This here is the official route map for some Critical Mass they had back in 2006. Tonight, “organizers” will meet at Dolores Park to “plan” the “route” for Friday’s ride.
What’s that you say? You, like me, thought Critical Mass was unplanned and spontaneous. Think again! Back in the day, apparently, routes were planned, destinations were decided upon in advance. And some want to bring that M.O. back. Head over to the “official” “unofficial” SF Critical Mass “website” to read all about it.
The meet is at 7pm at 18th and Dolores if you want in.
See previous Mission Mission coverage of Critical Mass here.
Hm, those are some interesting scare quotes you have there. Nowhere did the word “organizers” appear, so I guess you made that one up. And nowhere do we say our site is “official.” The sfcriticalmass site clearly states it is an UNOFFICIAL blog about Critical Mass. Anyone is free to make their own blog or webpage addressed to Critical Mass, and anyone is free to produce a route or flyer.
Not scare quotes. “Organizers” is in quotes because you’re not organizers. “Plan” because it’s not planning exactly. “Route” because there won’t be a route.
“Offical” was my mistake though, and I fixed it.
yea, Critical Mass is truly misunderstood :rolleyes:
Hooray for critical mass! Hope you guys destroy more property and harass more people than ever, since you are “organized”.
Judging from all the bike lanes in this city bicyclists ignore as they speed down the sidewalk and fly through red lights, Critical Mass is proof that terrorism is successful.
We’re not out to harass anyone, or harm anyone’s property. Go ahead and believe whatever you like, but I think if you join us some evening you’ll find that we’re not bad people — and we’re certainly don’t have anything to do with terrorism. (I don’t know why you’re using loaded terms like that unless you just want to blow off some steam yourself.)
Having joined you a couple of times, I hate to say Kyle Crankypants has a point.
When I first rode in Critical Mass, it was great to have that feeling of safety, that thrill of being in control of the road. And riding with so many happy people? Awesome!
But in watching what it does to drivers, I’ve come to think that Critical Mass is a giant dick move. I’m sure it was useful once, but that time is long past. And I say that as a guy who hasn’t owned a car in more than a decade, somebody who commutes by bike every day. I’m tired of apologizing to non-bikers for a giant monthly inconvenience, and I wish everybody would give it up.
Drink the Kool-Aid!
this statement sounds like it’s spoken by someone who’s never actually seen the streets of San Francisco. get off of the computer and check things out for yourself.
Critical Mass. Its PETA, but for bikes.
When I first drove a car in San Francisco, it was great to have that feeling of safety, that thrill of being in control of the road. And driving alone in my car? Awesome!
But in watching what it does to bicyclists, I’ve come to think that owning a car is a giant dick move. I’m sure it was useful once, but that time is long past. And I say that as a guy who likes to drive, somebody who uses a City Car Share pretty regularly. I’m tired of apologizing to bicyclists for a giant daily inconvenience, and I wish everybody would give it up.
Hugh, sorry, you’re wrong. Critical Mass is the ultimate giant dick move. It’s a form of trolling.
While you self-righteously take credit for helping to promote bicycling in San Francisco, CM is *perfect* justification for asswipes like Rob Anderson.
I wasn’t aware that I’m self righteous. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
I’ve made some arguments that SF Critical Mass has had a net positive affect on cycling:
http://www.sfcriticalmass.org/2010/04/30/argument-1/
http://www.sfcriticalmass.org/2010/05/25/is-critical-mass-bad-or-good/
I’ve tried to put together a coherent argument with evidence. If you have some contrary evidence you’d like to share, I’d love to hear it.
H.
I’m sorry, this is a bunk rebuttal of William’s point. Cycling and driving are both valid forms of transportation and both have protections and restrictions under the law. Bad drivers who violate the law are a danger to other drivers, themselves, pedestrians and cyclists– these people should be the focus of any cyclist activism. Addressing bad driving habits and laws that put cyclists in danger are the issues we should pursue. The problem with Critical Mass is that it operates outside the law and puts cyclists, motorists, and pedestrians in danger and serves only to Escalate The Hate. You can’t justify illegal behavior by saying you are perpetrating it on those that have perpetrated it against you, this is not valid. Additionally, you are perpetrating your illegal activity on everyone, not just bad drivers, so it’s not even retribution you can claim. Just straight-up assholery.
