Photographic evidence below. If you have more evidence of fun last night (photos, video, audio?) leave some links in the comments!

A lovely ride to Cayuga Park, park of mystery and amazing scupture!

As has been the case when passing out proposed routes over the past year or two, some folks get pretty hostile (weirdly, they usually look like they’re middle-aged guys, maybe over 50, who have some kind of self-righteousness that they *know* that Critical Mass *never* has any proposed routes!). But most folks I handed it to were eager for a good suggestion and excited to see a map.

Well the ride took off  before any of the co-conspirators could get “in front” so up Market it went. Who knows who decided to go, or to go *that* way (again!), but so it was. A bunch of us rushed to the front and managed to get it turning south on 4th Street. At 4th and Mission I made a bunch of noise and convinced the front to stop for a full light cycle (to allow everyone behind us to catch up and mass up again), after which I felt I’d done my part to make the plan happen.

Down 4th Street I jumped on to a bus platform and took these photos:

Southbound on 4th Street near Brannan, July 29, 2011, San Francisco.

Critical Mass San Francisco, July 2011.

A good time was had by all...

We rode across the 4th Street Bridge and when we tried to cross the empty baseball parking lots, a fair number of folks decided we were escaping the predictable patterns of past Critical Mass’s more than they could reasonably tolerate. Thus, they turned back and proceeded northward on 3rd Street, while those of committed to the route carried on southward on Terry Francois Blvd. Drama solved! Around 100-120 of us were going to Cayuga Park! That was plenty to have a good time, and enjoy a “real” Critical Mass experience.

For those who went back to the city center (and thanks for taking the cops with you, by the way), I hope you had a good time. I’m sure you went around Union Square, through the Broadway and Stockton Tunnels, circled up at Market and Van Ness, and eventually just melted away through attrition… Just like nearly every ride for the past few years! Geez! Some of us are bored to death with the predictability of that experience, and the empty posturing of those delusional few who actually believe they are being “more political” or “most radical” by pushing Critical Mass into endless traffic jams in the heart of the City (no, there is no “class war” between cars and bikes–they are inanimate objects!–nor is there one between motorists and cyclists, who are all workers of one sort or another at the end of the day).

I went to Cayuga Park because I prefer a ride that plays with the geography of the City. A ride that explores new and unusual routes off the beaten path. A ride that pleasantly surprises local neighbors and passersby as we roll through. And finally, one that ends, like we did during the first years of Critical Mass, in a shared hangout at a park, on a street, at a bar, or some kind of social ending. Serendipitously, there were a number of us oldtimers who made it to Cayuga Park and we realized that we can just do this whenever we want!

Everyone is invited to join us, of course. The more the merrier (must’ve been a good 75+ who made it all the way to Cayuga tonight). BBQ, beer, conversation, live music, it was a lovely evening. And an easy bike ride or BART trip back home at the end, long after sunset. So we’ll bring a proposed route and destination, perhaps not every month, but from time to time. If you’re bored with the same ol’ same ol’ break away from it and join us next time! (And send suggestions for ending spots and routes to get there! or better yet, make a map and bring a few hundred to the next Critical Mass!)

–Chris Carlsson

Cayuga Park sculptures by Demetrio Braceros, under the BART tracks.

BART over Cayuga Park

The more you look around the more you find...

Demetrio Braceros was the park's caretaker for years, and this is what he created.

Fittingly, we came on bicycles!

Please send your article proposals, drafts, flyers, photos, etc., to

critmasssf@gmail.com

From Chris Carlsson, Hugh D’Andrade, LisaRuth Elliott, and friends

The 20^th anniversary of Critical Mass is coming in September 2012. The first-ever ride was in San Francisco in September 1992, so we’re inviting everyone from around the wide world of Critical Mass rides to come to San Francisco next September for a week-long festival to celebrate twenty years. During the week-long festival we hope to have daily group rides, film festival, art shows, discussions, music, and more. (Send us a message if you’re planning to come, and let us know how many people are planning to come from your city/country. And if you’re in the Bay Area and want to help plan the week, organize an event, coordinate food and entertainment, provide housing, etc., please contact us!)

