, Monday, January 4, 2010

Arrive Los Angeles Union Station:
8:40 am, Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Vangoy Schedule-

Put your name on the vangoy list in the MR thread (link below)!

Leave Los Angeles : Dec. 28TH (TIME TBA)

Leave Nawlinz: Jan 4th (8AM-ISH)

DISCUSS THE MIND EXPLODING EYEBALL MELTING EAR FUCKING TONGUE LASHING HEART STOPPING KNEE POPPING BELLY FLOPPING TO THE 12TH DEGREE INSANE-ECSTATIC-CRAP-YOUR-PANTS-HAPPY-FUN-TIMES HERE.

COME SEE THE SPROCKETTES IN SAN DIEGO ON SATURDAY OCT. 3!!

You have two opportunities, and I am helping organize the second:

1. Tour de Fat – I haven’t been, but Borfo went to one in Portland and had a blast. A bunch of us are heading down Friday night / Saturday morning to hit up the festival.

2. GUERRILLA SPROCKETTES SHOW: We don’t have all of the details worked out, but it will be a guerrilla performance somewhere in SD (Balboa Park or dodgeball park), probably after a short ride.

C’MON LA, GET DOWN TO SD. Here is what one of The Sprockettes said:

“We’ve heard so much talk about the LA bike gang that we wanted to do something for them all and had the opportunity to go. If LA is in SD then let’s do it! More the merrier.”

Midnight Ridazz Camp will have a bar this year, grills and boils, with a big party worthy of Ridazz:

THURSDAY, 5 – 8

The LADIES OF MIDNIGHT RIDAZZ CAMP want you to DRINK THEIR JUICES and PARTY IN THEIR PANTS!

Ms. Stephanie will pour out her Blood, Sweat, and Tears for you to a “this-ain’t-no-rave-bar-bitchezz” soundtrack of her choice, and The Raquel will open her pants up WIDE to all comers! Come have fun with the Midnight Ridazz. We ride bikezz. We’re evolved muthafuckazz.

(Author’s note: The reference to being evolved is because the theme of Burning Man this year is evolution.)

Bar description (goddammit, I’m proud of myself):

I have constructed a bar for the camp – 72″ x 31″ bar top that we covered in black formica laminate, I painted the front and sides of the bar base a glossy red with the Midnight Ridazz logo in black on the front (the same logo we used to cut the burn barrels).

A 20′x10′ carport carport shade structure will act as the roof and the walls of the bar. 4 old rims will be fashioned into chandeliers (with real candles, of course – SAFETY THIRD), spoke cards and pictures of Ridazz Camp ridazz and their close ridazz friends will adorn the walls, and christmas lights and one funky old-ass lamp will provide the ambient night lighting.

Top all of that off with tables made from wooden spools scattered around and seating galore, and a sound system to scream out our NOT-YOUR-RAVER’S-BAR soundtrack, and we are going to have one fucking rad camp bar – one that Midnight Ridazz can be seriously proud of.

ON TOP OF THAT, the bar will be open to the entirety of Black Rock City at least one night (perhaps more, depending on the mountain of booze I amass) during which everyone will be invited to stop by the bar and drink the Midnight Ridazz juices: Blood (vodka + cran), Sweat (Whiskey + lemonade), or Tears (rum + grapefruit), OR Vomit (a mix of all three).

Burning Man. IF YOU HAVEN’T BEEN, YOU DON’T KNOW.

I had one bitch of a weekend; one in which bike riding brought both danger and some serious oh-yeah-I’m-a-chick-and-I-have-think-differently-about-safety-than-a-guy introspection. It was not sex crime danger, it was pure physically brutal danger. I have bruises all over my right leg (which is weird, because I could swear I fell to my left), including one impressively blue-y green-y purple-y thing below my right hip…where I was kicked? Frankly, I’m not even sure because everything was so hectic and out of control.

[Also, I'm going to ask now that if anyone comments on this blog, please don't discuss any details of that madness on here. Thanks.]

