On a rainy Sunday morning in Inglewood, while most of the sprawling Edward Vincent Jr. Park was empty, one area was full of action: the Inglewood Pumptrack. On the undulating, asphalt track that almost looks like a modern sculpture emerging from a field of grass, children and adults on bicycles rode at full speed, showing tricks and testing their endurance.
Since opening in September, the site, billed as Los Angeles' first pump track, has quickly become a safe haven for cyclists to ride, connect with others and, most importantly, have fun.
“This has been a game changer,” says Corey Pasowicz, who takes his 12-year-old daughter Alexandria to the track at least twice a month to practice her BMX and mountain biking skills. She is part of a Black Crown BMX factory team.
A pump track is a bicycle playground filled with rolling hills, rollers, banked curves (often called “berms”), and shallow jumps. Instead of pedaling or pushing the bike forward, riders perform an up-and-down pumping motion with their body to maintain momentum. There are approximately 10 pump tracks in Southern California; For many years, the closest to Los Angeles were in Temecula and Thousand Oaks.
BMX athletes ride the Inglewood track, which opened in September.
(Alisha Jucevic / for The Times)
The idea of building a pump track in Inglewood came to Eliot Jackson, a top 10 downhill mountain bike racer and top performer on the World Cup circuit, in 2020, when he began reflecting on his childhood.
Growing up in Oklahoma, Jackson and his older brother built dirt jumps in their backyard. When the family moved to Los Angeles, there was nowhere to ride that was away from vehicles, so Jackson's mother would take the children to a bike trail about 45 minutes away.
“A bike lane is not a safe place for children and many times sidewalks are not safe.” [either]” says Jackson, 33. “So I think for us, a pump track represents the first step toward permanent cycling infrastructure, a place where I can say, 'This is not going anywhere.' …I have a place I can go every day, there's a community there, it's safe [and] My parents are okay with me going there.'”
Visitors can also take Metro trains to reach the track, as it is a short distance from the Downtown Inglewood and Fairview Heights stations.
Eliot Jackson with his mother, Joi Jackson, current president of Grow Cycling.
Eliot Jackson, a professional mountain biker, shows off his skills at the Inglewood Pumptrack.
(Alisha Jucevic / for The Times)
Jackson also hoped to help remedy the lack of diversity within the professional cycling industry by building the track. Throughout his decade-plus career, he was often the only black person, or person of color, at the starting line of competitions. In August, after retiring from World Cup competition, Jackson launched the Grow Cycling Foundation, which is dedicated to making cycling more inclusive.
“I just thought about my life and all the random things that led up to it,” Jackson says. As if her family “moved to California, where there are mountains [and] My friend took me to the Whistler Mountain Bike Park and introduced me. [to downhill].”
“You start thinking about the lack of opportunities there and I'm like, 'What can I do?'” adds Jackson, CEO of Grow Cycling and Red Bull mountain bike expert.
The $1.2 million Inglewood Pumptrack was funded entirely by the cycling community for the cycling community with more than $300,000 in donations from individuals. The rest came from founding partners, including brands like Yeti Cycles, Ride Fox, Pinkbike, Santa Cruz Bicycles, Rapha Foundation and Adidas, Jackson says. (Jackson is also an ambassador for Santa Cruz Bicycles, Rapha and Fox.)
Jin Morita, 13, races on the World Championship track, one of two tracks at the Inglewood Pumptrack at Edward Vincent Jr. Park in Inglewood.
(Alisha Jucevic / for The Times)
Built by Velosolutions, the site features two asphalt tracks: The Woodlands and the World Championship tracks. Woodlands, which is smaller and surrounds a lot of trees, has smaller rollers and is designed for slower speeds. While the colossal World Championship track, which is wider and with large rollers, was built with a mirror design so that two drivers can race in opposite directions at the same time. The design and naming of this track was intentional as Jackson plans to host world championship competitions there. (Between both runways, approximately 300 to 400 people were traveling at the same time on opening day.) Both tracks are open to all ages and levels.
