Everything is Everything: Critical Mass

2.02.2010

January 2010 SF Critical Mass

The rain stopped half an hour before the start of Critical Mass. As the skies cleared, a relatively small group of us gathered together for a rather mellow celebration of rolling through our city on bicycles. Some folks passed out fliers beforehand encouraging positivity in lieu of hostility. The fliers also encouraged riders in the front to stop at red lights so that we can all stick together: a very valid point/issue that we should have addressed many moons ago.

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.