After I found myself on the ground, the first thing I heard from one of the guy riders there with me was, Hey man that’s fucked up, that’s a FEMALE!

…

I know that person meant well, but it made me feel ten times more helpless than I already did. Even writing that gives me knots in my stomach and makes me want to cry out of pure frustration. Was it because I’m a girl that when danger put its face right in mine, I paused instead of bashed? And why do I feel like my reaction was the wrong reaction? Also, is it really less okay to hit a girl (read: weak) than a guy (read: strong)?

These are all such tangled, loaded questions, aren’t they?

I don’t know what to tell you ladies, and I don’t know what to tell you gents, either. It can be a confusing thing, being a chick. I want to be strong, but I hate violence. I want people to think I’m attractive, but I hate the bullshit media-driven images of what is sexy and occassionally feel like I need to emulate it. I don’t want to bash on other chicks because we should all stick together, but goddammit there are some dumb fucking chicks out there that do NOT help matters any. Aargh.

I’m going to leave all of the open questions and confusion alone, and get back to bikes. I’ve had this on the calendar for a while now, but it feels really especially special to me right now: LADIES’ NIGHT. I’m putting together a fantastic playlist (according to me, of course) full of chick voices, and it’s going to be one big celebration of the wacky wildness that is being a chick on a bike. Come on along, won’t you?

I apologize to myself for not writing recently. And as a motivator to myself, I give me William Carlos Williams, one of my favorite poets:

Apology

Why do I write today?

The beauty of
the terrible faces
of our nonentities
stirs me to it:

colored women
day workers—
old and experienced—
returning home at dusk
in cast off clothing
faces like
old Florentine oak.

Also

the set pieces
of your faces stir me—
leading citizens—
but not in the same way.

[Stick with me folks...at the end of this blog I will provide you with a POSITIVE review of something! Yes! Something I read that I LOVE! I promise there's more to me than a bundle of negative energy...]

I have recently signed a lease with the boyfriend for a space in Glassell Park.  I am leaving downtown to its yuppie gentrification.  Goodbye, empty “loft” units.  Goodbye South Park.

And most importantly, goodbye L.A. Live.  You can go fuck yourself.

And in the spirit of luvving L.A. Live, I come to you today to build upon something I said about L.A. Live in a previous blog (rant):

LA Live, too, functions similarly to [Rick Caruso's and other similar] lifestyle centers – its buildings face inward upon each other around false public spaces, so the crowds moving within the giant entertainment developments rarely crowd the truly accessible streets of downtown L.A.

When I wrote the above, my L.A. Live experience consisted of riding my bike past / around it, marveling at the rapidity with which the hulking monstrosity was being constructed.

Now, however, I have been to L.A. Live as a consumer of its wares and its space. I have suffered through a meal at ESPN Zone (which my parents loved), cowered in front of a live feed of Fall Out Boy on the giant 42 FOOT WIDE screen in the L.A. Live courtyard (which didn’t bother my mom that much, as she is going deaf), and twitched amidst its twinkling flashing dripping blinking strobing lights (which my parents found exciting).* And as my sister’s death grip on my arm grew tighter and tighter, as her frightened desperate need to run screaming from L.A. Live as fast as she possibly could grew more and more palpable (as did mine), and as Fall Out Boy taunted from the giant screen giant speakers “I Don’t Care,” all I could think was:

I HATE L.A. LIVE.

As my parents soaked in the ESPN Zone cultural experience, my sister and I whispered possible L.A. Live culture jams. “Banner drop?” I suggested. “Zombie invasion?” she added. And as if on cue, my mother (who had not been listening to me and my sister), watching a table of law students do Irish car bombs, said “I read in the LA Times that there is an LAPD substation here because the police are concerned about drunkenness and other vices associated with the types of businesses at L.A. Live.” My sister and I deflated. And all I could think was:

I REALLY FUCKING HATE L.A. LIVE.

