For those in Los Angeles County who many not be able to trek towards the beach without hitting the freeway and are not within arm’s reach of a National Forest, there is always urban trail running along the Los Angeles River and my most recent discovery, Rio Hondo, an tributary of the Los Angeles River.

Oakland is the birthplace of the Scraper Bike, a phenomenon that blew up a few years ago with kids using their bikes as canvases for expression. They were aping the tradition of customized cars, or “scrapers” that have flossed out rims, colorful paint jobs. Tyrone Stevenson, aka Baby Champ, couldn’t afford his own car so he took to his bike’s frame. Now, its a bona fide internet craze. The idea didn’t catch on until he made a song about Scraper Bikes and added it to Youtube and now it’s a craze that’s spread from Oakland to Oregon and as far as Australia and Jamaica.

The always good Good turned us on to yet another iteration with our fascination with bike polo, the upcoming sport that makes us always think, “Of course! Why didn’t we think of that first?”

London goes hard for polo. This afternoon in East London I was surprised to come across a Hardcourt Bike Polo match. Never seen the sport played here until today. Being so curious, I had to find out more about this particular collective of urban riders.

A short summation of the upcoming Where’s Waldo? Scav Race in LA.: tattoos, music, prizes, beer, bikes. The idea is to be the first to collect four Waldo spoke cards and get to the finish line…the rub naturally being that Waldo is always a sneaky bastard. We asked Justin Kizzart, the curator of the race, some background information.

The sport is called Fixed Gear Freestyle or FGFS and it’s awesome.

Brakeless polo isn’t just for fixies. These kids take to the polo pit on BMX bikes and obviously not a care about the so-called elitism in bike polo. Obviously there’s no love loss between BMXers and Fixies, but this looks to be indication of common values. Here they take over the court and run shit.

The LBC, made famous by one of world’s biggest rap stars, Snoop Dogg, has come into its own in recent years. While you might imagine a landscape of rap video icons like low-riders and gangsters in house shoes, the community of Long Beach has become a hub of innovative companies and earth-friendly neighborhoods that show pride in their streets. The downtown area is booming with nightlife and restaurants, and activities have become a calling card for the city. It’s only fitting that a bike race become part of the offering…

While BMX gets a ton of attention for trick and freestyle riding, fixed gear is on the come up as riders have switched allegiances and evolved to bring tricks to the fixie. If you live in SF, you have probably witnessed it first-hand, but if not the guys from Fonseca, a small production company focused on fixed gear films.

Danny Macaskill’s talent has made its way all over the internet, since we last posted about him. Some 12 million views later, it’s not hard to imagine why the production company behind the video(s) decided to create their own outlet for their work, and the scene they come from. Watch26.TV is a high-quality platform, which they claim “will also set new standards in usability, video and player quality as well as user integration and comfort.” The site also just offers really fresh mountain bike video content from all over the world.

It’s not often that you’ll find us going on about a blogger, but sometimes you find a blog that makes you go “damn!” and immediately add to your bookmarks to keep checking. It’s the same thing I used to do as a kid with zines. Amazing Grace a/k/a Grace Ladoja is a filmmaker from London…

If you thought you were edgy by backpacking across Europe after college with little more than a Eurail train pass and a big beer budget then try heading out on a bicycle with only $2. In April 2001, Keiichi “Kei” Iwasaki of Japan found himself bored working for his dad and decided to set out for a big adventure across his homeland with only 160 yen (about $2) in his pocket.

Biking around the world seems so Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance, but Scott Stoll shows through his new tome that there is more to maintenance than spark plugs and gas valves. Stoll recounts what his Waterford bicycle went through on the journey, and emphasizes how much endurance this ordinary bike had to go through…

“Race Across the Sky,” a new film about the 2009 Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race, will premiere this October. The big guns, Lance Armstrong and Dave Wiens, are both featured, but the movie encompasses all the other cyclists as well.

Even though we’ve featured plenty of bikes made from everything from African bamboo to aluminum, this time we use the term “bike” loosely, but what the Yike Bike does is help personal transportation in a realistic way. It’s almost better than a bike, if it works the way it’s been demonstrated…

Half a million Danes ride their bikes to school or work each day and soon they’ll be able to use a bicycle superhighway to get there. The city of Copenhagen is investing $47 Million to offer cyclists smooth, even surfaces, no detours and service stations for air and tools along the way. While the city of Los Angeles is still trying to incentivize green transportation…

Long before the recession had the denizens of Los Angeles rethinking the way they got around town, bicyclists had already carved out a particularly large niche in local culture. Especially in more community-friendly areas like Silver Lake and of course along the beaches, bikes are a ubiquitous sight around town, the horrendous and downright terrifying L.A. driving habits of notwithstanding.

Sustainability has become a buzz word, but it seems that sports equipment has been left out of that loop, until now. Bamboo is a hearty material, a plant that grows anywhere in a short amount of time and is sturdy. So, the bike industry has taken a page from the bamboo bible…

I have a newfound respect for London Tri-Athletes. I was already impress with the idea of thousands upon thousands of sports enthusiasts multiplying their endurance, strength, and power in an event that equally test the body and the mind – but when I got to the race on Sunday and had a close look at the swimming dock, I had to give them some serious props.

The annual New York Triathlon kicks off its ninth edition on July 26th. The NYT is a must-do event for serious athletes: its an Olympic distance competition that, true to its name, combines three sports: a 40k bike race, 10k running event, and a 1500m swim.