Night Rider

5

Author: Jacob Miller

On the second Friday of every month, the Midnight Ridazz—a self-described party-on-wheels—gathers like a cloud across Los Angeles, precipitating a torrent of bicycles clogging L.A.’s well-traveled roadways. While each ride occurs at night, every one is unique, beginning in different places, adopting different themes and traveling different routes.

On this particular Friday, a large crowd of perhaps 500 Ridazz gathers at the edge of Glassell Park. The ride is the “La Noche de los Biciclistas Muertos – Parte Dos,” a now-annual 17-mile-ride through central Los Angeles taking its theme from the post-Halloween Day of the Dead celebration. As such, the event’s atmosphere is pretty festive, with costumed and face-painted skeletons composing much of the attendance.

Costumes aside, though, the Midnight Ridazz are a fairly unlikely bunch. Absent are the gym bag-toters and the uniformed bike spandex-wearers that populate the cycling world of daylight. In fact, the healthy are mostly underrepresented among this gathering: many riders huff happily on cigarettes, their plumes of smoke disguised by the mingling of moisture in the air. Even more drink beers in “preparation” for the ride. Most are in their twenties and thirties, with hippies saddled up next to yuppies and hipsters, and the overweight and underweight as well as the amateur and seasoned cyclists mixed in equal parts. This diversity in appearance is matched only by diversity of origin. Travel groups arrive continuously throughout the early evening from as far away as Santa Monica and Long Beach for the night’s ride. The common denominator among all gathered seems to be little more than an adventurous nature and a fair degree of Friday-night reckless abandon.

The assembly point is a parking lot at the corner of San Fernando and Fletcher, across the street from a Denny’s and juxtaposed not at all ironically next to a McDonald’s drive-through. The space is punctuated by endless linked chains of bicycles, circled about like makeshift wagon trains. A boom box built into one custom bicycle provides the ambient soundtrack to the evening—various Danny Elfman “Nightmare Before Christmas” music and such all-purpose athletic classics as “Eye of the Tiger.” The atmosphere was, to say the least, circus-like.

“Yeahhh, Riii-daaazzzzzzzz!” bellows one high school-aged skeleton, to refrains of cheering. Many of these more fanatical riders come on bikes with oversized frames and wheels. As performers they race and do tricks, crooning as they show off their customizations and costumes, evoking smiles and chuckles from the crowd everywhere they go. This is not at all out of place in a convention that is a bit anarchic from the start: there are no sign-in sheets, no membership lists, no outward signs of individual affiliation besides bicycle ownership. And to compound the confusion, a fair portion of the attendees to this meeting are first-timers. But hidden amongst the crowd are unassuming-looking people with high-powered walkie-talkies quietly directing riders into position. “If you could just move your bike over here . . .” intoned one as I pulled up.

Reliable information about the upcoming ride was scarce. While most had heard about it through various internet postings and email lists, the official communication was mostly mute, consisting mainly of “spoke tags” with route instructions which circulated informally among the crowd at the last minute. Several Midnight Ridazz organizers handed out sweatshirts emblazoned with “Peligro!” and a white skull with bike wheels for eye sockets—the Ridazz’s emblem.

“This ride is by far my favorite,” said Jade, a two-year ride veteran sporting an exceptionally well-maintained afro as we line up next to each other. “You’ll see why.”

Minutes later, and La Noche begins with a jolt. Whistles pierced the air suddenly with no forewarning, capturing the scattered attention of the crowd. An arrow of four riders hurdles outward down San Fernando away from the group, leading the vanguard to stop up traffic at nearby intersections as the main body of cyclists line up to merge into the street. Slowly, gradually, the mass of cyclists begins to expand in a line on the sidewalk. As the group’s confidence grows with its density, individual Ridazz spill out into the street, filling immediately like a gas the right lanes of San Fernando. In minutes, the throng has grown into a steady stream of humanity a mile in length, winding its way through the infrequently-lit streets of an industrial stretch of San Fernando, directed like a dagger towards the heart of downtown.

Within the crowd, an interesting social dynamic takes shape amidst this chorus of movement. As speed varies, people bounce forward and backward between social groups which coalesce around proximity. Companions of the moment most likely will not be riding nearby at the finish line, as bikers respond to the demands of hills and the pace of the pack. In short, one makes fast and varied friends.

