L.A. River Bike Path Grand Opening Video

My friend Ezra Horne shot and produced this fun short video documenting the December 2011 2010 opening of the L.A. River bike and walk path through Elysian Valley.

According to the Eastsider, the multi-use bike and walk path will soon be receiving some new signage designed to foster safer behavior between pedestrians and cyclists.

Militant Angeleno on the Creeks of UCLA

Click for bigger UCLA creek images at Militant Angeleno blog site

There’s an excellent article today at Militant Angeleno where he tracks down and maps the lost creeks running through the UCLA campus in Westwood. The piece includes plenty of photos and a great map. Here’s an excerpt:

There were four waterways that ran through the UCLA campus – all north from the Santa Monica Mountains down south eventually towards Ballona Creek – just like the other two rivers that The Militant retraced. There was (from west to east) the West Arroyo, Foothill Stream, Stone Canyon Creek and East Arroyo.

Fake Creek of the Week #2

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Today’s Fake Creek of the Week brings us to the magical confluence of three canyons, whose waters led New Agers (who state this is Tongva lore) to believe the locale to be a mystical power place.  And it may be that the many millionaires who live nearby agree, the rest of us lowly mortals can only acknowledge the confluence of the powerful with this place.

But we’re here to look at this fine example of fake creekery.  Unlike last week’s Fake Creek, today’s celebrates water and play – a children’s water feature safely shielding kids from the natural hazards and joys of real creeks.  The water?  Municipally treated and imported.  Dirt? None.  Scary wildlife?  Conveniently frozen in metal.  They’re so much more pettable that way.  Never fear, moms – your children won’t challenge themselves, won’t discover wildness and its attendant lessons (let’s start with adaptation vs. control), and perhaps most important of all, won’t track mud in.

It’s actually a very pleasant and clever little toddler pool – but knowing a real stream died only to be memorialized by this concrete simulacra tarnishes the shine on our magic canyon’s aura.

Do you know where this is?

Duck Die-Off on Ballona Creek

Creekfreaks, sad news of a duck die-off on lower Ballona Creek, same general vicinity as our last post on Ballona.  That’s all we know at this point.  Lisa Fimiani, Executive Director of Friends of Ballona Wetlands sent the word out to Ballona Creek Stakeholders – follow the jump for her email.

A stench that’s hard to swallow – unless you’re a swallow

Runoff from a culvert into Ballona Creek. Photo: Rick Pine

Thanks to an email chain, I’ve been following this latest issue on Ballona Creek.  A culvert connecting to lower Ballona Creek has become a bubbling cauldron of trouble.  The culvert drains portions of West Los Angeles, as far north as Washington Boulevard, and joins Ballona Creek west of Centinela Avenue.  Observers on the bike path noted white liquids discharging to the creek, setting off an email chain to identify the fluid and the source.  It has taken a few months for an understanding of the source to emerge.

L.A. Urban Rangers River Ramble this Thursday at MOCA

Los Angeles Urban Rangers are not afraid of getting their feet wet this week!

L.A. Creek Freak has received this urgent communique from L.A.’s Urban Rangers regarding their Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) activity night – this Thursday August 4th 2011. It’s FREE and you just might learn something while having fun and thinking about some serious art.

We’re passing the Rangers’ message along to you verbatim:

HELLO!

After our successful inaugural Engagement Party expedition to the peaks of Bunker Hill, we will be off rambling along the river this Thursday. Biking is encouraged!

L.A. River Ramble
THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 7–10pm
Trailhead located at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

Hone your river-scouting skills during this activity-filled hike to America’s most famous forgotten river. Participants will journey through the riparian corridor of art, industry, and infrastructure to explore the past and future of the L.A. River in Downtown and its place in the megalopolis’ watershed.

The event is FREE to the public and no reservations are required.

Wear sturdy shoes and carry water to avoid blisters and dehydration. Biking the L.A. River Ramble trail is strongly encouraged.

For further information, please visit moca.org/party or contact education [at] moca.org. We hope to see you!

In your service,
Los Angeles Urban Rangers
laurbanrangers.org

So… Don’t make your reservation right away. Gear up and pedal down to MOCA’s Little Tokyo trailhead this Thursday at 7pm. Arrive early to score extra brownie points.  The L.A. Urban Rangers include friend of the creek freaks Jenny Price and many more groovy and gregarious go-getters. Rumor has it that you might be able to ask your pressing river questions to L.A. Creek Freak’s very own Joe Linton, who’s been conscripted into urban rangerdom for the evening!

Santiago Avenue Bridge Mini-Park in Santa Ana

One of two identical commemorative metal plaques on the 1947 Santiago Avenue Bridge, located in the city of Santa Ana

I’ve been spending some time with family down in Orange County… and I got a chance to explore Santiago Creek. I did this exploring mostly by bike. It was actually really great to get my mind off of things and just follow an urban creek upstream and down. I love to bike around on streets and anticipate where I might be able to access a creek next, looking for what sort of condition it’s in, how access, bicycling, reinforcement, humans, critters, vegetation, etc. all are working or not for the waterway.

I did a great deal of this sort of exploration a lot in the late 1990s when I was first setting up the monthly Down By The River walks series for Friends of the L.A. River, and then quite a bit in 2005 when I was working on my book Down by the Los Angeles River. I recommend it highly – exploring creeks, I meant, not my book – though I recommend that too.

Whether you’ve got a concrete channel or a natural creek in your neighborhood, explore it – see where it flows to (often a journey from urban to even more highly degraded and concreted… until you get to the ocean) and where it flows from (of ten a journey from concrete to natural foothills streams.) It can give one a sense of place… often it takes one to the older parts of a place – great historic neighborhoods and bridges, other depression-era public works… sometimes just a slice, a sort of transect, through neighborhoods, including great places and neglected ones.

Santiago Creek is a tributary of the Santa Ana River. Santiago runs mostly through the cities of Santa Ana and Orange. I wrote about Santiago Creek briefly here, and ran Joel Robinson’s Santiago alert here. There’s also the Santiago Creek Greenway Alliance that’s working to protect the creek. I am going to write more extensively about my recent Santiago Creek explorations soon, but I thought I’d get something posted quickly about one feature I encountered.

Here’s a video I shot on the 1947 Santiago Avenue Bridge: