So.... in a recent "Los Angeles" magazine, there was an article about the large group rides at night, problems encountered and problems with police. In that article it was noted that certain riders were being fined $150 for riding an unlicensed bike on the street. I thought...
WHAT?!?! I've lived in LA over 15 years.... what is this license thing?
Well, after looking into the whole thing... there actually is a law about it. Been this way for decades. I frequently ride into Santa Monica, where a friend of mine got a moving violation (as if he was driving a car) for running a stop sign on a bike. I thought it might be a good idea to do the license on my commuter and road bike, if anything to avoid the $150 ticket I could face.
Get this, it's $3 for 3 years. Talk about cheap. Not just a city thing, it's a California License. I remember paying something like $15 dollars in Minneapolis where they really enforced bike license laws. You get two tags, one a 1x2 inch license tag and a renewal tag (little smaller). It's got to cost the state some bucks to provide these tags and keep records... way above $1 per year.
I just posted this if this was news to other California riders, like it was for me.
-3bikes