Earlier this month I traveled to Chicago for a couple of book appearances, and discovered a city so literary I couldn't begin to cover it all. I read trivia questions about solar power in a bar where I met a couple of terrific local writers, visited more than half a dozen bookstores, prowled through Printer's Row (the midwest's largest outdoor book festival), visited the Balzekas Museum which is America's only museum for Lithuanian culture and history, and read at one of Chicago's newest bookstores, City Lit Books. I spent one day getting around on the local bike share system, Divvy, which works particularly well because the city is so flat. It made me ever more impatient to get bike share in LA. I also bought way too many books.
While in town I picked up a copy of Newcity, which had a fantastic cover piece on Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago. It's a great overview of who matters in literary Chicago, from bookstores to local indie presses to the literary editor at the Chicago Tribune. Turns out, I'd met one of the city's literati, Eric May, while doing trivia at Sheffield's bar. It wasn't until I got back home that I found out The Rumpus had listed my reading at City Lit Books on their "Notable in Chicago" events listing for that week. The Rumpus! It pairs nicely with being listed as one of the Top 5 Things to do in Seattle the weekend I read at Elliot Bay Bookstore. Here are a few pics from my Chicago literary biking adventure. Some of them you might have seen already on Instagram or Twitter.
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My essay on how I did research on Lithuania and its history for Love Songs of the Revolution is now available at Necessary Fiction.
There's a small town, a brown dog, mushrooms, an English-Russian dictionary on disarmament and much more. Click to read the essay now. This year's Bike Week LA was marked by crazy hot, dry weather, an explosion of wildfires and a bursting crude oil pipeline near a residential neighborhood that left a lot of us wondering if there are any others close to where we live. Turns out Los Angeles is home to thousands of oil pipelines. They promise none of the 10,000 gallons of spilled oil made it into the LA River, at least none that they noticed. My bike to work path takes me down a lovely patch of the river where it isn't entirely cemented in at the bottom. I've seen ducks, geese, seagulls, cormorants, pelicans, grebes, kingfishers, red-wing blackbirds and so many other birds on the river. In the spring, mother ducks tour their clutches of chicks along the water, and for a moment you might not notice the roar of the I-5 freeway just a few feet away from the bike path. Thursday was Bike to Work Day in LA. Mayor Garcetti did his bit to set a good example early in the week by biking to the office, hashtags and all. It hit the low hundreds temp-wise on Thursday, but I definitely saw more bike commuters on the streets than usual. I stopped in at a pit stop early on my route, where they told me they were counting record numbers of cyclists. That's good news for all LA commuters - every bike is one less car blocking your way to work. Once again I organized a couple of bike trains in to my office. On one side of town I met up with Clare and Brandon at Cafe Tropical in Silver Lake. Unfortunately we didn't have time to stop in for one of their amazing guava pastries. We pedaled down through Historic Filipinotown and Westlake neighborhoods to meet up with PK at MacArthur Park. On the other side of town, Tom rode into downtown LA where he met up with Jen, and picked up swag at all the hottest hipster pit stops in the city. Sure, the ride home was hot-hot-hot: 94 degrees at 5 pm when we pedaled out the door. But with plenty of sunblock, cold water and a leisurely pace, we all made it home just fine. Whether you bike to work every day or once a year, it's great to see the world at a pedaling pace. You'll see details of people and places you never noticed before. I'd never been on the LA River before I rode it on my bike. You'll learn the topography of your city, and may even discover some wonderful, unexpected, crazy treasures. If Bike to Work Day LA ever gets its own theme song, I hope it goes something like this: |
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May 2018
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