With two CicLAvia presentations happening at the same time, I spent much of the afternoon working with cloning technologies. The experiment failed. Instead I tried going to both meetings with a we’ll see what happens attitude.

I first went to the community meeting at the North Hollywood library, where just off the bat you could recognize a more hostile crowd than the event last month. The audience trended older validating my belief there would be more business owners this time.

The presentation went fine, but a couple of people were chomping at the bit to attack the event. The first one focused on what a complete failure the event would be, eschewing facts and never having experienced a CicLAvia before. We all get into these confrontations where the other person can’t absorb any information because it would mean apologizing for their actions at some point. This was one of those.

Malia, Rachel and Robert Gard, Director of Communications and Marketing, did the best they could handling these sorties without the use of anti-aircraft machinery.

The other owner was more angered over this being the first time he had heard of the closure. Mind you, notices were given out long ago and I went to a Studio City Neighborhood Council meeting in November where this was mentioned as well. I had to leave for the Studio City event(my mom was speaking there for a separate issue too), but a friend of mine noted that these two owners did not want anything to do with the Neighborhood Council.

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It look me about ten minutes to reach the other meeting(by car) where there were about thirty people in attendance, not counting the board itself. I figured that if there were any objectionable business owners, they would be here, but that wasn’t the case.

One objection was brought up that the funds could be used instead to repair streets by a man who contested everything on the agenda and the other didn’t quite grasp the concept. Henny gave a very smooth presentation that was well received by the crowd. My mom filled out a public comment card without me knowing, so I punted when called to turn, but when there was controversy over the cards with CD2 candidate Eric Preven, I was given a second chance.

I used my two minutes explaining that Studio City is based on small businesses and relationships. The problem facing Ventura Boulevard is that only so many businesses can exist because of traffic and parking limitations. Families want to frequent this area, but bike infrastructure takes them to the edge and not along this main thoroughfare. CicLAvia is an excellent opportunity to look at Studio City in another light.

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The whole time I was at the Studio City meeting, I couldn’t keep my mind off of what was going on in NoHo. It was very easy to have a feverish temperature after leaving that event, but given a little air you realize that it was a small percentage of the population voicing their opinion.

These are not unique concerns to CicLAvia and if these events weren’t as much of a universal success, then they wouldn’t be growing at such a rate. March 22nd can’t come soon enough and I hope to see you there.