Chris Carlsson (co-editor) is a writer, San Francisco historian, “professor,” bicyclist, tour guide, blogger, photographer, book and magazine designer. He’s lived in San Francisco since 1978. He has written two books, edited five, including Critical Mass: Bicycling’s Defiant Celebration (AK Press: 1992), and co-authored another. He helped co-found Critical Mass in September 1992, and has ridden with Critical Mass rides in a dozen cities on three continents since then. He has been propelled into extended world travels since 2002. He has directed Shaping San Francisco since its inception in the mid-1990s, and continues to be co-director of the archive of San Francisco history at FoundSF.org. He also conducts award-winning bicycle history tours a dozen times a year, and hosts an ongoing Public Talks series in San Francisco.

LisaRuth Elliott (co-editor) is an activist, everyday bicyclist, bread baker, urban farmer, international disaster relief volunteer, historian, writer, dancer, weaver, and artist. She co-directs Shaping San Francisco, a community history project, co-edited Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-1978 (City Lights: 2011) and is currently illustrating a book of haiku by her father. She loved everything about helping create and edit this book and is excited for the Critical Mass world to converge in San Francisco in September 2012!!

Adriana Camarena (co-editor and contributor) is a writer from Mexico City, Mexico. She currently lives in San Francisco, California, where she writes about life in her immigrant working class neighborhood.

Hugh D’Andrade (cover design) is a graphic artist based in San Francisco. Although he hates drawing bicycles and finds it incredibly difficult, he has nevertheless created dozens of graphics, stickers, posters, flyers and shirt designs celebrating Critical Mass and bike culture generally. You can see more of Hugh’s work on his website.

Mona Caron (cover image) is a Swiss-born, San Francisco based professional visual artist, muralist, and illustrator since 1996, focussing on site-specific and community-informed murals in public spaces since 1998.  Mona also occasionally collaborates with activists and communities in the creation of art and agitprop for political actions for social and environmental justice; creates fine art prints in various intaglio techniques; and illustrates books, event posters, and more.

Giuso Ciclocuoco was born on a very hot august day, and lived a life of continuous movement during his childhood. During a severe heartbreak he was struck by the beauty and childishness of a Critical Mass passing by, and bought a bike becoming an activist immediately afterward.  He is now a project manager at cyclofficine, a social center based on recycling bikes in Paris, working with kids and youth in difficult situations.  He recycles bikes, hands out hugs and kisses, cooks enormous amounts of organic food for masses of people, and spreads love on a tallbike with a BIG sound system.

Daniel S. Libman has previously published essays and short stories in The Paris Review, The Baffler, The Chicago Reader, and Details among many others. His debut fiction collection, Married but Looking has just been published by Livingston Press.

Adonia E. Lugo is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. She uses ethnographic research to advocate for socially just and sustainable cities. The co-founder of City of Lights/ Ciudad de Luces and CicLAvia in Los Angeles, she is completing a dissertation about bikes, bodies, and public space. Adonia blogs and currently lives in Seattle.

Marcelo Kalil lives and rides his bicycle in Porto Alegre, Brasil. He shares his weekdays between working in a vegan cafe and volunteering at Cidade da Bicicleta‘s community bike shop.

Nes Bear is a bicycle mechanic, community worker, and cycling instructor from Manchester, UK. Nes is the founder of I Bike MCR, a network of cyclists that organise DIY bike events in the city. She also set up Pedal MCR, a community bike workshop that enables people from all backgrounds to obtain, maintain, and sustain bicycling through Tool Club, Bike Recycling, Earn A Bike, Maintenance Classes etc. Bloomers Bike Project, a wimmin-only bike project, was also founded by Nes and provides bike rides, tool club, maintenance classes and cycle training for wimmin.

Elisabeth Lorenzi rides her bike in Madrid and she was an early participant of Bicicrítica (2005). Anthropology is another of her passions where she combines ethnographic work with engagement in urban social movements. Along these lines, she did a study about the recent emergence of bike workshops in squatted social centers tied to the beginnings of Critical Mass in the city. Currently she is part of a research team working on the relationship between public policies and citizenship initiatives, and comparing Madrid and Sevilla.

Julieta Cal is a free-spirited world music singer and traveler with a degree in Music Studies from University of Buenos Aires. She has been a teacher; a road, stage and booking manager; a songwriter; and an event planner among many other occupations. She dreams of founding a bike tour band some day, among many other ideas. Her ambition is to live long and healthy enough to experience more and more shift happening.

Juan Manuel Taboada: Estudiante de Henry Miller, Delironauta en Oniriciclo, Escritor en causas judiciales sobre contaminaciòn de aguas en Argentina.
[a student of Henry Miller, “delironauta” of bicycle dreams, writer about the contamination of water in Argentina.]