And not only that, it’s just bad strategy. If you want to effect change, don’t undermine your own message of peaceful coexistence with anarchism and violence (you may not plan for it, but we all know that it has/can happen). And if your goal is not peaceful coexistence, but complete eradication of cars from SF, then you’re delusional and no reasonable person is going to pay you (and possibly by extension the entire bike community) any mind. Change comes in pieces. Work on lifting the injunction, work on getting more bike lanes, work on getting better enforcement of traffic laws that protect cyclists, work on raising awareness for cyclists through community outreach, work on the image of the community as a whole first, then we can take further steps towards a bicycle utopia.
Not that any of this will make a difference to the Critical Mass enthusiasts. I’m pretty sure that political change is just a cloak of validity they throw over themselves to justify having a little reckless fun once a month. I’ve ridden critical mass before and it IS fun. If I didn’t care so much about the cyclist cause, I’d probably look for reasons to justify participating in it myself. But I do care about making SF better for cyclists, so there’s no way I can justify setting the cause back any farther with these selfish shenanigans.
“The problem with Critical Mass is that it operates outside the law and puts cyclists, motorists, and pedestrians in danger and serves only to Escalate The Hate.”
If obeying the law is your highest priority, you will always reject Critical Mass, and that’s fine. I like to remind people that bicyclists aren’t the only scofflaws. EVERY SINGLE motorist in this city is a scofflaw that disrespects the law and public safety EVERY DAY by habitually violating the speed limit. With devastating effects on public safety, as the statistics show quite clearly.
Whether Critical Mass poses a danger to public safety is an interesting question. How many people have died on Critical Mass — in 18 years? 0. How many have been seriously injured (so far as we know)? 0. How many slightly injured? Very few, almost entirely do to bike-on-bike accidents, not collision with cars. How many pedestrians killed or injured? 0 as far as I know.
As for the idea that Critical Mass escalates the hate, you have not provided evidence for this assertion. What has happened since Critical Mass began in 1992 is that there are vastly more bikes on the road, vastly more bike infrastructure (in part thanks to Critical Mass, as veteran bike advocates testified in the article I linked to above), and bike advocacy is part of the mainstream of political life.
If Critical Mass is has a dampening effect on this upswing in the fate of bicyclists in this city, it must be slight, since all the vectors point up, continuously, since the late 1990s — after flatlining throughout the 70s and 80s.
“If you want to effect change, don’t undermine your own message of peaceful coexistence with anarchism and violence.”
I’m not sure what obscure 19th Century political theory has to do with San Francisco in the 21st. Are you afraid of “anarchists” on Critical Mass? There are some scruffy punk rockers, but you won’t find many who have read Bakunin, so I think you’re safe.
As for violence, there has been so little in 18 years that it seems silly to talk about it, except to say that when thousands of people get together for an event, bad things do sometimes happen — as the organizers of Bay to Breakers, Chinese New Year, Carnaval, or any sports event will admit. In case you hadn’t noticed, bicyclists are people too, and not perfect. (Try to murder them with an SUV, and you may not get a polite response.)
“And if your goal is not peaceful coexistence, but complete eradication of cars from SF, then you’re delusional…”
I’ll settle for Amsterdam. Or Copenhagen. In those cities, bicycles and other forms of traffic coexist quite well, in part because bicycles enjoy reasonable infrastructure, and in part because the law does not require bikes to behave exactly the same way cars do.
I agree with many of your other points about working in pieces, lifting the injunction, and improving our city. I’m right there with you. It seems we approach this problem differently. I don’t believe that the only way to do this is through above-ground, legal and organizational means. I think that one approach — an approach I think has been successful — is to bring thousands of people into the streets to see what the city would be like if the majority of people were on bikes. We do that once a month, and we like what we see. It inspires many of us to work full and part-time to make that vision a reality. If you will set aside your assumptions, you might be willing to grant us some respect, even if you don’t agree with our choices.
Thanks!
H.
Hugh,
To quote you: “EVERY SINGLE motorist in this city is a scofflaw that disrespects the law and public safety EVERY DAY by habitually violating the speed limit.”
This is complete bullshit, and you’d know it if you’ve ever driven in this city, which apparently you may never have. It’s near impossible to garner enough speed between stop signs in this town. We may roll through them, but at least we make an attempt to slow down. You and your cronies, however, never even slow down at stop signs. You plow through them, hop up on the sidewalks when it suits you (which is incredibly dangerous to pedestrians), go the wrong way down one way streets, and cry and yell when you can’t terrorize the city streets.
Fuck off, seriously. You are basically Cindy Sheehan or Michael Savage, the types of people that speak very interestingly 5% of the time but it never gets heard b/c the other 95% is all about hate and bullshit.
you faggots want some weed?
