Each bicycle had a story – a brief story with a beginning and middle but no end.
A small white sticker on its frame bore its owner’s name, date of birth, and date of admission to Los Angeles General Medical Center. What happened after that was not told. It is certain that the owner reached the hospital on a bicycle and for whatever reason left without the bicycle.
“It’s a somewhat morbid story, but I like things like that,” said Olin Reyes, as she turned the wheel on one of the bikes placed on a portable rack she kept in a dingy suite of windowless rooms inside the basement of the former General Hospital.
Rusted gate at the entrance of the closed General Hospital in Los Angeles.
The 94-year-old building, looming majestically over Boyle Heights, had stopped taking patients nearly two decades ago. but new next door County General, In the past, Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center used its empty rooms to manage a side effect of its mission to serve all who came to its doors: patients often arriving on bicycles or wheelchairs, and leaving without them. Whether they left on foot, by car, in the family car or in a body bag, there is no record of it.
The hospital simply placed identification stickers on the bicycles and buried them away from public view. That practice ended last year when demolition of the old monolith began in preparation for turning it into housing as the centerpiece of a health-themed redevelopment of the 42-acre Eastside campus.
As the hospital was preparing for its new life, Reyes was piecing together a parallel story of rebirth, one bicycle at a time.
Night after night after closing his Boyle Heights bicycle shop, Reyes lugged his equipment down the long, dark hallway leading to the bikes — initially there were about 280 of them — that had been tossed in piles over the years.
Olin Reyes, owner of Esquina Bicycle Shop in Boyle Heights, repairs abandoned bikes in the dusty basement of the closed General Hospital.
There he operated his own brand of triage. At first he moved the hopeless cases – frames broken, forks bent, rusted gears – into one room and their cousin wheelchairs into another room, saving about 90. Salvage work then began, releasing the wheels, dropping the chains, and pulling cables as needed from the thrown chains to replace lost or broken parts of the keepers.
Some had been there for so long that rust was destroying them. But the poor condition of others gave Reyes information about their former owners.
“A large percentage of them were homeless people,” he said. He was surprised to see the names on them.
“I got a little emotional thinking that maybe I worked on some of these bikes or that we sold these bikes,” he said. “I wondered what happened to these people. I was inspired to fix them because getting people into cycling, giving people a second chance is really in line with our ethos.”
That work came to fruition last week — on Earth Day — when people in and around Boyle Heights received 45 refurbished bikes, which were taken to display in front of a football field-long basement hallway. grand entrance, Adorned with Art Deco details and statues of Hippocrates, Pasteur and seven other medical pioneers.
Bernice Gonzalez, left, with the help of volunteer Estefany Rodriguez, right, helps her niece Vivian Orozco, 10, ride a bike for the first time during a bike giveaway event on the grounds of the Old General Hospital April 22. This is Vivian’s first bike.
Bicycle gift started last year centenary partnerThe development group that won the bid to renovate the complex began the first phase of that multiyear project — removing furniture, fixtures and medical supplies that had been gathering dust in the 19-story building for nearly two decades.
The bicycles caught the attention of project director Giovanna Araújo when she was scouting basements for sites for boring holes for geotechnical testing.
“I just went over to that corner of the basement and opened the door and saw all the bikes,” Araujo said. “It came to me immediately. We must save these bikes. They need to get back into the world.”
Araújo was committed to keeping landfill waste to a minimum through huge cleanups. She hired a trash removal firm that specializes in recycling. It is stockpiling useful items ranging from file cabinets to operating tables in surgical theaters, and will distribute them to nonprofits, primarily in Mexico.
A room full of abandoned bicycles offers an opportunity closer to home.
Rusted chain and sprockets on one of hundreds of abandoned bikes in the basement of the closed General Hospital.
“We thought, ‘Let’s partner with a local bike shop,'” said USC real estate student Eddie Pech, who interned at Centennial Partners and is now hired as an assistant project manager.
Using Google Maps, he made a list of nearby shops and started cold calling.
Reyes was the only one who stepped forward.
In December, he brought a team of about a dozen volunteers for the first round of repairs. Centennial Partners paid for the parts, and Reyes and his assistants donated their time.
Over several nights, he built 42 working bikes. They were given as Christmas gifts.
To finish the job, Reyes returned in April with a fresher crew and a better deal. He and a part-time employee, Lucio Rosas, billed for their time and materials.
Olin Reyes repairs an abandoned bike in the dusty basement of the closed General Hospital in Los Angeles.