The Inglewood Pumptrack was built specifically with cyclists in mind; For years, they were kicked out of skate parks and not welcomed by the skateboarding community, says Joi Jackson, Eliot's mother and president of Grow Cycling.
They wanted to set a more inclusive precedent for bike infrastructure, which is why there are priority days for bikes on the track. Other wheels, such as skateboards, longboards and rollerblades, are welcome on specific days of the week. (A sign near the track entrance includes more details about this and other track rules.)
People using wheelchairs or adapted bicycles can also use the track. However, scooters and motorized vehicles such as electric bicycles, hoverboards or electric scooters are not permitted.
Ameri de Vera, 9, who practices BMX on a factory team for a company called Answer BMX, goes to the Inglewood Pumptrack at least twice a month with her older sister.
“At first I was scared because you have to get used to how it swings,” says De Vera, who was preparing for the BMX world championship on a recent Sunday. “It swings in different directions and there are some sharp turns as well. So you have to keep an eye out for them, but it was a lot of fun once I got used to it. And you can skateboard on it.”
Eliot Jackson rides the Inglewood Pumptrack with BMX athletes Ameri de Vera, 9, left, and her sister Vida de Vera, 11, center.
(Alisha Jucevic / for The Times)
For beginners, he recommends preparing and wearing a helmet for safety “because the first time you'll probably fall off.” It also encourages people to be aware of their surroundings and pay attention to what others are doing to avoid accidents.
Although there is a skating ramp at the park, Erik Barnes, 50, says he prefers to ride the pump track.
“There's a proliferation of skate parks here, but none like this one,” says Barnes of West Adams, who has been an avid skateboarder since he was a teenager. He sometimes takes his teenage son with him to the track.
“I know a lot of kids my age or us older skaters who are falling in love with this place. Everyone says, 'This has reignited skateboarding for me.' It made me do it again,' and that's definitely the case for me.” Barnes frequents the rink at least twice a week, usually before work.
What Barnes likes most about the track is that “you don't have to be very good to enjoy this park.”
“You can get into a really fun zone of just cruising, which is a really enjoyable and fun thing to do,” he says. “It's not extremely difficult.”
And he adds: “You can get into a good flow. It's rhythmic. “It’s meditative and it’s a really good workout because you’re basically doing squats the whole time.”
After not seeing many skaters at the Inglewood Pumptrack every time they visited, Bily Ruiz, 26, started a weekly meetup called Khaotic Quads. The group, whose members range in age from 1 to 50, meets there on Sunday mornings.
“I love the community that [the track] is creating, because in some parks the culture can be very distant or they don't really talk to each other,” says Ruiz. While at Inglewood Pumptrack, “because everyone's so excited, everyone's like, 'What's going on? Hello. I see you. Good job.'”
“I look forward to it every weekend,” Ruiz says of the group. “It's very exciting and every time we meet, it fills me with a lot of energy.”
“We built something that people love and that makes me very happy,” says Eliot Jackson.
(Alisha Jucevic / for The Times)
Parents of young BMX athletes take their photo with Eliot Jackson, center, at Inglewood Pumptrack.
(Alisha Jucevic / for The Times)
The Grow Cycling Foundation has also donated permanent fleets of bicycles to elementary and middle schools near Inglewood, which they use for educational programs. The organization sees the pump track as the first step in a long-term mission to make cycling culturally relevant in the city.
In the meantime, however, Jackson says he's enjoyed seeing kids who may have never seen or heard of a pump track before experience one for the first time, or simply fall in love with riding a bike again.
“We built something that people love and that makes me very happy,” he says. “I just think about us as a family when we were little and my mom would have taken us every day, and look where I am now?
“And that will happen. There will be a boy who will become better than me because he discovered a bicycle in this place.”
