In this newsletter:

• Feature: Streets for All wants alternatives — miles of alternatives — to the car. 
• Sen. Adam Schiff talks Democratic leverage on immigration
  
• Is Silverlake the new Copenhagen? René Redzepi brings Noma to LA
  
• How LA activists monitor ICE activity at MacArthur Park
  
• Pole dancing for everyone: this ain’t Chippendales
  
• A San Onofre nuclear plant shuts down, not all are joyful
  
• LGBTQ+ youth suicide hotline is grateful for a windfall

Yes, You Can Bike To LAX... If You Really, Really Want To
by Brandon R. Reynolds

Telling someone you’re a cyclist in LA is a little like saying all your clothes are made from animals you’ve hunted yourself: People are impressed, possibly annoyed at the unnecessary and performative difficulty, and they’re slightly worried about your mental health. Civilization has moved beyond this, their eyes tell you as they back slowly away.

But there are plenty of people who want to bring more cycling to the city, and recently I went on a ride with one of them, a guy named Michael Schneider, who runs a cycling advocacy group called Streets for All. 

We rode the Ballona Creek Bike Path, a seven-mile non-car highway that connects Culver City to the beach. Schneider grew up in LA, has been riding the path since he was a kid, and wondered why it didn’t extend the full length of the creek. In fact, there was supposed to be a second phase after the current stretch was built in the 1970s. Never happened … but now it might. Last year, Schneider got approval to finish the last two miles.

Schneider at the current eastern terminus of the Ballona Creek bike path.
Photo by Brandon R. Reynolds/KCRW

On this warm January day, Schneider’s riding along in a black t-shirt on an electric bike with a big cargo bed in the front.

“ This bike fits three kids, and I have three kids, so this is my SUV,” he tells me. 

“That's incredible,” I say. “You can get three kids in there?”

“Get three kids in there, or a wife. We flew into LAX on Saturday night, and I biked my wife home.”

“You did not.”

“I did.”

Disrupting the existing automotive order can mean more traffic and less parking, of course. So Schneider has angered some people over the years. 

In 2022, he was on a neighborhood council championing a proposal for a dedicated bus lane along La Brea Avenue. The proposal passed, but in the run-up, he says, one guy got pretty mad about it: “He put up a mugshot of me along La Brea at different establishments saying, ‘This guy's about to ruin your neighborhood,’” Schneider recalls. When his mother-in-law saw the flyers, she “thought her grandkids were in danger.”

Schneider's "mugshot" was pasted on La Brea Ave.

Matthew Tallmer says he did post — though not create — those flyers. “Obviously, the businesses were very concerned that they were going to lose business because there'd be no parking,” says Tallmer, now a member of the Mid City West Neighborhood Council, though at the time he was just a guy going door-to-door opposing a bus lane.

Tallmer’s larger objection is that Schneider’s unique lifestyle just may not work for everybody: “The whole idea that people are going to bike all over the place is an elitist fantasy, to be honest.”

Schneider says the Ballona Creek Bike Path extension project is a way to realize that fantasy, and it doesn't inspire wanted posters.

“You're not taking away parking, you're not taking away travel lanes,” he says. “You're not taking away anything from anyone.” 

Schneider says the bike path isn’t just for recreation; it’s a good commuting option.
Map courtesy of Streets for All.

The Ballona extension project began in 2021. Streets for All raised $420,000 for a feasibility study. (It was deemed feasible.) Then they worked with the city of LA, which received a grant and put in funds from LA and Culver City to design and permit the two-mile extension further east to Venice and Cochran. That’s where they’re at today. The cost for all that (to get it "shovel-ready") is $8 million. But to actually build it? The city estimates that’ll be another $43.3 million that LA will have to find in a few years. So all in: $51 million. 

Schneider will be the first to tell you the costs are crazy compared to other places. (In 2021, the same year Schneider started his project, Paris announced it was continuing its biking renaissance by planning 112 more miles of bike lanes, at a cost of about $2.6 million a mile, as compared to Ballona Creek’s estimated $25.5 million per mile.)