In the burial room, the lights barely bright enough to cast shadows in the darkness, Reyes and Rosas set up their racks at opposite ends of the main room and worked in silence except for the occasional thud of a dropped instrument. Wearing a surgical mask to protect from the humid air, Reyes chose a bike and gave it the last rites of its former life, before working on its components. He removed the sticker that told a brief story of its owner, leaving him now anonymous.
Reyes and his assistant have their own story of renovation.
Reyes said he always had a passion for bikes, but when the pandemic derailed his plans to open a music venue, he was surviving on odd jobs. Noticing that bicycle shops were doing well, they found a vacant storefront on Whittier Boulevard, east of the Sixth Street Bridge, and opened the shop in July 2020.
she has a unusual business modelFinding bikes at yard sales and sometimes wholesale deals, refurbishing them and selling them for much less than new cost.
They also opened their doors as a “third space” for the community for events such as cumbia nights to raise funds for Palestinians.
Rosas was a kid from the neighborhood who dropped out of high school during the pandemic and started coming to the shop to work on his low-rider bikes.
“We saw ourselves in him,” Reyes said. “So we decided to help him.”
He did an internship and got a job.
“His people skills and his critical thinking skills have improved a lot,” Reyes said.
Rojas now has a GED and is taking classes at the East Los Angeles Skills Center.
Nine Nights Returning to the dungeon-like workshop, Reyes and Rosas pieced together 45 bikes for the final gift.
Bikes once abandoned during a bike giveaway ceremony on the grounds of the old Los Angeles General Hospital are now safe and ready for new owners.
“We’re working on it just like we did at the shop,” he said while shortening a discarded bike chain at work one night to fit it on his rack. “When I caught it, I could tell just from experience that it could be done for under a certain amount of money. It cost less than $100.”
He preferred the one that had a turning wheel and frame on the side.
“It’s at least a $180 job,” he said. “We set that aside and used the parts.”
The product of their work was a collection of bicycles of all brands, types and sizes: 21-speed road bikes, one-speed cruisers with wide handle bars and pedal brakes, mountain bikes with thick frames and front shocks, and even a child-sized BMX.
The little boy was soon taken in by 10-year-old Vivian Orozco, who arrived in a pickup truck with her mother, Vanessa, and aunt, Beatrice Gonzalez. Vanessa also picked out a street bike for her son, who couldn’t come. Before they pile them both into a pickup truck, Beatrice gives a smiling Vivian her first horseback riding lesson, galloping beside her on a wobbly path in the hospital courtyard.
Two volunteers from the cycling advocacy group People for Mobility Justice handed out helmets and lights to everyone who took a bike.
“Bicycles are vehicles,” volunteer Kalynn Mendoza advised a new owner. “White light in front, red in back.”
Using a pocket Allen wrench, her colleague Estefany Rodriguez adjusts the seat height and brake handle alignment on Vivian’s new ride.
Eleventh graders Desiree Alsaro and Remidy Patino learned about the incident on their school’s website. He said he doesn’t own a bike but is attracted to the idea of sustainable transportation.
Zaira Valdez, 16, of Los Angeles, left, and Desiree Alfaro, 17, of Los Angeles, wait in line to get free helmets after choosing a bike during a bike giveaway event.
“We didn’t have high expectations,” Alsaro said. “We thought, ‘Oh, they’ll be old bikes but they’ll be good bikes that will work.’ “
The bikes they came out on were new, at least to them.
“I’m really satisfied with my bike,” Patino said.
For one young Lincoln Heights couple, the gift offered more than just two free bikes. José Diego was unhappy with his wife Renee Dominguez’s suggestion that he should take up cycling as a way to escape his sedentary lifestyle. But a free bike tips the scale.
“Got to get rid of it clawDiego said, rubbing his only round stomach.
Araújo, who attended the event to see the culmination of a program dubbed “My Baby,” said the renovation of the bicycles symbolizes her vision of “circularity” for the hospital, which is known in the community as the Great Stone Mother.
“She’s going through a healing journey,” Araujo said. “She has a chapter of 100 years. She was created with a very clear mission that no one would be denied care because of lack of means. Her need to fulfill that mission has changed. And so has her need to change. And as she is healing, I am healing with her. I feel really connected.”
There is no reason to think that bicycles will stop coming, but what happens with them will have to change.
County General spokeswoman Connie Castro said “a standardized, time-limited approach to handling unclaimed luggage” is now being implemented.
“Disposition may include donation, recycling or disposal, depending on the condition and usefulness of the item,” Castro said.
This shows that, for bicycles, no matter the fate of their previous owners, there is still the possibility of a second life.
