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My  10-Bridgers river-side under the 6th Street Viaduct.

Since I’d left the house in a bit of an as-usual rush yesterday morning of course I forgot my notes for the 10 Bridges Ride (drawn from a variety of sources — the most reliable of which is the Creek Freak himself, Joe Linton whose book “Down By The Los Angeles River” should be on the shelf of every angeleno).

I winged it with the factoids as best I could, and near the end of the otherwise excellent excursion, rider Eric — who’d journeyed all the way from Santa Monica to participate — had the excellent suggestion that I post the notes online. And so here they are with my thanks for everyone who turned out and my hopes to see them and others on next Saturday’s Watts Happening Ride and others throughout the remaining Saturdays of May:

10 Bridges Ride Notes

The Man
Merrill Butler is widely acknowledged as the guiding force behind the design and construction of seven of the 10 bridges we’ll be crossing today, but little else is known about him. What I was able to discover was that Butler never attended college. Instead, he learned civil engineering via a correspondence course. Born in 1891 he was a city engineer for bridges and structures for 38 years, from 1923 to 1961. He died in 1963 and is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale.

The Movement
The bridges  over the LA River that we’ll be crossing today were born out of the late 19th-century City Beautiful movement, when monumental public works were developed in order to uplift the character of urban residents. In 1924 LA voters approved a $2 million Viaduct Bond Act, which levied a tax to fund the city’s ambitious program to upgrade and modernize its bridges. Butler began in the beaux arts style, which dominated US public architecture of the period. You’ll see it in the more ornate 1926 Cesar Chavez Bridge and the 1925 Olympic Boulevard Bridge. His later bridges are slightly more streamlined and modern, but all reflect a consistency of purpose and vision.

Each bridge has features unique to it. You’ll see that every bridge has its own unique lighting standards that compliment the individual design. On some of the bridges we’ll be biking by seating and overlook areas, harkening back to an era when walking was the way a lot of people got around the city.

The Impact
Butler’s bridges not only allowed the city to grow but literally paved the way for the highway era. Ironically that era brought about relative obscurity both to his bridges and to him. But the simple truth is that he was never in it for any glory. Instead he considered being a civil servant a noble profession and was proud to work for the city. Merrill Butler servesas a shining example for all who strive to make our river and our city beautiful and his amazing bridges stand as monumental legacies.

The Bridges
North Broadway Bridge – Was originally known as the Buena Vista Viaduct (viaducts are so named because they span not only water but also railway tracks and/or roads). Completed in 1911, it is 968 feet long, rising 40 feet above the river and was designed by architect Alfred Rosenheim though it is generally credited to Homer Hamilin who served as Los Angeles civil engineer from 1906 to 1907.

North Spring Street Bridge – Begun in 1927 and completed in 1929 to relieve overcrowding on the North Broadway Bridge, it is 700 feet long and was designed by Major John C. Shaw, L.A.’s chief engineer from 1925-1930 — although Merrill Butler’s name also appears on the plaque on the north end of the bridge.

Main Street Bridge – Designed by H.G. Parker and Carl Leonardt, not only is this the shortest of the 10 bridges at 311 feet long (one foot shorter than the Washington Boulevard bridge) but it’s also the one that’s lost the most. Over its lifetime many of its architectural details have disappeared including a crisscross railing of artificial stone and frosted glass globes extending from decorated posts. It is also the only at-grade bridge remaining downtown.

Cesar E. Chavez Bridge – Originally called the Macy Street Bridge it was designed by Merrill Butler and completed in 1926. Along its 1270-foot length its ornamentation is decidedly Spanish Revivial, featuring large porticos and spiral columns, abstracted seashells and a replica of the city seal. It is dedicated to Father Junipero Serra, the founder of the California Missions and is believed to be the vicinity in which The Pabladores — the city’s founding settlers — crossed the river on their way from the San Gabriel Mission to what became El Pueblo de Los Angeles.

First Street Bridge – At 1,300 feet long it was designed by Merrill Butler and completed in 1929. It has been redesigned to accommodate the expansion of the Gold Line whose tracks now where the old Red and Yellow cars did until the early 1960s. The bridge bears a bronze plaque  with a dedication to the memory of Henry G. Parker, who was assistant city engineer in charge of bridge building. In 1909. At the age of 40, Parker drowned while supervising repairs to flood gates of the city’s outfall sewer near Redondo Beach.