“But,” he says, “I think context is really important. The state of California spends billions of dollars each year on highway expansion. [The 2025-’26 Caltrans budget is $16.1 billion.] And we spend tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in the city of LA widening streets … just for cars. [LA’s Bureau of Street Services budgeted $208 million last year.] So this is a drop in the bucket.”

We’re still a long, long way from biking to LAX becoming a standard commuting option, but should you become a cycling extremophile like Schneider, he’s got a piece of advice:

“Terminal 6. Really good bike parking.”

In The Neighborhood

• KCRW host Steve Chiotakis talks to Sen. Adam Schiff (D) about the showdown this week in Washington over a Senate bill that would help fund the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Patrol. Sen. Adam Schiff says Democrats won't be steamrolled into voting to fund the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Patrol despite being in the minority in the House and Senate: “I don’t want to see any more of these masked roving sweeps, immigration raids over the opposition of governors and mayors.”
  
• Would you pay $1,500 for dinner? Someone would … meals at the pop-up Noma restaurant in Silverlake sold out in three minutes. Noma chef René Redzepi tells Good Food host Evan Kleiman the restaurant set up a four-month residency here because “Los Angeles is where my heart is when it comes to America, and it is much more than the sunshine…. When I arrive and land in Los Angeles, it’s the first place where I thought to myself, the world lives in one place.” Listen up to hear how Redzepi is passing his time in LA, why the pop-up costs so much, and what they’re serving that might be in your budget.
  
• ICE-watching isn’t just for the coldest states. Press Play’s Madeleine Brand spoke to Phillip Meyer, a volunteer who keeps watch for ICE at the MacArthur Park Home Depot. He and others shoot videos and photos, and keep track of license plates to document ICE activity. Meyer says that in the wake of the murder of Renée Good in Minneapolis, he believes it’s now more important to get involved: “The more that people participate in refusing tyranny, the easier it is for each individual that does it.”
• Step into the Polemaster’s Playhouse, a haze of glitter, lights, and fishnets. KCRW contributor Brian de Los Santos takes us to a monthly queer pole-dancing event in WeHo. Miles Woods, the founder of the Playhouse, is all about his mission: “We've been separated or othered in our other communities, right? Whether we're too loud, too queer, ” Woods says. “[At] the Playhouse, we welcome that, right? We welcome the boldness. We welcome the loudness.”
  
• Ever been on the 5 and wondered what those mammary-like structures are between San Diego and Los Angeles? Well, you could take a farewell tour around those iconic domes, which house the defunct San Onofre nuclear power plant. KCRW contributor Susan Valot did just that, and found a curious mix of resignation and nostalgia. AI’s increased demand for electricity has made nuclear energy less taboo, but the decommissioned domes are still meeting their maker. Julie Chang Holt spent nearly 30 years working at the plant, so for her “to see it go, is kind of like losing a family member…. A little bit hospice.”
  
• The Trevor Project, a West Hollywood-based nonprofit, runs a suicide hotline for young people in the LGBTQ+ community and lost federal funds last year. Now, MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of billionaire Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, gave them $45 million to resume their work. The organization’s VP of philanthropy tells KCRW host Steve Chiotakis what running an LGBTQ+ non-profit takes these days, and how increased intolerant rhetoric is affecting the mental health of young people.
 

Local Meme of the Week

KCRW's Local Letterbox

• 5 Things to Do This Week – Catch some local musicians at School Night; hit the K-town Night Market for Lunar New Year performances and treats; run the Griffith Park 5K (or really impress your friends and run the half-marathon!).

• Art Insider with Carolina Miranda — Carolina finds a group show curated by LA artist Elliott Hundley to be “enchanting”: “it’s just damn compelling — revelling in the uncanny nature of miniatures while exploring concepts like mapping, and what landscape might reveal about an individual life.”

• Community Alerts Bulletin — Read a roundup of LA media coverage of the one-year anniversary of LA’s wildfires, plus a list of community events.

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