That’s not totally true – it wasn’t the only thing I could think.  Also flashing through my brain was something about how the LAPD substation was another perfect example of state (The State) resources protecting and fostering capitalism (by ejecting arresting criminalizing anything that might disturb or discourage consumer’s happy-go-lucky money-spending experiences at L.A. Live).  But mostly it was:

GODDAMMIT L.A. LIVE SUCKS ASS.

So I twittered:

L.A. Live has its own LAPD substaion. How to fuck LAPD + L.A. Live at same time? I wonder if my tweet is being monitored as TERRORISM? 7:26 PM Dec 16th from TwitterBerry

And for good measure, just to see if I was being monitored, I twittered:

Terrorism at L.A. Live. 7:40 PM Dec 16th from TwitterBerry

Anyways, regaling you with the above tale was mainly just to illustrate the point that I got the chance to take a good long look at the L.A. Live quote-unquote public space that night.**  And truly, it looks just like the fucking website (and the picture above): a giant insanity-filled courtyard. I didn’t venture anywhere other than the giant courtyard, although there must be more to it. The courtyard was enough, thank you very much.

And, after that night, my analysis remains the same: although there are no barriers as such – theoretically, anyone wandering around the streets of South Park could wander down 11th into said courtyard – the design of L.A. Live itself provides a barrier, an obvious delineation between the public streets and this policed consumer space.  The false shiny hard spendy surfaces, the drinking eating shopping hordes staring into onto upon around the courtyard through the panopticon windows, even the type of material used as sidewalk surface differentiates the space from the streets and sidewalks of the city.  You remember what a city is right?  Where people are supposed encounter one another, where one can experience people that are the same that are different that are suspiciously similar that are nothing like each other?

Christopher Hawthorne wrote a pretty darn good review of L.A. Live, from an architectural critic’s perspective.  Although my quote with which I opened this blog comes from a slightly different perspective (architecture and planning as fostering socio-economic xenophobia) than Hawthorne’s (we need public space for all the nice yuppies in the nice lofts to foster nice gentrification of no man’s land), I leave you with the following quotes from his review (and a recommendation that you read his review, despite its orientation):

-  Los Angeles, city of enclaves, is methodically, unapologetically building itself one more.

-  When we trap the energy of an urban crowd inside this sort of self-contained world, and when we allow developers and their architects to heighten the differences between that world and the streets around it so dramatically, we help keep the rest of our blocks underused and, as pieces of the city, undernourished.

-  I have written before about how the plaza, which sits entirely on property owned by the developer, creates an impressive stage-set version of a public square….[The problem is] that it actively discourages any of the activities we traditionally associate with the use of collective space in a city: talking, reading, sitting under a tree, even pausing with a friend for a cup of coffee.

I also leave you with a request:  In light of the LAPD presence, what can I (WE) do?  I have ideas – a bloc banner drop action, perhaps (clown bloc, zombie bloc, pillow fight bloc, dance party bloc, zoo animal bloc, etc., with the bloc distracting people from the banner drop and scattering as soon as the banner is dropped) – but more suggestions are always welcome.

So that, dear readers, is why I hate L.A. Live.  And this, dear readers is something that I love!  I happened upon a blog on the Just Seeds website about a photography book – Big Box Reuse – focusing what communities do with big box retail spaces after the retailer has closed up shop and left the giant eyesores behind:  Hooray for creative adaptive reuse of shitty architecture and the people who appreciate it!

*I love you, mom.

**…and to garner sympathy for my horrifying experience…

There are things to be grateful for, among them organizations and individuals who work to make our silly world a better place. Prime examples of this are the people behind these three events that I highly recommend for this Thanksgiving weekend:

(1) WEDNESDAY – CRANKSGIVING

(2) FRIDAY – THE REALLY, REALLY FREE MARKET

(3) SATURDAY – NORTH EAST LOS ANGELES FOOD NOT BOMBS BENEFIT (WITH FUNDERSTORM!!)