In conjunction with this anniversary we also want to produce a new book of essays, cartoons, photographs, and documents, capturing the dynamic and powerful social movements that have emerged from, or embraced the Critical Mass phenomenon. To that end, this is an open solicitation for material for the book. Predictably we have no budget to pay anyone, but we hope to create a historically important volume documenting the emergent bicycle movement over the past two decades, and its relationship to Critical Mass. Any proceeds of sales of the book will go to funding events for the anniversary and after that, for ongoing Critical Mass-related printing and communications.

We’d love essays anywhere from 2000 to 8000 words, and we’re open to other kinds of materials too. We are especially interested in essays that go deeper into the larger political questions surrounding Critical Mass specifically, and the bicycle as a signifier and tool of a broader social transformation.

Please contact us to let us know if you’re going to write something, or if you have photos, flyers, or other material to contribute to this. Authors or groups published in the book will get a free copy, and if we’re lucky, we’ll find publishers in other languages to produce the book in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. If you have contacts with publishers in other languages, please do let us know.

Here are some questions to get you started, but feel free to query us with your own ideas of what you’d like to write:

1. Please describe the history of the Critical Mass experience in your city with the following questions as a guide:

When did it start? How many people participated in starting it? Did it come out of a pre-existing network or political association? Or did new friends come together to start it?

Give us the details of your ride:

where does it start from, when does it roll, how long has it been going? How often does it happen? Monthly?  How do you think your ride is unique vis a vis other rides you have heard of, or maybe personally experienced?

2. How does Critical Mass manage itself in your city? Do you have monitors and communications that are sustained by the same people month after month, or do new people emerge regularly to help produce a good experience? What kind of debates characterize your Critical Mass experience? Do people discuss and argue about the nature of the ride during the ride? Do you have xerocracy (printed documents circulating among the riders)? Do you have pre-planned routes or do you move around the city spontaneously? Do your rides split up into multiple rides sometimes? Tell us about the lived experience and the tensions within your ride, and related to other organized bike rides in your city (if any).

3. Can you describe stories of personal transformation that people have experienced as a result of riding in Critical Mass? Who rides in Critical Mass in your city? Has the population of your ride changed over time or is it the same as it has been since the beginning? What kind of future does the ride have in your city, in your estimation?

4. How would you characterize your city’s bicycling scene? Was it pretty big before Critical Mass? Did Critical Mass play a key role in expanding it? How does your city feel differently today than it did before Critical Mass started? Or does it feel different at all?

5. Are there formal bicycle advocacy groups in your city (or region)? How do they relate to Critical Mass? Do they support it and participate in it? Or are they hostile? What kinds of dynamics have taken place where you are?

6. Are there free food, gardening/farming, housing/squatting, free radio, hacker spaces, or other kinds of similar efforts cross-linked to Critical Mass in your city? What is the relationship of Critical Mass to other political and social initiatives in your city, if any? Can you write in depth about those relationships and how they have fed each other? What is the relationship in your city between formal and informal political groups?

7. Outsider journalists and writers often pose the question, “What has Critical Mass accomplished?” Our answer in SF as co-founders has generally been to emphasize that Critical Mass is an ongoing event, an ongoing seizure of public space by hundreds and thousands of cyclists, and is not an organization—nor even a coherent movement—with a specific agenda. So to speak of “accomplishments” is to frame it incorrectly. How do you respond to this question? Describe how you experience the meaning and coherence of the Critical Mass phenomenon in your city.

8. What kinds of journalism, blogs, writing, and/or art has emerged from the Critical Mass movement in your city?  Please submit some examples and tell us about them (can be weblinks, photos, artwork, books, zines, stickers, posters, etc.  If you are sending a url, please be specific about which page/blog/art you mean, and describe how it relates to Critical Mass, the ride).

I was sorry to hear that my friend Bob Berry passed away recently. I met Bob at Critical Mass almost 20 years ago, and saw him regularly on the last Friday of the month most of the years in between. In that time, he was always upbeat, happy to see me, and full of strange stories and jokes.

Bob worked at CalTrans, proving that the agency that relentlessly promotes the expanded use of the automobile had at least one mole working inside it. Bob was a serious cyclist, a lifelong advocate of sane traffic priorities (hint: biking, walking, and public transportation), and was never afraid to speak his mind on these issues.

Bob was a “character” — an unusual, offbeat guy who took some getting used to. Once you got to know him, he had all sorts of stories about why CalTrans is fucked, why bad decisions are made there, and how the system works (or doesn’t). And he was always eager to tell stories about the Whig Party of the 1970s, (which he co-founded) and the hippy airline he once worked for (yes, there was once a hippy airline — Zoom Zoom Air).

