Lifestyle
Zip, zoom and soar in L.A.'s extraordinary new playground for bike riders
On a rainy Sunday morning in Inglewood, while most of the sprawling Edward Vincent Jr. Park was empty, one area was alive with action: the Inglewood Pumptrack. On the wavy, asphalt track that almost looks like a modern sculpture emerging out of a grassy field, kids and adults on bicycles zoomed around, showcasing tricks and testing their endurance.
Since it opened in September, the site — billed as L.A.’s first pump track — has quickly become a safe haven for bicyclists to ride, connect with others and, most important, have fun.
“This has been a game changer,” says Corey Pasowicz, who brings his 12-year-old daughter, Alexandria, to the track at least two times a month to practice her BMX and mountain biking skills. She rides on a factory team for Black Crown BMX.
A pump track is a playground for bikes filled with undulating hills, rollers, banked curves (often referred to as “berms”) and shallow jumps. Instead of pedaling or pushing the bike forward, riders do an up-and-down pumping motion with their body to maintain momentum. There are roughly 10 pump tracks in Southern California; for many years, the closest ones to L.A. were in Temecula and Thousand Oaks.
BMX athletes ride along the Inglewood track, which opened in September.
(Alisha Jucevic / For The Times)
The idea to build a pump track in Inglewood came to Eliot Jackson, a top 10 downhill mountain bike racer and top performer in the World Cup circuit, in 2020, when he started reflecting on his childhood.
Growing up in Oklahoma, Jackson and his older brother would build dirt jumps in their backyard. When the family moved to L.A., there was no place to ride that was away from vehicles, so Jackson’s mother would drive the boys to a biking track about 45 minutes away.
“A bike lane is not a safe place for kids and a lot of times sidewalks aren’t [either],” says Jackson, 33. “So I think for us, a pump track represents that first step to permanent cycling infrastructure — a place where I can say, ‘This isn’t going anywhere. … I have a place where I can go every single day, there’s community there, it’s safe [and] my parents are OK with me going there.’”
Visitors can also take Metro trains to get to the track, as it’s walking distance from the Downtown Inglewood and Fairview Heights stations.
Eliot Jackson, a pro mountain biker, showcases his skills at the Inglewood Pumptrack.
(Alisha Jucevic / For The Times)
Jackson also hoped to help remedy the lack of diversity within the professional biking industry by building the track. Throughout his decade-plus long career, he was often the only Black person — or person of color — at the starting line at competitions. In August, after he retired from World Cup competition, Jackson launched the Grow Cycling Foundation, which is dedicated to making cycling more inclusive.
“I just thought about my life and all of the serendipitous things that led up to that,” says Jackson. Like his family “happening to move to California, where there’s mountains [and] my friend happening to take me up to Whistler Mountain Bike Park and introduce me [to downhill].”
“You start to think about the lack of opportunities that exist there, and I said, ‘What can I do?’” adds Jackson, who’s the chief executive of Grow Cycling, as well as a mountain bike expert for Red Bull.
The Inglewood Pumptrack, which cost $1.2 million, was fully funded by the cycling community for the cycling community with more than $300,000 in donations from individuals. The rest came from founding partners, including such brands as Yeti Cycles, Ride Fox, Pinkbike, Santa Cruz Bicycles, the Rapha Foundation and Adidas, Jackson says. (Jackson is also an ambassador for Santa Cruz Bicycles, Rapha and Fox.)
Jin Morita, 13, rides on the World Championship Track, one of two tracks at Inglewood Pumptrack at Edward Vincent Jr. Park in Inglewood.
(Alisha Jucevic / For The Times)
Constructed by Velosolutions, the site features two asphalt courses: The Woodlands and World Championship tracks. Woodlands, which is smaller and surrounds a host of trees, has smaller rollers and is designed for slower speeds. Whereas the colossus World Championship track, which is wider with large rollers, was built in a mirrored design so two riders can race in opposite directions at the same time. The design and name for this track was intentional as Jackson plans to host world championship competitions there. (Between both tracks, roughly 300 to 400 people were riding at the same time on opening day.) Both tracks are open to all ages and levels.
The Inglewood Pumptrack was specifically built with bicyclists in mind; for years, they were pushed out of skate parks and weren’t welcomed by the skateboarding community, says Joi Jackson, Eliot’s mom and the president of Grow Cycling.
