Late Night Ride

It's a different city at night.

I rode home last night from the bar. Some friends from school had thrown a party (laughter, voices spilling out into the street from the upstairs window), and we moved on from there to what's become a favorite dive. It was a send-off of sorts for another friend on his way to a research fellowship in Israel, and going out seemed the appropriate thing to do.

Another drink there, the evening tending past midnight, and we began to slip out our respective ways. I had a friend offer to take my bike in the back of her truck and give me a lift back to Koreatown, but I insisted I wanted to ride. Partly stubborn, partly masochistic, partly just a curiosity to see if I could do it (the day's rides mapped here).

Leaving the bar, I turned north on Sepulveda, then east on Venice. There's something about the street's width, its length, that somehow encapsulates so much of the weird unsettling beauty of Los Angeles. People waiting on bus benches for the last 33 of the night, a handful of cars skipping through the late night, a cluster of riders in the parking lot at Venice and Motor. At one point, I heard someone else behind me, another cyclist drafting for a second before turning south at National with a quiet "Ride safe" as he turned. Passed under the 10, smells of trash and urine, the heavy smell of dew settling on the grass. Arlington Heights, Crenshaw Boulevard, a group of men gathered outside of a small nearly shuttered storefront listening to reggae, the smell of incense over the street. A homeless man slumped against the plate glass front of a brightly lit doughnut shop. Police cruisers idling on side streets, then blue and red, rolling by a car pulled over, two black and whites pulled up to the curb. North at Western, late night noodle shops and taco trucks pulled up to the curb, supper clubs letting out. Traffic had nearly thinned out on 3rd, a couple of men talking in the shadows on Kenmore, roll home to a quiet house.

Back on the bike today; incidentally, back to Culver City.

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