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Two Wheels Good: The L.A. Taint Ride
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5011 Reads
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A nighttime bike cruise with friends around East L.A.'s sweltering barrios and downtown's industrial taint left me with serenity, endorphins, photos and a nagging question:
What the holy hell are they burning in Vernon at night? God knows we did a pretty good job looking for it ...
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LED's a-blinking, we rolled out from Michael's east-of-Alameda warehouse stronghold in a sloppy pack, dodging potholes and abandoned traintracks.
Past warehouses and manufactories, past neighborhood eateries and the odd stray bum, we made a steady 12 mph or so, lazing our way toward Olympic and headed east over the L.A. River.
To the south, a massive hydraulic claw shoved unidentifiable clots of debris around a mysterious processing facility. Mist rained from the ceiling to keep the dust down. Right next door to it, piles of sand waited to be shoveled, funneled and otherwise manipulated for who knows what. Caltrans? Cement?
 On we rode into barrios in the little streets branching off from east 8th and lined with trees and 1920s bungalows. On every other stoop or front lawn, people hung out - socializing, drinking, barbecuing.
An alien smell hung over the neighborhood, as if everyone had cooked the same thing for dinner and burned the cheese by mistake. To be fair, the neighborhood wasn't the source. It was something big downwind.
Kids grinned, teenagers whistled or whooped occasionally as we passed. At one corner, Sean swears some guys on a roof pointed rifles at us, but when it became obvious we weren't "One-time!" - just a passel of geeks on bikes, they found something else to focus on.
We rolled on through quiet residential neighborhoods, past streetside shrines and on into the netherworld of industrial east L.A..
A few blocks later, the burnt smell gave way to the rich aroma of baking bread, the almost comforting odor of passing diesel trucks.
Everywhere, men worked in the night: stacking steel, piloting forklifts, gold-plating 26-inch dub rims, and moving the things they made to and fro in rumbling semis that sometimes idled curbside with nowhere to go just yet.
 Downtown-east is where you put your warehouses and strip clubs, your grommet factories and recycling centers and processing mills and industrial mysteries tarped to keep either dust out or secrets in.
Here and there, huge structures loomed - their purpose unclear, their sovereignty over acres of smoke-blasted industrial L.A. absolute.
We moved west into Vernon - residential population 91, industrial population 1,200 businesses and 44,000 employees, and it smacks us like a wall: This reek - what is it - burning puppies? Chrome-plating carcinogens mingled with methane byproducts? A horse-fat rendering operation left to molder too long in the heat?
Christ, it stinks.
But strong as it is, its source remains hidden.
We move on, the traffic around us getting sketchier as the cars' occupants grow more tired or drunk, depending. No close calls, but we can definitely feel the margin of courtesy and safety shrinking as the evening wears on.
And before long, we're back on Washington and Broadway, almost grateful for the piss-stench and delusional hoots of the homeless, the buildings undergoing loft-conversion behind corrugated steel, and the occasional oasis of a club's neon, smoke and music.
One more quick detour up through the 3rd Street Tunnel, up the hill and cross back over to come barreling down fourth. A couple of us claimed to have hit 37 mph on the downhill, screaming like savages before an easy lope to Little Tokyo for sushi, lemonade, banter and then the jaunt home.
Good ride. It's a big city, and now we know a tiny bit more about it first-hand. Here's our route.
More rides:
- Two Wheels Good: Midnight Ridazz 2nd Anniversary
- Two Wheels Good: Biking the L.A. River at Dawn
- Feeding Mosquitos at Griffith Observatory
- Full Moon Ride: Griffith Park & L.A. River by Bike
- Full Moon Ride: Ballona to Hermosa w/ Mystery Lights
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| Posted by: Mack_Reed on Friday, July 21, 2006 - 04:59 PM
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