Bicycle Kitchen empowers a growing movement

Lauren M. Whaley/Special to KPCC

A bicycling enthusiast at work in the Bicycle Kitchen.

Jonah Schwartz is a 16-year-old cook.

But, his specialty isn’t banana biscuits or baklava. It’s bicycles.

Schwartz is one of about 50 people who volunteer at The Bicycle Kitchen. Their mission: teach people about bicycles and get more riders on the streets of Los Angeles.

“Everyone is just trying to help everyone else out,” Schwartz said.

Happy Birthday, Bicycle Kitchen from 89.3 KPCC on Vimeo.

The Bicycle Kitchen is a non-profit that runs on volunteers and small donations. Anyone can visit the small space on Heliotrope Drive and Melrose Avenue to learn about bikes, fix bikes or build bikes. The Kitchen provides tools, teachers and used parts.

Between the Kitchen, group rides, bicycle advocacy and help from the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (which recently started a bicycle blog), there are an increasing number of two-wheelers popping up in this land of freeways.

This year has been a good one for cyclists. The city released its Draft Bicycle Plan, albeit to some criticism. Google added bike routes to its maps. The L.A. County Bicycle Coalition made a formal count of pedestrian and cyclist commuters. And the Bicycle Kitchen, which has been operating since 2002, celebrated five years at their current space.

In its early years, the "cooking" happened in East L.A.'s Eco Village.

People came to work on bicycles in ad-hoc gatherings headed by founder Jimmy Lizama. They’d work on bikes, eat pizza, drink beer and go for bike rides. Soon, the group got too big for Lizama's dinner table.

"There was a really amazing movement happening in that small room there,” Lizama said. “We have movement. We have possibility. How are we doing it and why are we doing it? We wanted everybody to be on a bicycle and we wanted people to feel empowered."

And so, the group moved from the cramped kitchen to a bigger small space in East Hollywood. They've been cooking there ever since.

"You can power the bicycle with two things: burritos and love," Lizama said. "The car takes a lot more than that. That’s what it’s about."

In this audio slideshow, listen to the voices of the people who came together to create the Bicycle Kitchen. And imagine the smell of melting cheese and bicycle grease.

This is part of a series called "California: Landscape of Dreamers" from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.