It appears Bob died of natural causes, having lived a rich, creative life. He was 62, and had one daughter. My condolences to Bob’s close friends and family. Goodbye, Bob! It was great knowing you. You’ll be missed every last Friday!

(Photo by Joel Pomerantz)

We finally got a regrouping stop at Mission and Van Ness, but who thinks it's so fun to block a major intersection for five or eight minutes? Why?

There’s certain amount of hating directed at Critical Mass and a quick claim sometimes made is that we block emergency vehicles. But it’s quite the opposite actually–Critical Mass easily clears the way for fire trucks or ambulances in a fraction of the time it would take cars to move aside. As we rode north on Van Ness by City Hall an ambulance came up and we all melted to the right.

Passing City Hall on Van Ness, Critical Mass easily made way for an ambulance that came up with siren blaring.

Just as quickly the ride surges into the entire street northbound on Van Ness, the ambulance now three blocks ahead.

I can't remember when we did this exactly, but somewhere along the way we went easterly on Eddy...

Did anyone else notice there were a lot more older folks on the ride tonight? Being one myself, I did.

The inevitable pull through the Broadway Tunnel, this geezer exults on his way out...

Bryan Goebel, Streetsblog editor, at right, where the ride had an early stopping point in the Civic Center.

Hugh, the (not so) "secret master" of this blog and the FB page!

Thanks Hugh!

The Critical Mass ride on Friday was a fun, pretty ordinary ride. But it came on the one month anniversary of a terrible event, which was the attack by a crazed motorist on the Critical Mass ride in Porto Alegre, Brazil last month.

A few of us decided to mark this sad day with some signs for our bikes. We wanted to spread the news about the attack, and also to express our solidarity with our friends in Brazil. We are so saddened by this unjustified attack, and we hope everyone recovers quickly. Here are some photos (they are small but you can click to enlarge):

The last news I have from that tragedy is the following: no one was killed, but 11 people were sent to the hospital with serious injuries. The motorist was caught and is being charged with attempted murder. He is a well-known banker, and has a history of anger management problems and traffic citations. Several witnesses dispute the attacker’s claim that he was provoked. (If you have additional facts or information, please share it in the comments.)

Please note: We have an editorial policy on this blog that we post any comment, so long as it is not insulting, threatening, or spam. Sadly, we had to violate this policy on last month’s posting, because we had so many downright stupid comments from pathetic, ignorant individuals who wrote in to express their sympathy with the attempted murderer. If you would like to post a comment to this effect, please go elsewhere. We don’t have time for you.

The ride itself was great. The weather was fine, the route was not too predictable, the group was small (maybe 350 to 400 people) and the front of the ride happily stopped for lights to let people regroup. Later in the evening, when the ride had dwindled to about 50 people, there was an accident in the Stockton tunnel. From the comments on our Facebook page:

Wells: Everything was great until I saw a guy crash and literally face planting hard in the middle of the Stockton tunnel. He wasn’t wearing a helmet either. Police got him an ambulance. A few other bikers including me stayed behind to help him out. But let this be a lesson; ALWAYS WEAR A HELMET! And be mindful of how fast you are going.

The rider’s name was Steve. If anyone has any information about how he is doing, I’d love it if you would post a comment.

A few more photos:

Motorist who ran over cyclists in the Capital turns himself in to Civil Police
Ricardo Neis, 47, was escorted by four Special Forces police officers

Updated at 13:46

Ricardo Neis, 47, the Central Bank employee who ran over dozens of
ciclists in the Lower City on Friday, turned himself in to the Civil
Police around noon on Monday to offer a statement.

Neis arrived at the offices of the Transport Crimes Division
accompanied by two lawyers and escorted by four officers from
the Special Forces Battalion (BOE). In order to escape the
press, which was waiting in front of the building, he entered
through the parking (lot).

According to his lawyer Luís Fernando Coimbra Albino, Neis
will claim self-defense on behalf of himself and his 15-year-old
son. The motorist decided to appear in order to state that he
attacked the cyclists after feeling threated by alleged blows
to his black Golf.

On arriving at the police headquarters, the lawyer stated that,
finding himself surrounded by cyclists, Neis tried to “leave
along one side”, but had the windows of his car (containing his
son) broken:

“[Neis] tried to leave the area to protect his physical safety
and that of his son.”

