Rose bowl musings

July 10, 2:19 PMLA Bicycle Transportation ExaminerRuben Zarian

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Rose Bowl Cyclists: Photo Dorothy Wong

I love the Rose Bowl. I’ve been riding around it for years with friends, family, once with my apartment manager and more often then not, alone. Of course I’m not the only one, it seems to be the premier destination for anyone east of the 405. This includes not only cyclists, but runners, moms with baby strollers, casual walkers, golf cart riders and once in a while I even see a guy with a bird on his shoulder. The people who are not cyclists almost always outnumber the riders and that has created a ridiculous controversy in the last few years.

The famous Rose Bowl ride, peloton style (packs of cyclists riding one behind the other), is held every Tuesday and Thursday night most of the year. I only mention it now because it always seems to become even more serious during the summer, with sometimes around a hundred riders showing up to roll the ten laps for bragging rights. I can only speak of my experiences from a few years ago, when I counted calories and lived for the Thursday night ride, but it was incredibly fun. Of course like everything else popular in LA, it got a little blown out of proportion. Bad crashes involving mangled lycra and carbon fiber became a weekly occurrence, people with bad attitudes began to show up and act like they invented the bicycle (once I heard a guy exclaim to his friend as they almost ran me off the road “I feel like I’m better than most of these guys because I shave my legs!”). Whatever the case, I soon moved on and began to avoid the Tuesday/Thursday ride and focus more on other, mellower, places to train.

I’m not trying to focus this article onto only me, but on a recent visit to the Bowl to go casually walking with a friend I noticed all the attitude the cyclists had towards the rest of the people, and vice versa. I always thought road cyclists in LA were a little snobby, but at the bowl they occasionally reach a new stratosphere of too good for you, pretty hard to believe in this town (sarcasm). Most people who come for the ride don’t live in Pasadena, so they aren’t too aware of the fact that about a year ago the city actually tried to make the pack ride illegal. I don’t think that would have solved anything, but I have no idea what else Pasadena is supposed to do. In a way deep down, I really want to have the old Rose Bowl back, the one that was a little less about your fancy bike and matching kit and a little bit more about chatting with other cyclists and promoting the sport. Alas, I can dream.