The Radavist

While Black Friday follows a holiday meant to celebrate the togetherness of friends and family, we oftentimes get swept up in consumerism. Hey, it happens. Deals here, deals there. Lines, lines, lines! The whole ordeal can really taint an otherwise pleasant weekend. Don’t even get me started on Thanksgiving in itself. (You should read the history behind what this holiday was founded on, written by the Manataka American Indian Council.) Now, I’m not writing this piece to get into the complicated history of Indigenous Lands and religious zealots’ squandering of natural resources. I actually like what this time of year embodies but I approach the subject with great care. No matter how you look at it, we are all on Native Lands.

If there’s one route people ask me to show them when they’re visiting Los Angeles with a road bike, it’s how to get to the Hollywood Sign. It turns out, cyclists can fall victim to iconic destinations just as commonly as non-cyclists. That’s what you do when you come to LA right? The one thing that separates this spot from other tourist destinations like the Chinese Theater or the Walk of Stars is you’ve really got to work to get up close and personal to the Hollywood Sign.

There’s an old joke in Hollywood, stemming from a conversation between Johnny Carson and Bette Davis. Carson asked Davis for advice on “the best way an aspiring starlet could get into Hollywood,” Ms. Davis replied without hesitation, “Take Fountain!”

Fountain Ave is a bicycle-friendly connector between Silver Lake and West Hollywood. It runs east to west and is parallel to Sunset Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard, two very congested arteries and very dangerous to ride bicycles on, especially during rush hour. By contrast, Fountain takes you past cafes, farmer’s markets and while the beginning is a two-lane road, it widens up once you reach Hollywood. There are “sharrows” the whole way, reminding motorists to share the road with cyclists but don’t be surprised when a Maserati goes 80mph past you, tailpipes brapping.

You can tell a lot about a cycling brand based on what the owner or proprietor rides. In this case, we take a look at Mosaic Cycles‘ owner and builder, Aaron Barcheck’s own RT1 disc road built with ENVE, Zipp, and SRAM. This weekend, the brand is coming to Los Angeles, to kick-off the Cub House as being a new dealer for Mosaic and with it, Aaron himself, along with his bike will be here to ride in the endless summer heat.

Speaking of heat, will you just look at that thing! Propped up against the backdrop that is the San Gabriel mountains, surrounded by Chaparral, with its Spectrum powder coat glistening in the sun, and raw titanium “braggers triangle” showing off its frame material. Bikes like this need very little description since they stand on their own.

Stay tuned for details of the Cub House party this weekend!

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Follow Mosaic on Instagram and follow the Cub House on Instagram.

Tyler wanted to get a limited slip differential installed in his Volvo 142. The problem is, Tyler lives in Santa Cruz where he works for Santa Cruz Bicycles in the design department, and the Volvo experts were down in Long Beach. No one wants to drive from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles on the weekend, and the shop was closed then anyway, so what’s a dude with a slick Volvo to do? The genius of this whole ordeal was that Tyler, and David – two design department dudes at Santa Cruz Bicycles – were able to convince their bosses to let them ride the newest bike models down in Los Angeles, allowing Tyler’s car to get worked on while we shredded some of the area’s best trails. I’m sure it didn’t hurt to have me offer to show them around, ride the new bikes and obviously tell a story about the whole shindig. Sure, this is about the bikes, as much as it is about showing Tyler and David Los Angeles’ best trails in a condensed, two-day experience.

Playing host in Los Angeles is as much fun as it is hard work. Hard in the sense that these are my local trails that I ride quite frequently, so seeing the “new” in the familiar can be photographically challenging. Add to that, technically I’m injured. I found out right before the guys rolled into town that my pinky was indeed broken from a collision with a Prius’ side view mirror one day while I was riding home. That incident happened almost a month prior. Bummer for me, my bike control, and the potential to have a full-on shred fest, but I was so excited to ride the new 5010, so I sucked it up, taped my finger, and clipped in…

Machines For Freedom’s custom S-Works Tarmac Disc lands in Los Angeles
Words by Jennifer Kriske, photos by Warren Kommers

I have been riding for close to a decade and have never been able to wrap my head around the connection between frame geometry and gender. A bike seat, of course. But the frame? A frame is related to body proportions, leg length, arm reach, and the like; not our reproductive organs. Anecdotally, swap out my bike seat and my brother and I could comfortably ride the same bike. So what is the industry telling us? That I am built like a man? That my brother is built like a woman? The conversation quickly spirals into uncomfortable territory.

Los Angeles’ riding needs no introduction to the readers of this website. In fact, active readers and followers on our Instagram will recognize some of these spots. When people express an interest in coming to LA to escape the brütal winter months, I kindly oblige, especially when it’s people like Jeff Kendall-Weed. We’ve all seen him riding in videos, but I was curious to witness it in-person. His trip fell in-between a few other photoshoots, so it was going to be tricky, but I made sure to clear a few days of my schedule to take him out and show him some of my favorite trails in Los Angeles. Oh, and he was bringing down a brand new Ibis Cycles Ripmo, a long-travel 29’r, which was just icing on the shred cake!

A Brief on Los Angeles Mountain Bike History with MWBA
Words by Erik Hillard
Photos compiled by Erik Hillard from the MWBA Archives, on diplay now at Mission Workshop LA.

I rode my first mountain bike in the Santa Cruz Mountains while in high school and working at a bike shop in Salinas, CA. It was the early 1990s and by then, local hiking and equestrian anti-bike groups had prevailed and bikes were illegal on single track. There were few places to ride legally and I grew up with tremendous gratitude for legal trails when I found them.

Later I moved near Pasadena, CA and started to explore the adjacent Angeles National Forest. I was amazed at the miles of open trails for mountain bikes. How was access to this amazing forest preserved when so much of California single track was lost for mountain bikes in the 1990s?

Over the past week, nature flipped a switch. Suddenly, like migrating birds, the 100º weather had flown to the southern hemisphere, leaving behind clouds, cooler temperatures and even traces of precipitation. Basically, the perfect ingredients for successful dirt bike rides. All summer, I’d stuck to shorter, partially shaded rides, or banked on getting in my mileage before the heat of the day and now I felt comfortable taking off up my favorite dirt climbs.