Asked why the vehicle was abandoned, Albino said that his client
was afraid because he had been advised by a relative that he was
being chased by the demonstrators.

Background on the case:

At the start of the evening on Friday, around twelve cyclists were
run over as they went for a ride in the center of Porto Alegre.
Three cyclists were taken to the Pronto Socorro Hospital (HPS),
but they have already been released. After the incident, the
motorist fled the area. His car was found abandoned in an eastern
neighborhood on Saturday morning.

There’s also this article from earlier with an interview with the son and the lawyer. Both say that the car’s windows were broken and that the cyclists were hitting it.

Commenter Ana Tomazini wrote in with this note:
Great article, but things in Brazil doesn’t seem to be going ok for the victims … the biggest press release is already treating as an accident and protecting the criminal … the driver is a well know person, work for the Central Bank and got himself 2 lawyers already …. the cyclists has nothing, not the media, support or money … I can’t see justice been made in this case … It’s a sad, sad reality … All support and efforts are welcome ! Thanks !

We don’t have much information, but it does appear that at least 12 people were injured. Luckily no one was killed. Treehugger has a translation of a post from the Porto Alegre Critical Mass blog:

Yesterday, as on every last Friday of the month Critical Mass was held, which is a manifestation of what happens in the world when cyclists seek space in traffic, to raise awareness that we ARE PART of the traffic. Bicycles are a self-sustainable, less expensive, and environmentally friendly alternative, even if they’re commonly associated with leisure and recreation.
But what happened yesterday was beyond any expectation we could have had. A driver / killer ran over our group of cyclists. What happened was very scary, and I did not understand what was happening, because we could hear screams and the sound of people falling on the ground, the sound of bodies in the hood, windshield, on the asphalt. I saw legs in the air, helmets, bicycles, arms, all mixed together with parts of the car… all flying and making noise. It was like a horror movie.

Other news sources say the attacker has been identified.

Although police found the badly damaged car on Friday night they have not yet been able to locate it’s driver thought to be the 47-year old owner of the vehicle, Ricardo José Neif [actually the name is Ricardo José Neis according to a commenter here]. While local cyclists have called for the driver to be charged with attempted murder, according to Porto Alegre’s Police Chief, Gilberto Montenegro it is not yet possible to say if the driver intended to run over the cyclists, maybe he hasn’t seen the videos. However, Chief Montenegro has said that If intent is proven the driver may wel face a charge of attempted murder.

One cyclist who was on the ride Camilo Colling, told the Brazilian website Terra Brasil that he spoke to the driver just before the incident, asking him to be patient and stop behaving aggressively towards the riders in his path and warning him that there were children and older people taking part in the ride ahead. The driver allegedly replied “Yes but I’m in a hurry” before ploughing his car in to the group of cyclists in front of him.

Our hearts are with the victims of this horrific crime. Let’s dedicate the March Critical Mass to our friends in Brazil, so they know that they are not alone. And let’s hope the violent attacker will be held accountable for his crime.

Here’s the video (warning: violent images)”

Update: I asked a friend who speaks and reads Portugese to give a rough translation of the latest news. Here’s what he said:

The latest news on their blog is that a particular person was identified as the motorist responsible, and he was planning to turn himself in to the police today (Sunday). Although nobody died, the other Critical Mass riders are upset that press reports have used the term “accident” instead of language like “attack” or “attempted murder”. The Porto Alegre CM community is extremely angry and is planning some protests, including one that already happened and a large rally upcoming on March 3.

This cartoon

translates as something like “well, I’m from Porto Alegre”, or “it’s just that I’m from Porto Alegre”, or “it’s because I’m from Porto Alegre”.

According to this article, there were 10 cyclists hit and 5 of them were taken to a hospital for medical attention. That article also says that it was a hit-and-run.

Critical Mass cyclists are among the most visible practitioners of a new kind of social conflict. The “assertive desertion” embodied in bicycling erodes the system of social exploitation organized through private car ownership and the oil industry. And by cycling in urban centers in the Empire, we join a growing movement around the world that is repudiating the social and economic models controlled by multinational capital and imposed on us without any form of democratic consent. This mass seizure of the streets by a swarming mob of bicyclists “without leaders” is precisely the kind of self-directing, networking logic that is transforming our economic lives and threatening the structure of government, business, and (as more imaginative military strategists are coming to understand) policing and war-making too.

