One-by-one the motley crew of eight left Skull’s apartment at 1551 Echo Park Avenue. It was about 10:15 on a Friday night in February 2004 and chilly for Los Angeles. But they were dressed for it. Two wore hunting caps lined with fake fur while an equal number chose ski caps. Some even wore scarves and ski goggles. And with the exception of Skull, who rocked yellow mittens, no one knew where they were going.
Hopping on a BMX bike with a comfy banana seat, Skull rolled into the road and headed south on Echo Park Avenue. Behind her was a gaggle of five people on bikes and two on skateboards. All but one was a good friend, and for many of them, this evening sojourn would be a good chance to spend some time with Skull who had just returned from traveling in Asia.
Skull had been there with two other women and after a late night adventure in Phnom Penh, they had found a name for their gang of three, Midnight Ridazz–a combination of the hour at which they began their two-wheeled quest one particular evening and a love for the Nightrider character in the film "Mad Max."
It’s unlikely that any of Skull’s friends, who received their invitations to the first Midnight Ridazz event on domestic soil via flier, which read "Dwntwn (sic) Fountain Tour," knew where the name came from. The flier invited the reader to find a bike, wipe off the cobwebs, and go. MaBell (pronounced "ma bell"), a former bike messenger turned pediatrician, was the only person on the ride who could have been called a serious cyclist.
But on the road that night, cycling experience didn’t matter. Electricity seemed to envelop the Ridazz as they followed Skull down Echo Park Avenue. They took a left onto Sunset, passing two bars filled with hipster, 20-somethings, and kept moving. This ride was Skull’s attempt to offer an inexpensive alternative to what she and many of her peers did on a weekend night–spending too much money in a loud bar, surrounded by a lot of people but not interacting with most of them. She wanted something fun; something intimate; something interesting to do before going to the bar.
Moving east on Sunset, traffic was surprisingly light and the wheeled posse ebbed and flowed. Too small to attract much attention, they fit comfortably in the bike lane. It was like a rolling cocktail party: friends connected with friends that they hadn’t seen in a while and new acquaintances were made. Sans swizzle sticks and shakers, many riders had packed their own poison into flasks or brown bags.
But alcohol was only one ingredient of the buzz everyone was feeling. The main ingredient was being in motion. Reminiscent of the euphoric surge of freedom and independence children feel when they first learn to ride a bike, but through the lens of experience, this raw feeling was newly intense. Oddly, there was barely anyone else on the road. To Skull it seemed like everyone had vacated the city so she could share her favorite parts of Los Angeles with her friends.
As the Sunset continued east, hills began to interrupt the unity of the group. The skateboarders couldn’t keep up when the boulevard tilted uphill, and the cyclists got to the intersection of Sunset and Figueroa first. They turned around and watched one of the skateboarders descend the hill. With little traffic behind him, he put some soul into his downhill slalom. Surfing down the boulevard, the skateboarder embodied the magic of motion that everyone was feeling: un-motorized locomotion just felt good.
As they waited and watched, one of the tenets of Midnight Ridazz was born if not necessarily vocalized–"No ridah left behind." It meant that come flats, steep hills, or mechanical breakdowns, no participant would be stranded.
The skateboarder caught up and soon they were moving again, off to see the dead fountains that no longer flowed. Skull, a professional dressmaker, scoped the fountains out during her frequent trips downtown to buy fabric. After she had bought what she needed, she would return to one and sketch out different designs. On that February night, Skull led the group like a tour guide, stopping for photo ops, discussing the sites they were seeing, and stopping at fountains to pedal figure-8s.
Before they were half-way finished with the ride, one of Skull’s friends said, "I got next!" By this time everyone was having so much fun that it was a foregone conclusion that Midnight Ridazz would happen again. Veterans of downtown or urban riding had their own revelations. Skull had had found that one of her favorite fountains had been filled with flowers and MaBell, who had put plenty of hours on a bike saddle, had begun to see her bicycle in a new way.
The 18-mile ride was slated to end at the Little Joy. As they approached the bar, Skull faded back and let everyone get ahead of her. She believed the ride had an affect on everyone involved.
What Skull didn’t know was that Midnight Ridazz would multiply by word of mouth alone. Nor did Skull know that along with MaBell and a woman nicknamed "Muff" that she would spend two years working on and off on this ride that would change their lives. And these three had no idea that Midnight Ridazz’s ultimate success would threaten its existence.
But most importantly, no one realized that Midnight Ridazz would change cycling in Los Angeles and affect cycling across the country. Skull didn’t know any of those things that night. She just knew that she wanted to lock her bike up outside the Little Joy, join her friends inside and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Group rides in cycling come in a few varieties: bike races, casual rides led by cycling or fundraising organizations, and Critical Mass. Although there is some spillover, it’s safe to say each community of riders is relatively independent of each other. Racers hang with racers and casual riders pedal with casual riders. Critical Mass, however, is probably the ride that is most similar to Ridazz: a melting pot with every type of rider, from bike messenger to racer to casual rider. However, putting the fine points on the Mass ride is complicated because there isn’t an official spokesperson or governing body. Although Critical Mass takes place in more than 300 cities around the world, sometimes the rides are similar in name alone. One ride can number in the thousands and be antagonistic towards cars and another can be law-abiding and diplomatic.
