Once again, CicLAvia has brought joy to the people of Los Angeles by liberating a short network of streets from cars and letting our communities bloom and mingle in a bouquet of civic love!

Old and young; black, white, brown, and yellow; hardcore riders, casual cruisers, and even some non-human passengers–people from all walks of life and dozens of neighborhoods converged for a day of peace and exhilaration on roads that were mean streets no more.

From East Los Angeles, the Old Plaza, and South LA they converged on downtown and rode past classic Art Deco buildings, parks, homes, and busy businesses to end up in Hel-Mel, home of Orange 20, the Bicycle Kitchen, Cafecito Organcio, Scoops, and more. And there is where I took these portraits, “Faces of CicLAvia.”

Cars destroy civic cultures, but bicycles can knit them back together. Ciclovias have been a feature of life in South America for forty years; meanwhile, in Northern Europe and parts of Japan they would be meaningless, because you’re free to ride your bicycle in comfort every day–and those societies have happier, healthier populations and economies, thanks in part to bikes and their inherent social and spatial efficiency.

Let’s hope that after a few more CicLAvias, Los Angeles will get it too–and pedal into a happier future with fewer cars, less smog, less of the public’s money wasted on congestion-generating road expansions, and more real community–as we saw today, and in every CicLAvia since the first.