Agitated, the policeman cranes his neck up at Roadblock, who stands six feet seven, and tells him that riders have to stop running lights and clogging both lanes. “I don’t want to take anyone to jail tonight,” he says. Roadblock maintains that an LAPD captain said they could travel en masse. “Bullshit,” the cop says. “You will be tying traffic forever.” Squad cars zoom by as the rest of the group fades into the tunnel. “We are traffic,” Roadblock says. “We’re like a big—a big bus.”
The others are long gone by the time we’re allowed to start rolling again through the maze of empty side streets, so it’s a surprise when we reach Main and see a wall of bikes coming toward us, their headlamps flickering. But as the first riders reach Roadblock, a squad car cuts into the crowd and two officers dash onto the sidewalk, yanking a thin fellow with dreadlocks off his bike. “Why me?” he asks as they handcuff him and pull him to their car. A knot of bystanders joins the chant: “Let him go! Let him go! Let him go!” Traffic mounts. A helicopter buzzes overhead as someone with a banana protruding from the crest of his helmet drifts by.
“What, they arrest the one black guy?” asks a middle-aged rider wearing a jacket and tie above his shorts. An officer, looking uncomfortable, explains that the cyclist was being detained for running a red light. Of course, dozens of others had run the same light. Roadblock argues calmly with the police, and they tell him to leave. “I have the right to be here,” he insists before a cop studies his bike and cites him for not having a license on it. Cyclists have dubbed these retaliatory tickets. After all, they point out, hardly anyone in L.A. has a license on their bicycle. The LAPD has begun citing such petty infractions when a gaggle of cyclists flocks downtown, and the tension between the two has made the Ridazz outings more political than the Mamas and the Papas intended when they conceived the ride.
I REMEMBER THIS RIDE. HE'S TALKING ABOUT AVERY HERE. AND THIS WAS THE VEGANBANANAPENIS RIDE.
Jazzy Phat Nastee01.7.09 - 11:09 pm
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Ridazz Roulette!