Many critics of the more aggressive Mass rides think these rides are bad for cycling because instead of making drivers more receptive to bicycle traffic, they’re actually making drivers dislike bikes and cyclists. Seeing cyclists behaving badly is tough for many critics to watch because it enforces the thought that a group of cyclists can be as bad as a group of rowdy motorists. In other words, being an egocentric, righteous fool is not the exclusive domain of those who drive Hummers in cities.
Ridazz borrowed the Critical Mass idea to have the ride start at the same time every month. But the machismo spirit that is present at some Mass rides was lacking at most early Midnight Ridazz events and this lack is at least partially responsible for its success. Ridazz rides, regardless of who was leading them, had a relatively non-confrontational approach to the group bike ride. Male or female; queer, straight or with a toe in each pool, early Ridazz was inclusive without being tiresome. Sure, there was an anarchist spirit, but it was more Emma Goldman than Abbie Hoffman. And although booze was often a part of the ride, it was in a fun, sophisticated, and free-spirited way. Dorothy Parker would have enjoyed this ride.
As long as you weren’t a jerk, you were welcome.
And then the community grew. The first ride had only 8, the second ballooned to 21, and the third more than doubled to 45. This growth was all from word-of-mouth. One rider would invite another rider. Within three months, there were way too many people to meet at Skull’s studio, so they started to meet at the gas station across the way. Eventually, as the numbers grew, their meeting place became a parking lot, further down Echo Avenue, next to a fast-food joint called Pioneer Chicken and conveniently located across from House of Spirits, a liquor store.
People formed friendships at these rides, and after a few months, mementos were created specifically for each ride. Dubbed "spoke cards," these laminated pieces were made specifically for each event. For example, the E.T. ride had a picture of the extra-terrestrial in Eliot’s basket, and the bike cult ride had a pentagram on it. These cards were slid into the wheel’s spokes and not only added some color to a bike, but became a public, scrapbook that announced the rides a ridah had participated in.
Themes for rides were also announced before the ride, often only a day or two before the event. It was frantic and fun because friends and couples who were planning to ride together had to figure out their costumes in a hurry. For the Cult ride, some dressed like Satanists. For Prom ride, couples dressed in tuxes and gowns, and the Strip ride had both genders in pasties, French Maid outfits, and Playboy-Mansion-acceptable attire.
The look on drivers faces? Often it was amused. They wanted to know why people were riding. After many failed attempts at longer explanations, many would answer, "for fun!" Others would ask, especially in Hollywood, "Where are you going?" Although the truth was always a possible answer, "Topanga" usually yielded a better response. Finally, a lot of folks would want to know how they could find out about it. And that was a problem for those who wanted to share the magic–it was listed on a single website, bicyclekitchen.com, the website of a bike cooperative that was integral to the growth of Ridazz. But the site went down periodically, and the info about the ride was limited.
This year, things changed in a big way. The number of attendees grew and grew. When it peaked at over 1,300 attendees, organizers didn’t know what to do. It was interrupting traffic in a big way. There were too many reports of conflicts between cyclists and drivers and Ridazz were being left behind all over the place. Sometimes it would take more than 15 minutes for the entire procession to roll though an intersection and it seemed that more and more drivers were becoming frustrated and driving into the pack of Ridazz.
Then in August, one of the original eight Midnight Ridazz put up midnightridazz.com. The site would act as the home for the monthly event and each ride would begin in a different location. Originally, organizers hoped that this location change would cause numbers to decrease. They didn’t, but some other interesting things happened.
The website became an online community where visitors could tap into Midnight Ridazz without leaving their desks. Visitors uploaded pics, discussed rides, and used the web calendar to create their own rides. Ridazz itself grew: the once monthly ride expanded to three times a month, and now plenty of non-Ridazz rides are also listed on the website.
Words of the rides started to spread. Although San Francisco had borrowed the name months ago, Santa Barbara also created a Ridazz, as did a college town in Indiana.
Call it Midnight Ridazz 2.0. It’s attracted a lot of new people. Even folks who attended regularly 12 months ago, saw many more new faces than old ones at rides. Many of the regulars stopped attending as well. Skull, MaBell, and Muff as well as many of the folks who did some heavy lifting along the way stepped away from the ride completely. Here is part of what Skull posted to the website. "The founders and organizers, who have planned routes, created flyers and spoke cards, led in the front and fixed flats in the rear - are stepping down. We are passing the ride on to others who have new energy and ideas."
In this feature on Midnight Ridazz, you’ll hear Muff’s story: the tale of woman whose life was changed by Ridazz. She recently quit her job in Hollywood and became a bicycle advocate. You’ll also meet "Roadblock", one of the original eight Ridazz and the person responsible for the website. You’ll hear the story of Raymond Chavez, a cyclist who put his own spin on Ridazz: promoting his event weeks and weeks in advance and even making t-shirts to get the word out. Skull? She’s pursuing and planning other things like her wedding to a man she met on Ridazz. But she’s known all along that it takes a community to raise a ridah.
Stephen Krcmar has worked as a bike messenger in New York and Boston, a test rider for a self-contained bicycle transmission, and in other areas of the bike industry that he’d rather forget. He regularly writes about bikes and bike culture and his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Outside, ReadyMade, and other publications including the blog Wiredonkey.com where he serves as the editor-at-large. Lastly, he has corked intersections, changed flats, and pushed a Ridah’s bike for miles to make sure that no one was left behind.
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