Bikerowave co-op. (Photo illustration by Kim Nowacki)

Bikerowave is a well-worn bicycle co-op on Venice Boulevard where bikes in all state of repair, and disrepair, hang from the ceiling, wrenches line the wall and do-it-yourselfers can rent "stand time" to work on their bike.

It's a shabby space in the sense that everything here is for function rather than any kind of neat-and-tidy formality. It's a gearhead's dream, a laid-back place to fix your two-wheeled obsession and talk shop with others who know what it's like to actually want to ride a bike in Los Angeles, a city infamous for gridlock, smog and a diehard car culture.

It's also here that earlier this month congressional candidate Marcy Winograd won the endorsement of Bikeside LA, the new, and at times loud-mouthed, kid on the block when it comes to Los Angeles bike activism.

"They are powerful in that they have grassroots support and they have a mission. They're not kidding, they don't compromise and they're real," says Winograd, a co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Progressive Democrats of America, who's running against Democrat incumbent Jane Harman for the 36th congressional district seat. The district runs from Mar Vista, where Bikerowave calls home, down the coast to the Palos Verdes peninsula.

The endorsement probably doesn't mean much right now, but in a city where bike advocacy is quickly growing into bike activism, Bikeside LA is looking to be a booming voice in the, sometimes contentious, conversation. It was founded by Alex Thompson, who helped author the Cyclists Bill of Rights, co-founded Bikerowave and is known for his open disdain of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC), a longtime bike advocacy organization.

"We have always been the strident voices of 'fuck this.' That this is not OK. This situation is not alright," Thompson says, speaking about Bikeside.

It's not just ramped-up ideology that separates Bikeside from the LACBC. Both are non-profits, but Bikeside is a 501(c)(4), which means it's unrestrained in its lobbying efforts. And unrestrained is how Thompson wants it. (It also means donations to Bikeside are not tax deductible.)

"We are a pure lobbying organization. Parties, bike rides and film screenings -- all these things are secondary to our main purpose: making policy change," Thompson writes on BikesideLA.org, the website where the organization's name is followed by the slogan, "resistance is futile."

Those lobbying efforts have begun with seven political endorsements: six for bike-friendly neighborhood council candidates, and the last for Winograd.

"We're trying to form a relationship with a legislator who's going to be able to get things done for us," explains Thompson.

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

The 30-year-old Thompson is charming with book and street smarts that make him hard not to find inspiring.

It was school that brought him to L.A. to earn his doctorate in mathematical logic from UCLA. But it was an attempt to align his lifestyle with belief in a reduced carbon footprint that put him back on a bike, a hobby he'd abandoned for running years earlier. At the same time, he was also involved in John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign.

"After the Kerry thing went sour and Bush won again, I'd gotten a taste of being involved and I was also frustrated as hell," says Thompson. "So I looked for something where I could get involved and make a change -- it was biking. And it just worked out really good. I think bike people are some of the best people around."

Thompson grew up near Detroit, a city that knows a thing or two about devotion to the automobile. Here in L.A., he's fighting an uphill battle against an entrenched cruiser culture where cars are romanticized and remain a status symbol and there's an unflinching sense of entitlement to the road.

"Three years ago, if you'd asked me what I thought of somebody who rode their bike in the streets of Los Angeles, I would have told you I thought they were completely insane and that I feared for my son's life all the time because he was riding around on a fixed-gear bike," says 58-year-old Donald Strauss, a Bikerowave board member and acting chair of the soon-to-be-launched Master's in Urban Sustainability program at Antioch University.

 "Now, it's hard for me to even recognize myself in that statement," he says while fiddling with the handlebars of a 10-speed bike.

Strauss is currently working on his PhD in environmental studies and is focusing his dissertation on L.A.'s urban alternative bike culture, which includes repair co-ops such as Bikerowave, flamboyant night rides and, of course, a growing activism.

"It's a huge, huge undertaking," Strauss says about shifting the transportation infrastructure in Southern California to be more bike-friendly. "But I feel like the way any important thing that's ever been done is a huge undertaking."

(Watch the videos -- Bikerowave and L.A. Bike Culture -- on YouTube.)

For its part, the LACBC would like to see all the different cycling advocacy groups work together. After all, L.A. has a long way to go in changing its car culture and there is strength in numbers, says Aurisha Smolarski, campaigns and communications director for the LACBC.

"It's not a power struggle, it's about working together," she says. "The bottom line is that personality differences are a distraction from what we're trying to do."

Thompson, however, doesn't feel there needs to be unity to ultimately bring about the change the cycling community, for all its fragments, wants to see. Unified movements, he says in an analogy that includes tanks, sugar cubes and "piranhas that devour the cattle that is the DOT," aren't fluid enough to move around obstacles and quickly adapt.

"The activist environment is traditionally one where you don't compete," he says. "But at some point you get enough organizations, you get a mature enough community and now the important territory is staked out and you're forced into competition. I think we're going through that transition right now."