Critical Mass has a new cousin in town: the San Francisco Bike Party (SFBP). The party-like qualities of Critical Mass have always been present, but the Bike Party model as developed in San Jose and other cities first involves an organizing (and monitoring) crew of volunteers who direct the fun. The first official SFBP happened a few weeks ago on January 7 and drew around 1000 riders on a bitterly cold night. It was a lot like Critical Mass in some ways—I enjoyed dozens of conversations with people I found myself next to in the ride, there were music machines, and friendly vibes from riders and passersby alike. We were dozens and hundreds of bicyclists filling the streets and displacing cars, just as we’d dreamed back in the first months of Critical Mass in 1992.

Critical Mass is, or seems to be, political—but let’s admit that it is a relatively inarticulate politics, or perhaps so multi-voiced that it cannot be summarized easily by any given set of ideas. SFBP on the other hand is militantly apolitical, somewhat obsessed with obeying traffic rules, and—based on the repeated bellows of “Bike Party!” as we rode along—settling for a fairly shallow and empty idea of “fun on bikes” as its self-conception.

More interesting perhaps is the informal leadership that is behind the scenes at both SFBP and Critical Mass. There is a continuum from the SFBP organizing committee and its “birds” (monitors) at one end to the hardcore “no leader” anarchists leading recent Critical Masses at the other. In between—in a decidedly un-moderate role—are some of us who like both events for similar reasons but have problems with both too. We don’t want to have people hectoring us into the right lane or to stop at a stoplight where there’s no need (e.g. northbound along the Embarcadero in the right lane), or a stop sign when there’s no cross traffic. As one friend put it, “I don’t do this in my normal life, why would I do it on Bike Party?!?”

What motivates the Bike Party organizers and monitors? Do they have an urge to make sure groups of people obey their behavioral standards? We know there are a lot of bicyclists who are intensely committed to “good, lawful behavior” as the standard by which cyclists of all sorts should be judged. The Bike Party has just started and it’s likely to grow very large and attract its own police attention. When the organizers start negotiating with the police it won’t be long before the police are dictating what is acceptable in terms of routes, stops, and pace. How will Bike Party’s fun evolve when the “birds” are more obviously enforcers of police preferences?

That said, the first SFBP was a lot of fun, and in its self-discipline was a sight to see. Wherever there might have been a conflict with a motorist or a bus that needed to get by, people courteously cleared the way. No one rode into a red light or into oncoming traffic. This didn’t need monitoring and grew naturally out of the preferences of the riders.

Interestingly, this kind of common-sense courtesy could be adopted by Critical Mass routinely (it is now, but only sporadically) and by so doing, reduce the tension and increase the pleasure of the ride for most people. Some of us have modeled this approach and argued for it in flyers and online for years. But we don’t want to be monitors and don’t want to impose anything on anyone. We’d like people to behave courteously and respectfully because they want to, and because it’s more subversive than being angry and confrontational!

Critical Mass has always styled itself as radically democratic. In the public space of our streets, the people present determine their own fates by how they interact with each other and passersby, which can be profoundly democratic—not in the sense of majority-rule voting that we usually accept as the definition of “democracy” but in the directly democratic sense of open and unmediated participation. In other ways Critical Mass never has been “democratic,” because very few people influence the route the rides take (though almost anyone might exercise that influence on a given ride), and fewer still sometimes cause conflicts along the perimeter by riding into oncoming traffic or lurching into cross traffic ahead of the main ride.

In the early years routes would be proposed and “voted on” by a show of hands in Peewee Herman Plaza at the beginning of the ride. No more than a few dozen could meaningfully participate in that, even if hundreds were in the vicinity. In practice every ride is directed by the most convincing and assertive riders at or near the front. Ever since the 1997 attack by the police, after which there was a big drop-off of written communication among riders (the much-vaunted “xerocracy” seemed to wither away), there haven’t been more than a dozen proposed routes in as many years. As a result, many people who didn’t live through Critical Mass in the 1990s are ideologically committed to “no proposed routes” and “no leaders.”

Some of these same people seem to believe that Critical Mass is “a protest” and that the point of it is to occupy the major traffic arteries in order to screw up traffic as much as possible. They have been heard grumbling when the ride headed south or too far west, urging the ride to turn back towards downtown and the city center in order to pursue their tactical approach. In their own odd way, they ARE leading Critical Mass, but without explaining their idea of what it is, or how going where they want to go will fulfill their unspoken “mission.” This reveals the peculiar self-governing reality of Critical Mass: ad-hoc leadership groups make important decisions that influence the experience of everyone, but are completely unaccountable to anyone but themselves.

