11.02.2009

halloween critical mass 09

tayyab

things started out in a happy, festive mood as we left justin herman plaza. the mass started and 40 minutes passed before we even started moving and we were walking. this was probably the biggest critical mass ever?!

tayyab and tony (dressed as a bridge worker)

looking down market st.




and then after passing city hall, things got really ugly on van ness st.

this old man had just maced several bicyclists. (you can see the large spray can in his right hand.) he then was yelling and swung at a bicyclist and then he was shoved to the ground. from city hall on van ness ave. (at mcallister st) to broadway ave. (about a mile), there were physical altercations in almost every single intersection taking place while i biked through these cross streets!

here another pissed of motorist tries to drive through the bicycle parade through van ness. evidently, these motorists had been waiting for 30+ minutes already while the front of the mass went by, and were pretty frustrated by the time we rolled through. they must have had really important things to drive their cars to but they wanted to utilize the same small strips of pavement that we had temporarily claimed for ourselves for just a bit of time - and this really made some folks mad.

this guy was angrily screaming "faggot, faggot, faggot!" after this, i started yelling, "let's keep the peace." before the mass, i had been yelling, "let's storm the bay bridge and go to treasure island." (it would have been traffic-free since the bridge was closed to cars), but no one ever listens to me.

the broadway tunnel...




met up with andrea towards the end of the mass. here's her amazing "dia de los muertos"-style face paint


1 comment:

k haas said...

this is the only bit of info i have found on the interweb regarding the violence at last month's mass. no blogs nor news sites seemed to have mentioned it. that's right folks; you heard it here first.