Brooks Hassig from Design by Seeing did this great time lapse of our 18th Anniversary ride in September. Nice! Thanks, Brooks!
Meanwhile, Twitter pal Deprogrammer 9 found a bunch of videos of September rides from around the country and the world. Here are a few of them!
Budapest!
Brussels!
Oristano!
Detroit!
Los Angeles!
Chicago!
Last Friday’s ride commemorated the 18th birthday of Critical Mass! Happy birthday to everyone who has ridden Critical Mass in those years, all the friends we’ve made and lives that have been changed during that time.
I liked this photo for the wary eye of the San Jose Bike Party rider as he looks over his shoulder at a motorcyclist interloper. It seemed like a good illustration of just why corking is important. Having a motorcyclist or car weaving in the midst of a mass of bicyclists is downright dangerous!
This expensive Lamborghini convertible reminded me of a comment by Ric Bruce I read a few days ago on Streetsblog:
Perhaps it would be useful to address the true underlying cause of driver inattention. That is, driving a car is tedious manual labour.
Paradoxically, nobody knows that better than the automobile manufacturers themselves. Their massive advertising budgets (approximately US$17 billion per year for the last five years or so) invariably feature single cars “flying” down roads uncluttered with other cars, red lights, or pedestrians or bicyclists. In other words, the companies’ extensive research into the issue has clearly proven that the realities of automobile ownership and operation are, at best, unsaleable.
In an effort to distract attention from the underlying tedium that is driving, automobile manufacturers have added an ever-increasing number of toys that enable the driver to amuse themselves.
So, rather than attempt to “make roads safer” or “make drivers pay attention”, perhaps we’d do better to recognize that driving isn’t “fun” or “freedom” or “excitement”, and begin liberating Americans from the tyranny of the automobile-centric way of life.
We ended up in the Presidio — always a great place to explore on a warm September night!
I titled this one “Ralph Nader Does Not Approve,” thinking of the “Unsafe at Any Speed” phrase. I personally love seeing people carrying kids and dogs by bike. The serious injuries I hear about with bikes always involve cars. Biking is not in itself a dangerous activity!
Congratulations for another successful Critical Mass! Here’s to another 18 years!
This was first published over at The Nowtopian a few days ago, and we decided to republish it here.
We had an incredible Critical Mass last Friday night (August 27, 2010). It was led on an unprecedented route–my congratulations to the folks who made the effort to get the ride out of its rut for a 2nd consecutive month (I rode in the back and only found out later who was out front doing such a good job! way to go, mosquito abaters!). We went south, weaving through the South of Market to pop out on to Potrero and then much to everyone’s surprise, after a long cruise south past General Hospital we did a short jog right and left on 25th, Hampshire, 26th and Bryant to make a big left on Cesar Chavez.
We went south into the Bayview. One of the occasional obnoxious comments hurled at Critical Mass over on our blog or in the always-insufferable SFGate comments is something along the lines of “why don’t you take your ride into the Bayview instead of going through North Beach, the Mission and/or the Haight every month?” Well we had a fantastic ride down there, first taking Bayshore Blvd and Oakdale, turning on Palou, south on 3rd Street for a while, and then a big westerly turn on Williams.