Fourth Street Bridge -  The Goth Bridge was designed by Merrill Butler and completed in 1931, at 1890 feet this bridge replaced the last remaining wooden bridge downtown with a 254-foot arch spanning the river. Butler incorporated gothic-style details in its ornate railing, lighting and columns.

Sixth Street Bridge – Set apart from the other downtown bridges by its use of two steel arches to span the river, this bridge, designed by Merrill Butler and completed in 1932, was aligned to provide a smooth transition from Whitter Boulevard to East Sixt Street. At 3,546 feet in length it was the longest concrete bridge in the world in its day.

But the 6th Street bridge is falling apart. The sand quarried from the site 80 years ago to produce the concrete used turns out to have been toxic, triggering an alkali-silicon reaction that is slowly turning the bridge to jelly. The bridge remains safe for routine travel, but the city’s engineer corp gives it a 70% chance of failure in the event of the next major seismic event.

The Bureau of Engineering and its consultants have introduced five design alternatives, most of which attempt to replicate the current bridges signature arches. But none of them comes close to equating the current bridges singular drama.

Replacement of the bridge is estimated at $400 million dollars and in a recent op-ed column in the LA Times titled “Beauty and the Bridge.” Lewis MacAdams and Alex Ward urged the city to revisit the design and come up with one that doesn’t disregard the bridges important cultural and historical connections to the city. They wrote:

“No LA River bridge has more spectacular views of the downtown skyline than the 6th Street Bridge. None says “Los Angeles” more unmistakeably. No bridge in the city carries more symbolic weight either. There is no more direct route between Boyle Heights and the financial district than 6th Street, no bridge that better illustrates the physical proximity and the psychic distance between the working-class Eastside and the towers of the Figueroa Corridor. No bridge more accurately symbolizes the forces that bring us together and pull us apart.”

Seventh Street Bridge – At 1530 feet, the bridge as you see it today was designed by Merrill Butler and completed in 1927. And from the side it looks as if it might have once been a double-decker. In actuality the 1927 bridge was built on top of an existing bridge completed in 1910 to carry trolley cars back and forth across the river.

Olympic Boulevard Bridge – Designed by Merrill Butler and completed in 1925 originally as the Ninth Street Bridge, it was renamed in 1932 in honor of the Olympic games held here that year. Originally trolleys ran along the middle of the bridges 1,420 foot length, supported by a special girder and a thicker deck.

Washington Boulevard Bridge – Completed in 1930 from a Merrill Butler design, at 312 feet it is the second shortest of the 10 bridges. It is significant for its polychrome terra cotta frieze panels on the columns which depict the art and science of bridge building.

— • —

Here’s the route we took on Gmaps. And I only snapped a few other photos that can be found here on Flickr.

In case you missed my preview post over on LA Metblogs, I’ve gone and done rustled us up some group ride goodness for next month, beginning May 1, with a replay of my 10 Bridges Ride, only this time done in reverse.

It will depart at 10 a.m. from SilverSun Plaza at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Parkman Avenue in Silver Lake. So if you’re available and interested, join me there and we’ll be part of a unique few dozens of angelenos who’ve biked over the 10 bridges spanning the L.A. River between Chinatown and Vernon.

Lunch afterward at the always wonderful Blue Star restaurant in the Scrap Metal District.

Just a not very satisfactory morning. Wolfed down some leftover chicken as I was getting ready to leave for work and it triggered that allergic reaction I’ve written about finally self-diagnosing in the past in which my esophagus basically plays the Black Knight and closes up in full “None. Shall. Pass.” mode.

So I spent the next hour wearing myself out hacking, gagging and coughing the chicken back out of me. It normally doesn’t take that long, because I’ll normally sense when the reaction starts and wisely stop eating. This time I was running around getting my crap together and just gobbling the half a chicken breast barehanded like a cro-mag. So by the time I recognized the symptoms it was all jammed in down there, and subsequently it all had to come out.

Fantastic.

I should’ve just notified my superiors that I was gonna work from home — which I’m gonna start to do officially next week — but see, if I bike to work every remaining day this week, my last day in the office will see me break the 2,000 bike miles barrier for the year so far.

