LA Loves a Street Party
November 19, 2009 at 6:15 am Adonia 2 comments
This Sunday we headed to the celebration marking the opening of the new Gold Line extension in East LA. Since the event at Mariachi Plaza involved a closed street, we got to see throngs of people in the road. That’s a nice sight!
Hundreds crowded 1st Street, which was closed for the celebration.
People know what to do if there’s an event in the street: they go out and join in.
But what if there is no specific attraction in the street?
No crowds just a block away from Mariachi Plaza.
Just a short distance from the Boyle Heights Block Party, people walked along the sidewalk of closed 1st Street, staying out of the four closed lanes that yawned across the empty street.
Angelenos know how to have a good street party, as our many festivals show, but do we know how to expand onto our streets when they are opened to us?
cicLAvia will feature many performances and activities, just to be sure that people have something to do. And then maybe, after a while, they will start to wander from one lane to the next, feeling the freedom to move through the large spaces we give over to traffic the rest of the week.
Besides, there will be so many people enjoying themselves that they’re going to spill off our narrow sidewalks anyway!
Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: Boyle Heights, Gold Line, street festivals.
1.
dudeonabike | November 19, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Love the work and the press being devoted to this. Big thanks for moving this forward. I liked the comments Joe Linton and others provided recently over at Streetsblog about the length of a proposed cicLAvia–too short and it’s doomed to be not as rousing success as it could be and too long may present too many city planning obstacles. I’m clearly in the as-long-as-humanly-possible camp–and in favor of the Silverlake/Los Feliz/East Hollywood kick off.
Curious though–perhaps a loop-type pattern would be the best option, i.e., close off the two lanes closest to and around Echo Park Lake, or MacArthur Park, etc. A loop would “feel” endless and accomplish the distance thing that would make many people feel that they really had the opportunity to either spend the time or cover some distance (i.e,. many loops). There aren’t many local businesses around the two above-mentioned options, so that is a downside. Just thought I’d chime in with this thought in case it hasn’t been given much consideration. Thanks for all you are doing.
2.
Carlos Morales | November 19, 2009 at 9:19 pm
We welcome CicLAvia in the Eastside. Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, Highland Park or El Sereno. We have streets in these communities that will welcome the Pedestrian and Bicycle traffic that will draw people to most likely stop and consume food, services and products.
The potential consumer draw to these businesses will be a desire for many communities. THE EASTSIDE BIKE CLUB & THE VOICE NEWSPAPER will support such an effort. LET’S MAKE THIS HAPPEN SOONER THAN LATER,
I first found out about this project at the BIKE SUMMIT in March 2008.
ITS TIME! LETS ROLL!