BIKE SALON: LONG BEACH’S TWO-WHEELED LOVE AFFAIR COMES FULL CYCLE
By Sarah Bennett
For a bike-friendly city with one of the country’s best public art institutions, Long Beach sure has been lacking in art shows about bikes. Review the list of every bicycle-themed art exhibit ever, for example, and you’ll find that Long Beach has lacked all but one of them—Spoke Up, which was displayed at the Downcrowd Gallery on the Promenade.
Yeah, I hadn’t really noticed, either.
But then the 2011 Long Beach Bike Salon opened last Saturday at Residence, a new, small gallery tucked behind Shelter Surf Shop on 4th Street’s Retro Row. Despite only 300 square feet to work with, the Long Beach Bike Salon dynamically presents the bicycle’s mixture of art, mechanics and social impacts, along with a smidge of regret over what we’ve been missing.
Co-curators Frank Burton (the gallery’s owner) and Evan Whitener (a Jones Bikes employee with an industrial design degree from CSULB) created a creative cross-section of the bicycle’s artistic potential with photo essays featuring classic Schwinns, a light fixture made from forgotten bike parts, a large fine art portrait of Bob the Greeter with his ride and—of course—actual bicycles.
Long Beach’s first framebuilder (and firefighter), Adam DeHart, displays two of his elegantly lugged frames, one of
which is a track bike still in progress. Local bike collectors scoured their garages and brought in a 1950s Claud Butler Saxon twin-tube road bike, a 1940s Elgin Twin-Bar, a mid-century Schwinn Cycle Truck and one of the first BMX bicycles to ever be built by the infamous Cook Brothers Racing company.
The centerpiece of the entire show, however, is Long Beach-based cyclist Steven Davis’ Surly Long Haul Trucker, which is on a raised pedestal surrounded by photos taken of the bike last spring as he rode it over 1,000 miles across the southwestern United States in one month.
The floor plan at Residence is identical to the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, which became famous for holding Andy Warhol’s first west coast solo exhibition). But Residence sharply contrasts with many other art galleries in Long Beach. Unlike Phantom Galleries’ empty storefront takeovers and other event-based spaces where viewing is permitted on opening night and sporatic weekend hours, Residence is the only permanent gallery dedicated to contemporary art practice in Long Beach that has consistent viewing hours.
This accessibility is crucial for the Bike Salon, which aims to bring people together through mutual love of the bicycle. Most of the area’s bike-related art shows—including last October’s Spoke Up at the DownCrowd Gallery on the Promenade—focus on the modern trends and politics of urban cycling. But the Long Beach Bicycle Salon is a multi-disciplinary exhibit that instead spotlights the creativity that arises through the indelible connection between man and machine by paying homage to the bicycle’s history, innovation and current place in culture.
Burton’s vision for Residence as an opportunity to show Long Beach something different will not stop at bicycles. Starting with this show, Residence exhibits will rotate out more quickly than before with music-and-food-truck-filled openings on the last Saturday of every month.
A high school photography teacher by day, Burton’s gallery is a labor of love and he receives little financial help in return for his efforts. But he doesn’t mind pouring money into a space as long as it brings people together and generates discussion.
“What else is there to do?” Burton said last week while smoking a cigarette in the parking lot behind his gallery. “Go to another show at the Prospector?”
LONG BEACH BIKE SALON RESIDENCE GALLERY• 2148 E 4th STREET • LONG BEACH • 90814 • 562.439.0022 RESIDENCEGALLERY.WORDPRESS.COM • TUES-SAT NOON TO 7PM, SUN NOON TO 5 P.M. • THROUGH JUNE 19
9 Comments
While having lunch with a friend on Friday, he told me about the problems with customer access, parking and deliveries the new bike lanes were causing to his downtown business. I suggested he go before City Council and explain his compelling story. He said he had tried talking with the City Manager and his Councilperson. He further expressed concern over the ill-treatment of John Morris by Council after speaking about problems his business was facing. My friend indicated that he was instead planning to move out of Long Beach due to its unfriendly business environment.
Following our lunch, we decided to stand on the corner of Pine Avenue and Broadway to count how many bicyclists actually used the new bike lane there. After 35 minutes, NOT a single bicycle was seen using the new bicycle lane as far as we could see in both directions. However, we did see one person on his bicycle on the sidewalk. My friend had to get back to his business. We were both disgusted.
“BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME.” That appears to be the City’s motto relating to these bike lanes. You would think after the $millions spent on the Queen Mary, the Pike and the Aquarium that City Council would learn their motto doesn’t work. Furthermore, I thought we were supposed to see improvement in City Council decisions when businessmen such as Councilman DeLong and Mayor Foster were elected. Go figure.
Well, according to Gino Rotundo, anti-business Long Beachs’ shenanigans drove him to sell the Legends partnership. One of the buyers, of all people, is John Morris. Is he a glutton for punishment? Is it really that bad Gino? Or are you just whining?
I can’t wait to ride my bike down to this new gallery in the burgeoning retro row district. What a perfect fit for the neighborhood.
Mike, this article has nothing to do with the bike lanes. In fact, the downtown seperated bike lanes were not even mentioned *once* in this article. However, in your typical negative and cynical style, you wrote three paragraphs reacting to the unrelated bike lanes and some supposed personal encounter with somebody about the bike lanes and your completely unreliable ‘field test’ to measure ridership on the lanes that *just* opened a couple months ago.
I repeated my “unreliable field test” again today at lunch and did spy a single rider using the bike lane over that 30 minute period, obviously justifying the $millions of taxpayers dollars spent on the project.
Thanks for reading, Baaktaah! Hope you get a chance to see the show. The gallery’s lineup for the next few months looks interesting too, so I guess we’ll stay tuned!
Great story, I’m surely headed over to see this ASAP. As far as the alleged unused bike lanes I call BS. I use them quite often, I wish every city was as cyclist friendly. It’s a progressive movement, it’ll pick up speed. Wait till your beloved gasoline prices continue their rise, more people will turn to bikes.
Too bad potholes or unpaved alleys aren’t “progressive” so taxpayers money could have been spent on remedying those problems rather than addressing a demand that has yet to occur.
Its Saturday at 10:56 am and I just drove the length of Broadway between the 710 and Alamitos. NOT A SINGLE BICYCLE in the bike lane. However, I did spot two people riding their bikes on the sidewalk.
Another myth dispelled that people use the bike lanes on weekends.
I see the bike lanes getting used all the time….by delivery trucks!