And don’t forget, (Black) Friday is Buy Nothing Day!

*As a prologue to my little rant about Rick Caruso’s lifestyle centers, a reminder: With Black Friday fast upon us, remember that it is also Buy Nothing Day 2008. Join in on an action, or create your own, but most of all BUY NOTHING.*

Last Monday I attended (for stupid work reasons) an awards dinner that honored Rick Caruso and The Walt Disney Company for demonstrating “exceptional contributions to positive economic development in the region.” The Beverly Hilton teemed with well-groomed real estate men in dark suits (and the sparkly, sparkly women who love them) discussing the economy, the lack of development financing, and the vision and accomplishments of Rick Caruso.  Sitting at my dinner table listening to the host wax poetic about Caruso and The Walt Disney Corporation, I had the following (grammatically incorrect) twitter outburst:

Ohmigodthisagainsteverythingibelieveinyikes. 9:20 PM Nov 17th from TwitterBerry

Rick Caruso is best known to Los Angelenos for his developments The Grove and Americana at Brand, as well as for briefly considering (but then abondoning the idea of) running for mayor. The city streets ring with lauds and praises of “Carusostyle” – “high-quality shopping malls, which he [Caruso] contends are more akin to retail streets on a par with the great piazzas of Europe” – and institutions and publications from the Urban Land Institute (2) to Los Angeles Magazine (2) emphasize his influence on architecture, design, and the city of L.A generally.

Much like the awards dinner I attended, while Los Angeles Magazine pays tribute to Caruso and his lifestyle centers, it associates Caruso with Disneyland: the editor comments that more people visited The Grove than Disneyland in 2006; the magazine describes Caruso’s lifestyle centers as “open-air facsimiles of storybook Main Streets.”  Although intended to be a positive association in the foregoing contexts, the pairing of Caruso with Disneyland unwittingly highlights what I despise about Caruso’s developments, what makes him and his lifestyle centers “against everything i believe in yikes”: the progressive Disneyfication of city life, of city experience, of human experience.

Quick and dirty look at a European retail street (i.e., why Rick Caruso is insane): Passeig del Born is part of the Born area of the city.  Although I haven’t been there for a couple of years, I have been there many, many times – Bar Rosal, one of my favorite places in Barcelona to sit and sip a coffee or drink a beer and eat green olives, is there – and I have watched it go from a quiet retail street to a trendy high-end fashion retail area. And even as a trendy retail area, it’s a “democratic” space – there is nothing blocking pedestrian access day or night. Cars have very little access, to be sure, as it is part of the old city constructed long before cars, with narrow windy roads and a beautiful emphasis on foot traffic (although Passeig del Born is more of a large open square). However, it is part of the city. To get there, you only have to turn the corner from one street to the next. You do not enter into an obviously defined private area. While people eat and drink at the clusters of outdoor tables, a tide of humanity washes back and forth: beggars, buskers, skaters, grandmothers, university students, natural gas vendors, tourists. One can even enjoy the famous Barcelona graffiti – of which one of my favorite Born examples was a single light blue stenciled word: “fucksion” – (although due to tighter regulation this is sadly a disappearing art form).

Compare this to Caruso’s European-style retail street, The Grove.* Like Disneyland, you park in a designated parking area outside. Like Disneyland, you enter into a sanitized, policed simulation of “real” life.** However, unlike Disneyland, and what makes it more sinister, is that there is no ticket required, no price of admission. This begins to blend the lines between public and private space in dangerous ways, in ways that allow unthinking, uncritical shoppers to prefer the comforts of this entirely undemocratic, not public space to the “vagaries” of true public space – panhandlers, exposure to other “lesser” classes of human beings and/or human activity that challenges the comfortable world these people gather about themselves like protective armor.

