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The Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time #157 - A Tale of Two Fields
07.18.12
One or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives
for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities,
and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the
encounters they find there.
It's a bike ride.
Started by user nathansnider and user theroyalacademy.
It meets every Wednesday at 8:30pm
at California Donuts #21.
We ride at 9pm.
We'll endeavor to return before the last red line trains (around midnight).
On this bike ride, you might expect:
- inconvenient passageways
- oblique strategies
- Oulipian constraints
- disorientation
- reorientation
- "cover" versions of other people's rides, performed with amateurish enthusiasm
- amateurish enthusiasm
- pool halls
- bowling alleys
- karaoke
- geocaching
- full moon picnics
- traffic median tea parties
- rivers that no longer exist
- smell tourism
- Couchwick v2.0
Furthermore:
- usually 20-35 miles
- usually some hills
- a medium pace (probably not for beginners; certainly not a hustle)
- few stops, short stops
- but we're not in a rush; we don't need to run every light
- victory donuts!
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This week:
A Tale of Two Fields
It's a horizontal city. That's what they say. While our average population density
overall is greater than New York, that population is more spread out over our
area. We have built out, not up. We do not have a dense, central core and a
more sparsely populated sprawl.
And yet, if you are looking at it in terms of population instead of high-rises, that
may not quite be true. For when you are standing at California Donuts, waiting for
the ride to begin, you are actually standing in the densest neighborhood in Los
Angeles, Koreatown. It is ten times the regional average. Neighboring Westlake
and East Hollywood rank second and third densest, respectively. Pico-Union is
number four. The area might not have the visible architectural density we typically
associate with urbanization, but the people, the people are here.
So this week we decamp from our bustling Koreatown metropolis and head
towards the relative pastoral idyll that is… downtown. Yes, hovering right around
the average, our eastern cousin sits a lowly 170th on the regional density rankings.
We shall venture forth seeking two of its greener pastures. And, okay, those fields
no longer exist, technically. But their memory is still marked upon the urban fabric,
in names, in forms. These were the fields that once rimmed the center city. Now
the supposed center itself is much a field in comparison to its outgrowths.
Very easy ride this week. Fields, not hills. One-donut rating.
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For the latest information about each week's ride, join our mailing list:
http://groups.google.com/group/the-passage-announcements
For more information about past rides, visit our (newly updated!) website:
http://www.ThePassageRide.com
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Discuss
Certain shifting angles,
certain receding perspectives.
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