Eric Richardson [Flickr]

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Thursday night was the July edition of the Downtown Art Ride, our bicycle complement to the Downtown Art Walk. It was a great time.

There were 13 of us who made our way around to as many of the galleries as we could make before closing time (which was pretty close to all of them). That's a feat you're just not going to manage on foot in any one Art Walk evening.

Of course our 13-member Art Ride was about 1/100th of the crowd that showing up in Echo Park last night for Midnight Ridazz. The numbers floating around are saying there were between 1300 and 1400 riders.

The route started toward Downtown, heading through the 2nd street tunnel (pictured; ghost riders in the foreground, homeless camp in the back). The tunnel gets done often on Ridazz, but for good reason: taking that many bikes through a tunnel and hearing the riders start yelling is something you have to experience to really comprehend.

Downtown Art Ride is the second Thursday of every month and meets at 5pm in front of Downtown Art Gallery. Midnight Ridazz is the second Friday of each month, and meets at 9:30pm in the parking lot of the Pioneer Chicken on Park Ave just north of Sunset.