So once my esophagus relaxed and I’d recuperated enough from that ordeal onto my bike I went, and it was headwinds the whole freakin’ way in. To add to my misery, I flatted at 4th Street and Westminster — on top of flatting last night on the way home by LA City College.

When it rains it pours. But whereas last night’s flat was a result of a poorly sealed patch on the tube, this morning’s flat wasn’t the result of any bad innertube repair. It was this fucker sitting there on the tip of my filthy index finger, yanked from the inside of the rear tire that it had wormed its way through the tread (click for the bigger picture):

Putting my hopes on a doomed-to-fail stick-on patch getting me the remaining 11 miles to work, I set out again into the headwinds that found me whether I was pedaling south or west.

The patch failed at Venice Boulevard in Culver City. Not wanting to patch again and without any other spares I had confidence in I rode slow on the mostly deflated tire to Palms Cycles and ordered me up five new tubes.

“Five?” the clerk asked in surprise.

I was in no mood to justify or be explanatory or cordial. “Is that a problem?” I asked.

Dude shook his head and rung me up. Then I went outside and swapped out the flat rear tube for one of the new ones and the rest of the way to work was uneventful, save for the incessant headwinds.

Of course, after arriving I tweet vented my frustration about the winds and the flats and a follower tweeted back wondering what kind of tires I was using because he commutes pretty much every day and has had something like two flats in seven years.

Don’t tell me that. I don’t wanna hear that. Shit like that makes me ornery.

Why? Because today’s two flats were Nos. 10 & 11 for 2010. I think I had something like 34 last year. I’m a flat magnet. Two in seven. Pesh. Good for you, but keep that factoid to yourself.

The irony is, I’m rolling on a pair of Gatorskins, purported to be one of the toughest, flat rejecting tires around. But the reality of rolling 2,000 miles back and forth across Los Angeles in four months is that unless I opt for solid rubber, it doesn’t matter what shoes my 8Ball is wearing: I’m gonna get waaaaaay more than my fair share of flats.

The biggest joy I get from wearing my videocam sunglasses isn’t the capture of footage demonstrating bad road behavior. Rather it’s the mundane scenes they record in passing, moments otherwise forgotten that instead I get to faux up and celebrate.

Oooooooooo! Art Project! Taking a page from my friend Stephen’s book when he posted lakeside prints of the much-mourned and long-gone lotusflower of Echo Park Lake’s lagoon, I wouldn’t be surprised if the occaional still doesn’t start showing up, staked out in the vicinities of where they were snapped!

Coming back Saturday night from our inaugural visit to The Thirsty Crow Bar — our new favorite neighborhood watering hole — we decided to get some food to-go from Cowboys & Turbans up the street, one of our new favorite local eateries. In going there we passed a gathering of cyclists in the parking lot at SilverSun Plaza, getting ready for a group ride hosted by the MOM Ridazz crew, a group I’d heard of but didn’t really associate with because their reputation precedes them as partiers (their logo prominently features a marijuana leaf), and who did little to endear themselves to me when I found photos posted of a past MOM Ridazz ride some months ago in which one participant thought it awesome to climb the fragile Echo Park Lady of Lake statue. I’m sure their rides are great for those they appeal to, but they’re just not my bag.

Anyway, while waiting for our order outside Cowboys & Turbans, Susan and I were talking and in the distance I heard a loud thump, but it took a few seconds to register that the noise didn’t sound good. Stepping into the street and looking east up Sunset, I saw a person down in the bike lane next to a bike, and another person kneeling down next to them.

At first I thought it was just a case of a spill, but as I got closer and saw there wasn’t a second bike, I wondered if there’d been a car involved. Sure enough after getting the injured cyclist and his messed up bike out of the street, I found out the woman had opened her car door and he’d barreled into it — loud enough that I heard it 100 yards away and with enough force that the door now wouldn’t close.

The nasty knot on his knee, an abrasion to his back and some other aches and minor scrapes notwithstanding, the young man was lucky. Besides seeming not to have hit his helmetless head, he also avoided sprawling out into traffic where he might have been struck by another vehicle.