That leaves some of us oldtimers scratching our heads. Who said Critical Mass is “a protest”? Isn’t being an antagonistic cyclist counterproductive? What is it about youthful subcultures that think it’s really radical to act out and pick fights with people who don’t look or think like they do? Isn’t it more radical to try to turn these people into active allies in the fight for a better life? Isn’t the “mainstream” life the radicals are “protesting,” dependent on car transit, inherently worse than what it could be? Don’t we want to invite people imprisoned by it to join us, instead of giving them cause to hate us?

In some cities the police have been successful at stopping Critical Mass, maybe because the riders themselves haven’t been as creative with the ride and its logic. In Austin, Texas and Minneapolis, Minnesota, and even in Manhattan, police departments have attacked and arrested Critical Mass cyclists and successfully discouraged a lot of people from participating in those cities. In Portland, Oregon, a very bicycle-friendly city, Critical Mass died out when the culture was too dominated by angry young men (in San Francisco we call them the Testosterone Brigade) who think there is a “class war” between cars and bikes. They go out of their way to block cars, to taunt and provoke motorists, especially those in expensive cars. Those doing it are proud and feel like they’re pushing things to the limit, but to the rest of us they look cowardly, hiding behind the mob.

Inanimate objects don’t have class wars, and to target people in cars as the enemy is a huge political mistake. Car drivers are not the enemy, but our natural allies! The folks stuck in traffic in cars or on busses are clearly more like than unlike the riders who are temporarily altering the rhythm of urban life by seizing the streets on bicycle. The point of Critical Mass, in my opinion, has always been to create an inviting, celebratory space that is so contagious that people who might not bicycle much are irresistibly drawn to trying it out. If you self-righteously call people names, try to make them feel guilty or ashamed, there’s little chance they will change how they think and further, change their behavior. Our pleasure is more subversive than our anger, and that’s hard for some people to remember in the heat of the streets.

It’s easy to forget that one of the best things about Critical Mass is that it puts hundreds and thousands of us in the streets together where the rules and etiquette aren’t always clear. That means we have to solve problems as they arise by talking to each other, working things out in the pressure of the moment, and getting important practice in political self-organizing and self-management.

In the United States during the past two decades a serious Culture War defined the society, with right-wing Christian fundamentalists increasingly emboldened to try to control the behavior of the rest of the society. On the other side are millions of people who believe in high levels of personal freedom and tolerance, and you can find a lot of the most ardent and articulate of those folks riding their bikes in Critical Mass.

There is real tension between the different values vying to influence these mass bike rides. Probably a large number of participants really don’t care, as long as they have a fun ride every month. That’s fine, but we’re not living up to our self-expectations if we leave these deeper issues unexamined. Whatever our preferences, neither Critical Mass nor SF Bike Party are good at communicating to passersby the deeper meaning of their existence. We may not like every turn the ride ahead of us makes, but shouldn’t we do our best to influence our shared culture by openly debating our behaviors, our “messages” (or lack thereof), and our purposes?

—Chris Carlsson, January 28, 2011

Painting by Mona Caron

Here’s the write up, and you can also sign up via Facebook. Hope you can come!

Critical Mass is a movement with no leaders or formal organization behind it. No one in charge — which is another way of saying “everyone is in charge!” There are as many ideas about what Critical Mass is as there are participants.

Given that fact, there are — and should be — competing visions of what Critical Mass is about. Is Critical Mass a protest whose purpose is to gum up motorized traffic and make things difficult for anyone in a car? Or is Critical Mass a celebration of bike culture that changes the rules of ordinary life by opening up public space to public participation? Should Critical Mass be led spontaneously by the loudest voices at the front of the ride? Or should it follow a route from time to time, as it did in its first few years? Is Critical Mass about staying downtown, where traffic is densest? Or can it also be about exploring other neighborhoods and vistas?

Come to this forum to discuss these and other competing visions of what Critical Mass is and can become. Bring your ideas, bring your open ears and minds.

Chris Carlsson, Hugh D’Andrade, and others will faciitate this conversation.

Tuesday, February 8 · 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Station 40
3030B 16th Street (at Mission), San Francisco