Roma Ciclofficine popolari (Network of People’s Bike Kitchens) is a network of bike-activists engaged in what in Rome could be considered a grassroots movement: promoting daily use of the bike. Each Ciclofficina (workshop) provides people with a place to fix their own bike (or learn how to) for free. As a network, we organize collective actions like promoting big auctions of bikes, bike-mechanic courses, and building DIY bike lanes. We also encourage people to start more Ciclofficine popolari, offering them practical help. The network was launched in 2008, when Ciclofficine popolari began to spread around the city; today in Rome there are 10 Ciclofficine. One more will open the last Friday of September 2012, for the 20th anniversary of San Francisco’s Critical Mass.

Thiago Benicchio is a journalist and urban mobility researcher in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Author of the sleeping blog Apocalipse Motorizado and local Critical Mass participant since 2004, he’s currently Executive Director of Sao Paulo Bicyclist’s Association (Ciclocidade).

Carlos Diz Reboredo is an anthropologist specializing in political anthropology, urban studies, and anthropology of the body. In his fieldwork in bike workshops and on Critical Mass rides, he tries to understand the global politics of networking, paying attention to the new grammar of joy and carnival, and looks for their influence in the reappropriation of the city and on everyday life.

Moncho Vázquez (A Coruña, 1986) joined a Critical Mass ride for the first time in September 2007, thanks to which he has became an enthusiastic bicycle commuter, mechanic, builder, educator, blogger, and researcher. He’s part of the community workshops reCiclos Propolis and Ciclofactoría Palavea and is now involved in the formation of the Velo aí vai bicycle coop. He’s also an awful law student.

Lusi Morhayim is an architect from Turkey. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area as she completes her doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She loves cities where streets are full of people, and one does not have to depend on the automobile to get around. Her academic research centers on environmentalist groups’ demands for rights to the city as well as sustainable design and planning.

Born in San Francisco, Mario Bruzzone is currently a Ph.D. student in geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He would like to thank the editors, Keith Woodward, and especially Heather Rosenfeld for their gracious help in improving his contribution.

Rotafixa: Bike welder, bike painter, bike writer, bike dreamer, daily biker: biker.

Jesús Carlos Soto Morfín is a philosopher and an activist from Guadalajara, México. He is a promoter of sustainable mobility, bicycling, and cultural changes through playful street protests, association, symbolic violence, and concrete democracy. He is part of a collective of citizens Ciudad para Todos (City For Everyone). He works as a contributing writer for AdQat where he also analyzes political discourse, and designs strategy for social networks. He shares his home with a dog and a cat, and spends his free time plotting ways to throw tomatoes at members of the house of representatives.

Raquel Treviño Lomas is a biologist who happens to be a human rights activist who loves photography, and who is always on a bike.

Gerardo Núñez Noriega is one of those weirdo industrial designers that actually DOESN’T like automotive design. Causing trouble since October 1985.

Gábor Kürti is a 38 year old father of three, and a cycling activist car-owner who works at the Hajtás Pajtás (“Come on, Bro”) messenger company in Budapest.  Translator/editor Kriszta Vályi is a biologist and cycling activist.
Additional translators: Eszter Szilva, Vásárhelyi Gábor, and Roland Venesz
Photographs: Dezső Kürti

Justin Hyatt is an advocate of sane and sensible urban mobility and looking forward to life after the automobile. He is both an activist and writer, globally focused, yet with special attention to Eastern Europe. As an adult he has lived in San Francisco, Bulgaria, Prague, and Budapest.

Daniel Mourek (44) is one of regular participants of Critical Mass in Prague and one of many who was influenced by the Critical Mass movement and became a “professional,” lifelong bicycle advocate.

Eeva Luhtakallio is a sociologist-activist currently engaged in studying the everyday politics of sustainability, in particular bicycling. She is the author of Practicing Democracy: Local Activism and Politics in France and Finland (Palgrave Macmillan: 2012). She is an enthusiastic commuter cyclist who thinks the bike is the best way to explore new places and to meet new people, which she has done both in Finland and while living in LA and in Paris.

Angi Mauranen is a student, an environmental activist, and vice chairperson at the Friends of the Earth in the Helsinki region, which is a key actor in the local Critical Mass movement. He appreciates the social, political, and environmental benefits of cycling even more than its personal ones.

Janne Nurminen is the chairman of Helsinki Cyclists (Helsingin Polkupyöräilijät ry), a non-governmental organization which aims to promote cycling and influence legislation and traffic planning in Finland, especially in the Greater Helsinki area.

Otso Kivekäs and Olli Heikinheimo also contributed to the Helsinki piece.

José R. Cepeda-Borrero is a criminal justice professor at Inter American University of Puerto Rico at Ponce, where he was born and raised. A human rights activist, he is the co-founder of the group Energía Roja y Negra which advocates for alternative transportation including the bicycle.

Sharon Clampitt-Dunlap is an ESL and Linguistics professor at Inter American University of Puerto Rico at Ponce (birthplace of the Ponce Critical Mass) where she has worked for 25 years. A slow rider at heart, she enjoys urban cycling and commuting.