“Oh, I go on every ride I can,” shouts Lola, a Silverlake resident buzzing alongside me for a few minutes down San Fernando. She’s wearing makeup and dressed up in indie-venue attire, hardly the most natural choice given the circumstances. “I just played a show at The Smell,” she explains. To my right, three riders juggle green glow sticks in the dark, quickly losing their place in the riding queue as they slow down to take pictures. But most riders simply concentrate silently on the road, moving to the music of the crowd and tires.

Like a great wave, the Midnight Ridazz thrive over straight distances, accumulating momentum and blowing through stop signs and stoplights out of sheer necessity. This sort of recklessness is more managed than it appears: at each intersection, groups of lead bikers, called “corkers,” stop to hold up auto traffic for a half hour or more while the group passes. This maneuver is carefully executed after about a half hour on San Fernando, as the group approaches Broadway and the vanguard riders stop traffic while calling out “Riiiggghhht!” on loudspeakers. This change in direction was no small feat, though the stream was gradually channeled rightwards, utterly disrupting a three-road intersection. It was—for lack of a better word—awesome.

As the Ridazz approached downtown, a number of police cars appeared to be blocking lanes of traffic ahead of the crowd, sending a sudden hesitation that, like other rides in the past, this one would be broken up by overzealous law enforcement. This was quickly proven false—the police presence was an aborted drunk-driving checkpoint, and passing riders were treated to a young man sitting on the ground in handcuffs, an apparent sobriety-test victim, smiling broadly and hooting. The police muttered into their radios, but mostly just stared at the biker-swarm which, of course, cheered seditiously as they flooded the area.

The Midnight Ridazz spilled quickly through the Chinatown gates, spreading chaos and snaring traffic across a wide arc of northern downtown. While pedestrians (and the homeless) were laughing and shouting their approval, the affections of the drivers were split between adulatory honking and mild to severe annoyance. One driver opened his door to argue for a moment with a corker at the Hill Street intersection, but was quickly surrounded by scores of aggressive cyclists, effectively neutralizing his opposition. The group remained unchallenged.

Unexpectedly, the route from the heart of downtown shifted eastward, with Ridazz leaders directing movement along 1st Street through Little Tokyo. Drunken revelers emerging from karaoke bars gawked and snapped photos as the Ridazz passed. The lanes there, however, collapsed as the road continued on across a bridge, forcing the group into close quarters as it traveled through the warehouse district. This area, deserted and foreboding even during the day, seems all the more sinister at night, though for the moment it’s populated by hundreds of flashing LED’s and skeleton costumes.

The goal of the
ride was, even at nearly nine miles in, completely uncertain among those of us in the middle of the pack. “Where the hell are we going?” asked Al, a network administrator for a Pasadena law firm with whom I had kept pace through downtown. No one but the vanguard could be certain. Those Ridazz in the lead soon inexplicably turned south along Mission Road, sending the crowd through an east side neighborhood already heavy with weekend foot traffic. The residents pointed and laughed, with some even grabbing their bikes and joining the throng. The group lumbered southward, turning another corner, preparing to cross another bridge back west towards downtown.

And there, across all lanes of Whittier Blvd, the Midnight Ridazz halted to seize the bridge.

It was a surreal sight. As if on cue, hundreds of cyclists unfastened their helmets and laid down their bicycles in unison to “begin” the festivities. Out of every backpack came a surprising amount of Tecate, Sparks or bottles of who-knows-what (occasionally water). Total strangers, bound by little more than adrenaline and excitement, stood around exchanging anecdotes and offering each other various intoxicants. Bus and car traffic was paralyzed, with jubilant Ridazz jumping on the backs of coaches as they moved haltingly through the crowd. The scene was congratulatory chaos.

At this point, with revelers dancing and chatting to music on the bridge, it becomes clear what the sheer genius is behind something like Midnight Ridazz. Part-political statement, part-Mardi Gras, the Ridazz are something urban, common and easy to enter/exit in an era when urban living is synonymous with anonymity. It’s inclusive while conveying identity, feels bohemian and underground with only the slightest hint of pretension. And it’s chemical—the party is the wheels, the endorphin rush, the adrenaline and not least of all the surprise.

Then you remember that, exhausted and tipsy, you’re only halfway done—you have to cycle back. This may be one of the most exhilarating parties in Los Angeles, but your legs are going to hurt in the morning.

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