Handmade bicycle industry is on a roll: Positive trends are helping bolster a small cadre of crafts people who still build bicycles by hand. That’s why the mood was upbeat at the industry’s annual North American Handmade Bicycle Show, which concluded Sunday.
Photo: Brad Quartuccio of Urban Velo photographs a bike built by Don Walker Cycles at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show in Sacramento. Credit: Paul Kitagaki Jr. / Sacramento Bee
Hector Tobar: Los Angeles’ Spring Street green lane is only 1.5 miles for now, but hopefully it’s leading to a more bike-friendly future.
This is sweet, I thought. And also a little scary. The green lane puts you, seemingly, near the center of the street. That big, wide lane on your right is supposed to be for parking, but buses use it all the time, and for a moment or two I had a bus on my right and a car on my left, without any layers of steel or glass to protect me.
And I was the only self-powered vehicle in the little green lane itself. Then another guy pulled up ahead of me — on a skateboard.
“This is better than being on the sidewalk,” Jed Stoddard, 32, told me. “On the sidewalk, I’m a moving target for all the dogs.”
Photo: With Los Angeles City Hall in the background, a cyclist rides along Spring Street near 2nd Street on the new bright green bike lane that extends from Cesar Chavez Avenue to 9th Street. Credit: Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times