A privilege to be called a “faggot” by you, sir.
[...] the comments section of an earlier post, we’ve been having a serious talk about Critical Mass. On Monday, reader William [...]
How is CM not a giant dick move? It starts at 5:30pm on a Friday and starts in the heart of downtown, melting down transit and traffic all over. From an outsider’s point of view, it’s clearly conceived to fuck over the start of people’s weekends. I’d probably have more sympathy is this was a Saturday 1pm thing.
Couple that with the rude behavior that I see (cyclists actively preventing cars from getting out of the way and interfering with pedestrians who are just trying to walk on the sidewalks) and that’s a lot of ill-will that the group is picking up.
Have your ride, but don’t pretend like people shouldn’t be pissed off when you screw their Friday after-work plans.
I confess that I am turned off by the use of the phrase “dick move.” What does that term even mean? Is that some sort of hipster slang?
Are you sure that the reason Critical Mass begins at 6:00 (sometimes 6:30) is to “fuck over the start of people’s weekend”? Maybe we just want to be seen, and we want to celebrate the start of our OWN weekend with a SAFE ride through the city. Maybe we don’t want to wait till the weekend for our chance to be legitimate traffic! We’re not second class citizens, you know. We also have a right to the road.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but traffic (and mass transit) sucks in San Francisco, EVERY day of the month. It’s not bicyclists that cause the the traffic jams on those other days, it is the problem of too many cars on the road. Too many single-occupancy vehicles taking up all that room.
I know that many motorists stuck in traffic like to blame their misfortune on Critical Mass, which is fine. We do cause some delay, one day a month. But who do they blame the other days? Many people have the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Friday night plans ruined by traffic — motorized traffic that gets worse every year, and that pollutes our air, contributes to global warming, and is directly responsible in part for the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico.
Life is hard in San Francisco. There are all sorts of people trying to get around limited public space, most of which is devoted to storing private vehicles. And there will always be momentary disruptions due to protests, social events, sports events, and other forces of (human) nature. Get used to it! If you really can’t stand it, I hear the traffic in the suburbs is quite orderly (and bicycle-free).
H.
” Maybe we just want to be seen, and we want to celebrate the start of our OWN weekend”
Is your weekend held on a different schedule then my weekend? I think we all share the same weekends, and I for one would appreciate it if strangers did not conspire to obstruct my bus line as I head out to enjoy it.
“We’re not second class citizens, you know. We also have a right to the road.”
No, you have a right to PART of the road.
I think there’s probably a good reason that you don’t like the phrase “dick move”, and it has something to do with your self-image.
Your semantic distinction ignores the fact that bicyclists do not enjoy full rights to PART of the road under ordinary circumstances. To ride a bike in San Francisco — and most urban centers — is to be a 2nd class form of traffic. You ride in the narrow gap between parked cars & moving traffic, you take your life in your hands each time you try to take a legal left turn, and you accept a level of personal risk that motorists don’t.
For an idea of what a city looks like when bike traffic is given the same respect that motorized traffic gets, take a look at this video of Utrecht: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-AbPav5E5M
That’s what I and many of the people who ride in Critical Mass want. We want this city to look like Utrecht, Amsterdam, Copenhagen. We aren’t content to wait for city planners, politicians and corporate foundations to build this reality for us. We make it happen for ourselves, one day a month. And we like what we see.
That means that other traffic has to experience some delay. That means we have to run some red lights. You find that intolerable, which is fine. But I accuse you of being comfortable with the status quo, happy to accept the dominance of motorized traffic as the natural order of things.
You may give lip service to the idea of changing how our cities are organized, but you would prefer that that work is done by responsible people who wear business suits, lunch with the mayor, and accept funding from BP. Change from below, by a noisy rabble willing to disrupt the way things are just to make a point and have a good time doing it — that you find unacceptable.
I’m not sure what your comment about my self-image means. It sounds as if you are trying to call me a dick without saying so outright, which is sort of annoying. But whatever.
Have a nice day!
H.
Good luck with your way of changing the world. I’m doing mine.
I think a lot of people ride in it for the wrong reason but Critical Mass’ heart is still there, my favorite surly and weird comic book owner Al rides in it regularly and he was telling me a story about when he saw some guy acting out, causing trouble and starting fights with car drivers. He took his u-lock and locked the guy’s bike to a street sign and pretty soon as the mass moved on the problem was solved.
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