Gary Gutierrez-Renta is a university professor in the area of criminal justice.  In addition to teaching, he is dedicated to social observation and documentation which is his true passion. He is a co-founder of the group Energía Roja y Negra which advocates for alternative transportation including the bicycle.

Bilboko Masa Kritikoa is a tiny Critical Mass that has been growing little by little for nine years, because it’s not in a hurry. It doesn’t need gasoline, but wants to go far–very far–and continue bicycling through Bilbao and well beyond…

Moshe Cohen likes photographing urban graffiti, collecting bike propaganda, and sharing ideas around the themes of community and empowerment.  His job as a mathematician gives him the opportunity to visit new cities and to see them by bike.

Gail Jennings is a sustainable and non-motorised transportation specialist, working to improve low-carbon mobility and access in southern Africa She is also the founder of Mobility Magazine and creator of the first-ever Cape Town & Winelands Bicycle Maps. She is currently engaged in PhD research into the way in which non-motorised transport (NMT) is implemented and communicated. With a research background in both behaviour-change communication and public health, she has published and presented nationally and internationally about appropriate transport systems; transport behaviour, social equity and citizen activism. In 2010 she was awarded an Open Society Media Fellowship to study the transport behaviour legacy of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Gael Sande Avendaño is from Vigo, Spain. Since he was a child he has had a strong relationship to bikes. Perhaps you could say that you couldn’t understand his life without the presence of bikes. He got his first tricycle before he was 2 years old, which was made of plastic. Now he’s a Telecommunications Engineering student, nearing the end of his studies. He has collaborated with “Vigo Critical Mass” since 2010 and is a bike traveler during the holidays. In May 2012 Gael helped start a new project to develop a weekly workshop for bicycle repair, information sharing, and preparing for the next month’s Critical Mass.

Luca Simeone, Roberto Coscione, Claudio Caccavale, Mari Muscará, Alfonso Barriello, Paolo Falanga

Matthew Roth is a writer living in San Francisco. He currently works as the Global Communications Manager for the Wikimedia Foundation.  In 2008, he co-founded and was deputy editor of Streetsblog San Francisco, where he regularly reported on progressive transportation policies. Previously, he lived in New York City and worked as a campaign manager for Transportation Alternatives, a non-profit organizing support for reducing traffic congestion, improving public space and promoting bicycles. In 2004, he was arrested during the Republican National Convention protests for riding his bicycle. He was an active participant in more than 50 Critical Mass rides in New York City and regularly played loud dance music from the Time’s Up! sound bike.

Critical Mass turned Joe Biel into a bicycle activist in 1995 in Cleveland, Ohio. He went on to found Microcosm Publishing, Cantankerous Titles, and co-found the Portland Zine Symposium. He is finishing up a feature documentary about the history of bicycle activism, Aftermass: Bicycle in a Post-Critical Mass Portland to be released late 2012.

Des Kay has been promoting the joys of cycling for over 30 years with his bicycle displays and pedal powered creations. With his pink fairy castle and pulsating “Hoberman” Sphere atop a “Linear” Recumbent, he is a familiar figure on the London CMs. His alter-ego, Professor Kayoss uses a pedal powered “Heath-Robinson” type puppet show to steer his audience towards eco-action!

Jason Meggs has nearly 20 years experience enjoying and defending Critical Mass rides, from California to Italy. Dubbed “The Johnny Appleseed of Critical Mass” for his enthusiastic support in too many cities to list, Jason also engaged in promoting bicycling in a plethora of other ways. Perhaps best known for his years of campaigning for equal access to bridges, Jason’s latest work involves scientific analyses modeling costs and benefits, including health effects, of policy actions and investments intended to increase bicycling.

Tatiana Achcar

Marco Pierfranceschi, born in 1964, works as mechanical designer.  He started using the bicycle for fun and travels in 1987, then joined FIAB (the Italian Cyclist’s Federation), and was a member of its national council for a few years. He has been part of Rome’s Critical Mass and worked to start and build the Salvaiciclisti (Save the Cyclists) people-powered movement. You can find his blog, Mammifero Bipede (“bipedal mammal”… a short definition he gives himself).

Daisy Gowda now works with the Indian Peasant Seed-Saving Network. Uma Sherwood now works as a tap-dancer and a goat herder in Bulgaria.

Robbie

Alissa Starodub is a student of Communication Science, journalist, activist, and writer. She was born 1988 in Kiev (Ukraine) and lives now in Germany, in the U.K., and sometimes in France.

Elly Blue writes and rides bikes in Portland, Oregon. Her writing about bicycle culture, gender, and economics can be found on her blog Taking the Lane.

Iain Boal is a social historian of science, technics and the commons. He is associated with Retort, a group of antinomian writers, artists and artisans based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and affiliated with the Geography Department, UC Berkeley and Birkbeck College, London. He is co-director of MayDay Rooms, an “archiving from below” project active in London, San Francisco, Berlin, Bangalore, and Copenhagen. He is co-editor of West of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California (PM Press: 2012) and author of The Green Machine (Notting Hill Editions: 2012)

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