Emily Kelley / Roundup
It’s a little after 10 p.m. and the stars are partially dimmed by the bright city lights of downtown Los Angeles. You’ve chosen this night to ride around the city, the wind blowing through your hair and the cold night stinging your skin.
No, you’re not in a convertible. You’re on a bicycle and you happen to be dressed like a pirate.
These types of shenanigans are typical of the group known as the Midnight Ridazz, an L.A.-based bicycle-riding group open to anyone with a bike and a love of fun.
“The misfit style is what appealed to me at first,” said Cyrus Azari, a 22-year-old philosophy major who first heard about the Ridazz through friends. “It’s just a laid back social scene, which is hard to find.”
Graphic artist Kim “Skull” Jensen started the Ridazz in February 2004, according to an original member who wanted to be referred to simply as “Roadblock.”
It began with eight original members, aptly named “The mommas and papas.” They rode bikes and skateboards about 18 miles around the city, starting from the Echo Park neighborhood where Jensen was living.
“It was so much fun. We felt like kids again… so of course we had to schedule another ride,” Roadblock said in an e-mail. The next ride happened two weeks later and included 25 people.
The rides grew to include more than 1,500 people within two years, forcing the caretakers to re-evaluate. Roadblock decided to create the Midnight Ridazz Web site (www.midnightridazz.com), which allowed the riders to form their own rides to help “split the mass.”
Azari isn’t part of any specific group, so he uses the Web site to find rides.
“There’s like a million different kinds of rides,” he said. “I usually just hook up with random people if the ride seems cool. I usually do what appeals to me.”
One of the groups put on the “Wolfpack Hustle,” which Roadblock claims is the fastest 40 to 50-mile ride in Los Angeles.
“People from all over the world have come out and ridden with us while they’re in L.A. We’ve had people from France, Germany, Japan, the East Coast, Portland, Tampa… it’s different every week,” he said.
The Hustle takes place at 10 p.m. in Silverlake on Monday nights.
“I’ve never really put that much seriousness into it. Those guys (the Wolfpack) are maniacs,” Azari said.
The Ridazz have been compared to another bike-riding movement called Critical Mass, which was founded in 1992 in San Francisco as a way to bringing awareness to how unfriendly cities were to cyclists.
The founders have denied that their rides have political undertones.
“The most important thing about these rides is community and the all-inclusive nature that we promote about the community,” Roadblock said.
The Midnight Ridazz boast similar groups in various cities across the country and even internationally (Italy apparently has a chapter). They also have an AIDS Life Cycle team that competes in the ride from San Francisco to L.A. every year.
“Anyone can join a ride so long as the people show up to have fun, be respectful of others including cars and pedestrians, and clean up their trash,” Roadblock said. “It can be difficult to maintain the all-inclusive nature of the ride considering the diversity of people that show up, but somehow it all works out.”