They wanted to set a more inclusive precedent for bike infrastructure, so there are bike priority days at the track. Other wheels such as skateboards, longboards and rollerblades are welcome on specific days of the week. (A sign near the track entrance includes more details on this and other rules for the track.)
People who use wheelchairs or adaptive bikes can also utilize the track. However, no scooters or motorized vehicles such as e-bikes, hoverboards or electric scooters are allowed.
Ameri de Vera, 9, who rides BMX on a factory team for a company called Answer BMX, goes to the Inglewood Pumptrack at least twice a month with her older sister.
“I was scared at first because you have to get used to how it sways,” says De Vera, who was preparing for the BMX world championships on a recent Sunday. “It sways in different directions and there’s some sharp turns too. So you have to keep your eye on those, but it was really fun once I got used to it. And you can ride your skateboard on it.”
Eliot Jackson rides the Inglewood Pumptrack with BMX athletes, Ameri de Vera, 9, left, and her sister Vida de Vera, 11, center.
(Alisha Jucevic / For The Times)
For first-timers, she recommends gearing up and wearing a helmet for safety “because the first time, you’re probably going to fall.” She also encourages people to be aware of their surroundings and pay attention to what others are doing to avoid accidents.
Although there’s a skate ramp at the park, Erik Barnes, 50, says he prefers to ride on the pump track.
“There’s a proliferation of skate parks here, but none like this,” says Barnes of West Adams, who’s been an avid skateboarder since he was a teen. He sometimes brings his teenage son to the track with him.
“I meet a lot of guys my age or us older skaters who are just falling in love with this place. Everyone’s like, ‘It’s reignited skateboarding for me. It got me back into it,’ and that’s definitely the case for me.” Barnes frequents the track at least twice a week, usually before work.
What Barnes loves most about the track is that “you don’t have to be really good to enjoy this park.”
“You can kind of get yourself into a really fun zone of just cruising, which is a really pleasurable, fun thing to do,” he says. “It’s not exceedingly difficult.”
He adds, “You can just get into a nice flow. It’s rhythmic. It’s meditative and it’s a really good workout because you’re basically just doing squats the whole entire time.”
After not seeing many rollerskaters at the Inglewood Pumptrack each time they visited, Bily Ruiz, 26, started a weekly meetup called K.h.a.o.t.i.c Quads. The group, whose members range in age from 1 to 50, meet there on Sunday mornings.
“I love the community that [the track] is creating, because at some parks, the culture can be very standoffish or they don’t really talk to each other,” says Ruiz. Whereas at the Inglewood Pumptrack, “since everyone’s so excited, everyone’s like ‘What’s up? Hi. I see you. Good job.’”
“I look forward to it every weekend,” Ruiz says about about the group. “It’s so exciting, and every time we meet up, it fills me up with so much energy.”
“We built something that people love and that makes me the most happy,” says Eliot Jackson.
(Alisha Jucevic / For The Times)
The parents of young BMX athletes take a photo of them with Eliot Jackson, center, at the Inglewood Pumptrack.
(Alisha Jucevic / For The Times)
The Grow Cycling Foundation has also donated permanent bike fleets to nearby in Inglewood elementary and middle schools , which they use for education programs. The organization views the pump track as the first step in a long-term mission to make cycling culturally relevant in the city.
In the meantime, though, Jackson says he’s enjoyed seeing kids who may have never seen or heard of a pump track before get to experience one for the first time — or simply fall back in love with riding bikes.
“We built something that people love and that makes me the most happy,” he says. “I just think about us as a family when we were growing up and my mom would’ve taken us every single day, and look at where I am now?
“And that will happen. There will be a kid who goes on to be better than I ever could because they got to discover a bicycle at this place.”
Jane Austen ready to party for her 250th birthday at the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting in Baltimore.
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In her six completed novels, Jane Austen excelled at love stories: Elinor and Edward, Lizzie and Darcy, Fanny and Edmund, Emma and Knightley, Anne and Wentworth, heck even Catherine and Tilney. As her fans celebrate the 250th anniversary of her birth, they’d like you to know it’s a mistake to simply dismiss her work as light, frothy romances. It’s full of intricate plots, class satire and biting wit, along with all the timeless drama of human foibles, frailties and resolve.
Tessa Harings (left) learns English country dance at the Jane Austen Society of North America’s 2025 Annual General Meeting
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“The basic reason why Austen is still popular today is because all of her characters are people we know in the world,” says Tessa Harings. She’s a high school teacher from Phoenix and one of the more than 900 attendees at the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting, held in Baltimore this year. “We all know of someone who’s shy and aloof and needs to be brought into the crowd. We all know someone who’s quite witty, naturally. We all know someone who is a bit silly and always looking for attention.”
