Ally Cat-ing Late-night LA on a Bike

Ally-Cat-ing Late-night LA on a Bike

        by Bernie Dubinsky

             

These mean LA streets are very real to us the late night cycle freaks.  I mean I don't give a hang about rap music, getting some booty or 'throw'en down' in a street altercation with some fellow gang member.  (Christ, don't even know when     I 'm wearing gang colors or flashing gang signs.)       I mean, I'm actually clueless and really from another planet to many of my crew members in the Midnight Ridazz bike hikes I take on 'Taco Tuesday'.  But dig it, I'm into the LA late night street scene.  I'm completly there and present when it comes to GREAT Taco Truck Food, wild dancing in the street to salsa rythems and capturing those wonderful romantic deep-throat kissing scenes that take place along parked cars up and down LA's late nite boulevards. 

The sights and sounds of LA after dark on a bike are more exciting than a spill over a river rapid.  And its free and fairly safe.  You need some street smarts but, speed and agility on a bike can mostly keep you out of trouble.

Street biking changed forever when the subway came in.  Cause LA is so vast, you can’t be a biking purest to really explore it – you have to alternate between a bike and the train to see it all.  Known as ‘alley cat-ing’ to bike messengers  its just makes sense to use the train where possible and jump on a bike when you want to or need to. 

LA's street biking is more thrilling than walking around New York's hip little areas like SoHo.  New York has late nite areas that maybe go for 10 blocks but LA stretches forever into the night.    There are these wonderful flights across rivers and freeways and stuff that would be an insurmountable barrier in any other sane city that wasn't designed for the car.  As LA’s urban infill occurs  - everything from DTLA to S & M feels like the Isle of Manhattan only more exciting 'cause you're going at 30 miles an hour - and not 8.  You glide on flat terrain with bright city lights and streets emptied of auto traffic.    Even without drugs you feel like a junkie roaring into that angry night for a fix.  A fix of LA sights, sounds  and smells on a bike after 9 pm can be very intoxicating. 

Now that the subway actually goes into neighborhoods, I am forever exploring parts of LA that were not easily accessible before.  Boyle Heights for example was over the water and up a big hill.  Skip that hill and pop the Gold Line to Mariachi Plaza and you are instantly transformed to a Plaza Centro that could be found in any Mexican pueblo, but you its in the middle of Los Angeles.  Street food, old musicians in traditional garb all surrounded by young guys hanging out in baggy cargo shorts and wonderfully exotic Latina women covered in tats with lots painted black fingernails.  Don’t forget those unbelievable piercings and round ear lobe expanders that every taco truck stevedore seems to have.  And you’re there in an instant ‘cause of the subway.  This is a great starting point for an urban bike hike.

So I head out 1^st  street to find my favorite food, el pastor tacos at King Tacos – a local LA chain that offers tacos on those smaller tortillas that serious aficionados look for; fried just right in grill grease to just about crispy and covered with the best salsa with flavored pinto bean on the side. Before eating I swing by the East Los Angeles County Park at the Civic Center that’s  3 minutes away to feed the ducks.   Its  mid-night when I pull in and the 24 hour King Taco on East 3^rd Street just on the other side of the 710 Freeway.  The place  is rocking with all sort of hungry people looking for late nite nourishment.   I’m starved from the 5 mile bike ride – all paralleling  the train – and order up one of everything.   Folks are friendly and I’ve talked to 6 or 7 different families, couples, truckers and people curious about some old white guy on a bike covered with decals.

Time to go home to West LA.  Hop the train at the Maravilla Station across the street and figure I’ll nap on the way to Union Station ( securing my bike first, of course).  The Expo Line drops me off just in time to witness the dating scene in upscale Culver City as the bars start to close.  Lots of gussied up millennials dowsed in liquor and dressed up for Saturday night.  

Heading west on the Venice Blvd. bikeway and thinking of greeting the dawn at Santa Monica – way different world in the same city.  And that’s what LA’s late night scene is all about – lots of contrast and different realities but all under the same cool evening breezes on empty, flat streets that stretch east from the ocean.  The train will eventually go to the ocean, but on a bike, late at night, you wanna ride and experience it.