Friday Afternoon Interlude (Riding Bikes With Swell Ladies Edition)
The post below regarding the Women’s Garden Cycles Bike Tour brought to my mind another bike tour taken by a smaller, but no less intrepid, group of young women not long ago.
One of the highlights of our Southern California experience was getting to spend some time with a very good friend of ours from New York who is not only one of our favorite people in the world, but a gifted illustrator and designer, and a committed velophile as well. She was one of the few people I knew that went car-free in Los Angeles, and did it with aplomb.
My wife and our friend did a pirate bicycle scavenger hunt in Echo Park (I believe that’s where it was, I could be wrong) with a couple of our friend’s friends, who were also delightful and talented and skilled and velophiliacs, and they had a band. We saw them perform as The Ditty Bops at Amoeba in Hollywood when Ruby was a little younger than 2, and Huck was still in pre-production discussions. They harmonize like angels, are skilled musicians, have an amazing stage presence and put on a great show. They make music that you could call “old-timey” (if you cared to), but it’s not derivative or gimmicky or hokey, it’s just… perfect. Oh, and Amoeba gave away a bicycle too, which was pretty neat.
That show kicked off their Moon Over The Freeway Tour, which they undertook by bicycle from May to September of 2006, charting a course from Los Angeles to New York and back to Seattle. What’s better than that? Hmmmm well, they did it on a couple Surly Cross Checks, that count?
So, on this lovely Friday afternoon, please sit back and enjoy this tune from The Ditty Bops. It’s the title track off their latest release, Summer Rains.
If opportunity knocks, and you get a chance to see The Ditty Bops live, do it. In the unlikely event that you they don’t hook you, you still won’t be able to hate the show or their music, I don’t think it’s possible. It’s far more likely that you’ll at least enjoy them a little, and there’s a better chance that you’ll succumb to their charms and be delighted in spite of that hard boiled persona you project to keep people from poking around your sensitive, vulnerable interior. Or maybe not, but if they come to your town, you should check ‘em out.
Have a great weekend, and hey hey hey! Let’s be careful out there.
Tags: Entertaining Interludes