What is truly horrifying about this, however, is that it is catching on. Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga – the address of which is even North Mainstreet, one of the streets within the development – further blurs the lines between public and private by including a community cultural center. LA Live, too, functions similarly to these lifestyle centers – its buildings face inward upon each other around false public spaces, so the crowds moving within the giant entertainment developments rarely crowd the truely accessible streets of downtown L.A.***

Okay, I have to stop here – I’m even starting to bore myself. But to wrap up this discussion, I will provide for you three positive actions you can take that are in direct opposition to shopping / participating in this consumer-driven simulacrum of public space:

- Reclaim the Streets. In Recipes for Disaster, CrimethInc. describes the guerrilla action it calls Reclaim the Streets. A group of individuals blocks off an intersection or a part of a city street and uses the area for a street fair, or for enjoyment, interaction, exchange.

- Midnight Ridazz / Midnight Ridazz-style bike rides. A form of reclaiming the streets, most of the rides born of Midnight Ridazz challenge the ideology behind lifestyle shopping centers. Once again I will quote a friend of mine:

Fuck politics!
Fuck appeals to the authorities for more lenient terms of enslavement!
We are forging a new society, right now!
Every Midnight Ridazz ride, every Tren Way ride, every Sins and Sprockets ride, every C.R.A.N.K. MOB ride is a political ride.
Why? Because it’s a public demonstration of collective happiness without consumerism, without structure, without hierarchies. It’s a demonstration that anarchy is possible AND fun.

- Go to the NELA Food Not Bombs benefit this Saturday, November 29.

If you got this far, thank you for reading. If I were the type to cause trouble, I would go cause it now.

*I have only one experience with Americana at Brand: Soon after it opened, the boyfriend and I went to the theater there to see a movie. Gathered just outside its perimeter, guarding the boundary between it and genuine public space, were crowds of Glendale police. The only time I will ever enter Americana at Brand is when I finally get up enough courage to bomb through it on my bike…which absolutely must and will happen soon.

**I’m not going to get into Baudrillard (2) here even though I would like to. I have already blown past tl;dr.

***To the extent the streets of downtown L.A. are truely accessible. Of course, see The City of Quartz for what was for me a life-changing discussion of city space.

Funderstorm Thumb

Originally uploaded by Ms. Stephanie

My Funderstorm thumb is healing nicely.

…Although my thumb is pretty ugly. Are all thumbs this ugly, I’ve just never really noticed, or is it just mine?

Don’t answer that.

(This is really just me testing my ability to email pics to my blog.)

California hasn’t experienced a Funderstorm since July 5, 2008*, so when the Funderstorm raged this past Friday, Los Angelenos cheered. They rejoiced. They danced.  They lept into the air…and it was all to celebrate the end of the Funderstorm drought that plagued the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area for 4 long, dry months.

This intrepid urban bicyclist and Funderstorm chaser converged with numerous other likeminded individuals on Artist Gallery near Sunset Junction, the eye of the Funderstorm. Many wore specially-fashioned Funderwear to protect themselves from the inevitable electric excitement surges and fun flooding caused by a Funderstorm.  Due to an astonishing lack of forethought, I neglected to don anything more protective than war paint, and my body suffered the consequences:  although, as recommended by experts to amateur thrill-seeking Funderstorm-chasers, I didn’t fight against the onslaught but became one with the Funderstorm, I nevertheless emerged with the singularly strange wounds of a Funderstorm enthusiast such as a bruised black thumbnail, a glasses gouge between the eyes, and sore shins.

But believe you me, dear reader…There is nothing like a Funderstorm. I wear my bruised black fingernail and glasses gouge with the pride of someone who has seen the heart of a Funderstorm and returned to tell the tale, and I will tell it over and over again! And although the Funderstorm drought may be over, Southern California’s thirst is in no way slaked. We require more.

Thanks to spiraldemon, ipso fatso, and Mr. Rollers for photos of the Funderstorm.

*I was lucky enough to have been present for this last Funderstorm, which occurred in Riverside, California.