[from LA Times]
Live to Ride, Ride to Live A Bike Shop With a Recipe for Mobility
If Jimmy Lizama had his way, the fossil-fuel-burning monsters clogging our streets would be
relegated to the junkyard while Angelenos savor the city's beauty and climate on bicycles. "I want
to help working-class people who want to go to the market on their bikes instead of driving 10 miles
to go to a store," says the proprietor of Kill Your Car Courier service and a founding member of the
Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition advocacy group.
[. . .]
On Tuesday and Thursday nights, still soaked in sweat from a day on wheels, Lizama pedals to the
Kitchen, a bicycle repair co-op he created two years ago with fellow courier Randy Metz and
freelance photographer Ben Guzman. The operation is crammed into the kitchen of an empty unit in
the two-block Eco-Village cooperative near Koreatown, an endeavor sponsored by nonprofit funding
and devoted to ecologically sustainable community development. The Kitchen is outfitted with four
work stands and every tool an aspiring bike mechanic could need. Hanging in the front room in
various states of repair are about 20 found and donated bikes being refurbished for use by rideless
Kitchen users.
[more]