Colin Firth, properly memed from the 1995 BBC miniseries. His Darcy is a big favorite with the JASNA crowd.
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Shy and aloof? That could be Darcy. Naturally witty? Lizzie Bennet. Silly and looking for attention? Take your pick: baby sister Lydia or maybe the haughty Caroline Bingley or the unctuous Mr. Collins, all creations from what might be Austen’s most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice.
Her characters have permeated modern pop culture, even among people who’ve never opened her books. Harings says that’s one reason her students want to read these Regency-era novels. They want to understand the jokes in all those short videos and memes, like Mr. Collins making awkward dinner conversation.
He wants a wife, he compliments the potatoes. In Mr. Collin’s head, it makes sense.
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Her students enjoy the tension between Darcy and Lizzie: he’s very rich, so besotted by her against his will that he can hardly dance, glower and talk at the same time. Lizzie initially cannot stand him and refuses his first proposal, as shown in this soggy scene from the 2005 movie adaptation.
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Harings says Lizzie is her favorite Austen character. “She has such sharp, sarcastic wit and she’s so self-confident, despite the fact that she’s constantly being put down by the people around her for her supposedly lower position in life as the slightly less pretty of the mother’s two oldest daughters.”
Milliner Dannielle Perry (right) and her assistant Mia Berg of Timely Tresses in their Regency-era togs.
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“When I was a teenager, I loved Lizzie and I wanted to be Lizzie,” says milliner Dannielle Perry of Oxford, N.C. She’s read and reread all of Jane Austen’s books and she loves how they change for her as she’s gotten older. She’s now more sympathetic toward Mrs. Bennet, Lizzie’s mom: a woman desperate to get her five daughters married, least they be penniless since they can’t inherit their father’s estate. “I feel sorry for her in a way I never did before,” Perry says. “She is sort of silly, but she’s lived with a man for 20 years who largely dismisses her and thinks she’s frivolous.”
Doctoral student Katie Yu, of Dallas, has this analysis of Mrs. Bennett and her husband, who seems mentally checked-out at best: “He’s not a great father. He’s always putting his wife down in front of his daughters, he’s putting his daughters down in front of his daughters.” Yu says Mr. Bennet married Mrs. Bennet because she was pretty, treats her as an inferior, and often ignores her. This is why Mrs. Bennet goes on about her nerves and “has the vapors” whenever she’s stressed: she’s trying to get his attention.
“But,” says Tessa Harings, “she still has a level of street smarts that she has to get her daughters married. And yes, she’s sincerely concerned about their future … she actually, of the two of them, is the more concerned and involved parent.”
Tom Tumbusch explains 19th century dance moves to JASNA members.
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Dance instructor Tom Tumbusch, of Cincinnati, says men can learn a lot from Austen. “Modern men struggle to find good role models,” he says. “Reading Austen’s works can help them see the places where men can go wrong.” Mr. Bennet, for example. Or the libertine George Wickham who lies and runs off with the flighty Bennet sister, Lydia. Or maybe Willoughby from Sense and Sensibility, who leads Marianne Dashwood on, ghosts her and is later revealed to have abandoned an unmarried woman who gave birth to his child.
Oh, Marianne, he’s so not worth it!
On the other hand, Tumbusch says Jane Austen’s heroes can show men “how to be masculine in a constructive way,” like owning mistakes, taking responsibility and treating women with respect. It’s not just Darcy, who works behind the scenes getting Wickham to marry Lydia, it’s also Captain Wentworth from Persuasion. Tombusch says Wentworth does what men of his station should: he uses his own resources to help someone less fortunate, the poor, partially disabled widow Mrs. Smith. And in Sense and Sensibility, there’s the steadfast Col. Brandon. Hoping to make Willoughby’s rejection of Marianne less devastating to her, he exposes the libertine’s behavior. He rides hours to retrieve her mother when Marianne is near death. He patiently, oh-so-patiently, waits for her young, broken heart to mend.
All this while wearing a flannel waistcoat because he’s on the “wrong side of five and thirty” and needs to keep those ancient bones warm.
Before he rocked worlds as Snape, Alan Rickman made the earth move for viewers of the 1995 movie adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.
