kpseesee:

For six hours, the night riders of Los Angeles shut down the tile-covered 2nd Street runnel for the biggest bicycle drag race the city has ever seen.

More than 200 riders competed and organizers quickly winnowed the field to a group of the 16 fastest in women’s and men’s categories. Each rider wore an ankle bracelet that timed their efforts to the one-hundredth of a second. In the end, only two remained. The fastest people on two wheels in the City of Angels.

Video by Bear Guerra, Mae Ryan and Grant Slater

This is like the Olympics underground, on crack, with cowbell.

(Source: audiovision)

“There are a lot of problems in the book world — the most significant of them is that it’s harder and harder for writers to make a living. I’m determined to…make enough money to pay writers a decent wage…The idea that people write on the internet for free has been a terrible thing for writers and a terrible thing for the culture,” said Tom Lutz, founding publisher and editor-in-chief of the new Los Angeles Review of Books. 

The Los Angeles Review of Books, an exclusively digital publication, is the latest entry into the world of books and publishing. The site offers reviews and essays by well-known writers, video and audio of author interviews and events, reader forums and a searchable database of books, authors and their publishers.

Listen to the interview with Tom Lutz on literature for a general audience and how the publishing world has changed.