25
Oct
2010
Working at Orange 20, many customers ask me what the Bicycle Kitchen is. More often than not, i give them the short of it; “The Kitchen is a non-profit educational center.” It is located in the Los Angeles’ Bicycle District which is on the corner of Melrose and Heliotrope in Los Angeles. The organization is ran by volunteers called “Cooks,” that have a mission to promote the bicycle as a fun, safe, and accessable form of transportation.
It all started a few miles from where the kitchen is today at The Los Angeles Eco-Village. Jimmy Lazano, Randy Metz, Ben Guzman needed a place to wrench on bikes, so they set up a bike stand in Jimmy’s kitchen at the Eco-Village got some pizzas and had friends come over and wrench on bikes. Such a simple concept has evolved in to so much more.
As a city, we owe a lot of the momentum to The Bicycle Kitchen and the foundation it has built for Los Angeles as a cycling community. It has inspired so many other co-op’s through out the city and will continue to cater to the growth that The Kitchen has started. I really feel that if it wasn’t for this organization, we would not have a point of reference to where the movement started here in Los Angeles.
As a bonus, I included a little video i did a few years back to show case what the organization has to offer. Enjoy!
P.S. I want to give recognition to K.Boogie (Kelly Martin) for always being the block’s ray of sun shine!
-The Sleepers