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JASNA president Mary Mintz, of McLean, Va., says though Jane Austen is largely known for her marriage plots, it’s really the human need for connection that grounds her stories. “She writes about the relationships between parents and children, between siblings or among siblings, she writes about relationships with friends. And she is really insightful. When you combine that with her knowledge of human psychology, it’s a great formula for success.”
Mintz is fascinated by Emma’s pivotal character, Miss Bates. She’s a spinster and member of the gentry class who lives with her elderly mother on an extremely limited income. She’s also a nervous chatterbox, “someone who can’t stop talking,” says Mintz. “I’ve known a lot of Misses Bates in my lifetime… people who seem insecure and feel as though they have to fill up silence, but are really good-hearted people.”
When Emma is rude to Miss Bates, she’s firmly chastised by her neighbor, Mr. Knightley. It becomes a turn-around moment in the story. Humbled, Emma apologizes. She also sees how she’s been wrong to meddle in the love life of Harriet Smith, a pretty teenager whose parents are unknown.
Mintz says there’s an interesting link between Bates and Harriet, if you put two and two together.
“In Jane Austen’s actual life, mothers and daughters often share the same name,” she explains. That pattern can be seen in many of her novels. “We don’t know who Harriet Smith’s natural mother is, but at one point Miss Bates is referred to as ‘Hetty,’ which could be a diminutive for ‘Harriet.’ “
That’s the first clue. The second clue occurs during that scene where Knightley sets Emma right. He says of Miss Bates, “she has sunk from the comforts she was born to.” He then draws a contrast between the spinster’s current station and her former one: “You, whom she had known from an infant, whom she had seen grow up from a period when her notice was an honour…”
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Emma’s father is quite wealthy, so why would Miss Bates’ notice have once been so esteemed? Mary Mintz asks, “Is because she had a child out of wedlock?”
And could that child be… Harriet Smith?
The mind: it boggles! A Jane Austen Easter egg! It’s just one example of how multi-dimensional her novels are and why so many people will continue loving, analyzing and discussing her work well into the next 250 years.
Jacob Fenston and Danny Hensel edited and produced this report.
Rob Reiner And Wife Michele
Throats Slit By Family Member
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Updated
Rob Reiner and his wife Michele had their throats slit by a family member, possibly after an argument inside their Los Angeles home, leading to their tragic deaths … TMZ has learned
It’s unclear what exactly triggered the violence, which went down Sunday afternoon in Brentwood … but we’re told one of Rob’s daughters found her parents dead and told police a family member had killed them. PEOPLE reports the couple’s son, Nick, is being questioned in connection with the murders.
Our sources also say the daughter told police the family member “should be a suspect” because they’re “dangerous.”
TMZ broke the story … Rob and Michele suffered lacerations consistent with knife wounds and LAPD’s Robbery Homicide Division is investigating the case.
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Dispatch audio captures a firefighter calling for backup to the Brentwood mansion around 3:30 PM … though it doesn’t provide any further information about the circumstances in the abode.
Rob was 78. Michele was 68.
Sunday Puzzle
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On-air challenge
I’m going to read you some sentences. Each sentence conceals the name of a major U.S. city in consecutive letters. As a hint, the answer’s state also appears in the sentence. Every answer has at least six letters. (Ex. The Kentucky bodybuilders will be flexing tonight. –> LEXINGTON)
1. Space enthusiasts in Oregon support landing on Mars.
2. Contact your insurance branch or agent in Alaska.
3. The Ohio company has a sale from today to next Sunday.
4. The Colorado trial ended in a sudden verdict.
5. Fans voted the Virginia tennis matches a peak experience.
6. I bought a shamrock for decorating my house in Illinois.
7. All the Connecticut things they knew have now changed.
8. Can you help a software developer in Texas?
Last week’s challenge
Last week’s challenge came from Mike Reiss, who’s a showrunner, writer, and producer for “The Simpsons.” Think of a famous living singer. The last two letters of his first name and the first two letters of his last name spell a bird. Change the first letter of the singer’s first name. Then the first three letters of that first name and the last five letters of his last name together spell another bird. What singer is this?
Challenge answer
Placido Domingo
Winner
Brock Hammill of Corvallis, Montana.
This week’s challenge
This week’s challenge comes from Robert Flood, of Allen, Texas. Name a famous female singer of the past (five letters in the first name, seven letters in the last name). Remove the last letter of her first name and you can rearrange all the remaining letters to name the capital of a country (six letters) and a food product that its nation is famous for (five letters).
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Thursday, December 18 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.
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