Invisible Riders

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For the invisible riders, two-wheeled transit has nothing to do with style or making a political statement. The invisible riders are overtly saying nothing. But their actions? Nothing could be more politically charged than the way they live.

From overhead, the intersection of Vermont Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard could be seen as the center of a giant cross, marking the center of urban Los Angeles. It is a busy spot. There's a construction site, a gleaming subway station, and bus after bus chugging by, each with its front bike rack nearly filled. At lunchtime on a Wednesday afternoon, riders passed through continually. Most were riding Magnas and Micargis, popular department-store models in faux off-road style. A couple of messengers on fixed-gear rigs blew by, and one rider on a battered yellow Schwinn.

It wasn't easy to get people to stop and talk. A heavyset man on a frame branded simply 'Alloy' pedaled around us, saying, 'I'm late.'

'At those kinds of jobs,' Salinger pointed out, 'there are no second chances.'

One place these riders congregate is MacArthur Park, a city recreational facility a few blocks away. A rider resting on the grass there is somebody who hasn't found work yet that day, who might be waiting for a second shift to start, or who just won't go home because the distance, weighed against even the slim chance of getting hired for something, favors staying put. We rode to the park's southwest boundary, picking through a streetside marketplace of fake green card and driver's license merchants, then circled the soccer fields and basketball courts on an asphalt outer ring. Dozens of bikes leaned against trees or lay on the scruffy turf.

'I don't want to give my name,' said a man on a $130 Schwinn with a basket mounted to the front. The basket was filled with empty plastic bottles. 'When I don't find work, I try to make a little money by turning in empties,' he said.

He told us he pedals more than three hours a day, but limited to a minuscule area. He'd never been farther north than the park we were standing in, or much more than three miles in any direction. When I asked why, he got nervous, and the answer was suddenly obvious to me. This is his territory. He couldn't afford to be caught out, to be jailed or sent back across the border.

A few benches down, Hugo Moreno laid his bike on the ground and took a seat. A muscular 27-year-old with a faint mustache and an easy smile, he'd worked since 6 a.m. and wanted to rest before his ride home to Pico Rivera, a community at the heart of immigrant Los Angeles. I asked Moreno if his bike was a good substitute for a car. He looked at me with incredulity. 'It's more like a horse,' he said.

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