As with any traffic accident with injuries I wanted the police contacted, but the young man begged us not to, claiming he was fine, and despite my best efforts to encourage him at least to go to a hospital to get checked out, he was understandably amped on adrenaline and that just wasn’t really a priority to him.

Eventually the MOM Ridazz participants began their ride (which is where he’d been heading). Passing us the downed cyclist called out to them and a couple of his buddies came to his aid. His rather blunt explanation that he “got hit by a motherfucking car” with the apologetic driver right there drove her to tears and I did my best to calm her, telling her that thankfully it wasn’t any worse and that the first opportunity she had she should file a report with her insurance company — especially if he didn’t want to go to a hospital and  no one wanted to call the police.

In the chaos of the victim talking with his buddies and trying to get the bike working I wished everyone well and Susan and I got on our way home.

Coming home last night from work in the still-light late afternoon I opted to go the “long way” east across Jefferson to pay my annual spring visit to the Exposition Park Rose Garden, then up Figueroa to 2nd to Glendale around Echo Park Lake and home via Sunset.

Everything was awesome, up until I was northbound on Fig approaching 4th and the latest in the endless stream of inbred motorists dickwads — this one in a full-sized silver pick-up — passes less than two feet from me and lays on his horn despite having room to pass me without the honk and also to move to the left.

Here he is in mid-pass from my sunglasses cam, close enough not only to scare the crap out of me with or without the horn, but also close enough for me in the truck’s wake to get a solid whiff of the skunkweed emanating from the closed cab.

In the next frame, you’ll see he’s further up the block, prepping to make a right turn on 4th and either oblivious to or not interested in  my loud and heated invitation for him to stop and let me physically demonstrate my disdain upon his head and ass until he apologized for being a self-entititle cromag with no respect for anyone but his drug dealer.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. In the next frame I’ve arrived at 4th and I’ve wisely decided that the dipshit isn’t worth chasing down, much less the prison time I’d incur from stomping a hole through his stomach. So I stay on Fig and give the truck a dismissive wave and shake of the head as I pass. Trouble is those two fixie riders on the sidewalk you see there? They see me wave and for some stoopid reason they think I’m dissing them.

Of course I don’t know this until I get up between 3rd and 2nd streets and pull off to the side of the road, seething and half-hoping the truck might be coming back onto Figueroa from 3rd. This doesn’t happen, but in short order the two fixies pass me and the second guy makes a deliberate effort to dismissively wave at me and shake his head as he goes by, like so.

At first I’m all WTF, but since I’m not the dimmest bulb on the chandlier I figure they must’ve thought I was insulting them as I passed them at 4th and they were returning the favor. So, when traffic cleared I get in the left lane for my turn on to 2nd and catch up with them at the intersection, where I seek confirmation of my theory. The guy smiles and shrugs when I ask him if they thought I’d been dissing them and so I tell him he’s got it all wrong, that  I had been waving at a truck on 4th that had almost hit me, not them.

Dude didn’t look too convinced and was all “Whatever you say, man.”

I started to launch into a defensive sermon about my love for bikes and how I’d be the last sumbitch on the streetz to behave so ignorantly toward another cyclist, but I could tell it was lost on him so I just went on my way home chuckling at how only in my world can a motorist harass and disrespect me with absolutely no consequences — and in the end I’m left having to placate to some sensitive misinterpreting cyclists all because I elected to do the right thing and avoid confronting the bastard.

Sigh.

LAist posted this photo on its website and in light of the MTA’s plans to raise fares this summer I just had to put my — shall we say: spin — on the the transit monopoly’s current ad campaign:

Before:

After:

Photo by RobeRt Vega via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr

I’m gonna be bicycling. Join me?

Spokecard art above, more info over here.

There was supposed to be rain today but being Earth Day, I put away my lazy/don’t wanna get wet excuses and got on my bike for the ride to work. As I discovered on the way in it must have also been Block The Bike Lane Day as demonstrated by a variety of motorists, including the most ironic one (pictured in sequence  of my approach/arrival below): a Department of Transportation Parking Enforcement officer sitting in her vehicle that she has parked in full obstruction of the bike lane on Venice Boulevard while issuing a citation to the vehicle parked at the curb — despite there being ample curb space in front of the violating vehicle for the officer to park and thereby avoid me yelling at her not to block the bike lane as I passed (click for the bigger pictures).