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20th B-day Comments!

September 29th, 2012 by admin

Photo by Mona Caron

Last night’s ride was fantastic! Many thousands of people experienced a joyful ride through the city to celebrate 20 years of safe, social bicycle riding in San Francisco on the last Friday of each month.

Some comments via Facebook and our blog:

Josh Wilson:

Thank you, everyone here and everyone on the street, for everything you did to facilitate the glorious bicycle blossoming in San Francisco last night. It’s like the years fell away and everything was and is alive again with possibility. Something happened over the past decade that deadened a sense of the possible and a sense of hope. After last night, it feels like there’s a quickening, something new sprouting. It feels like this is not just an anniversary but the birth of something new. Something we will remember in another 20 years. Maybe so. I hope so. Thank you for re-awakening this sense of the possible.

Eric Anderson:

It is difficult for me to overstate the importance of the Critical Mass movement to my life, which is probably why last night’s 20th anniversary ride was such an emotional moment for me. This movement has given me my career, many lifelong friends, my health, my sanity, hope, joy and damn near my life. Last night I got to see some of the same people I met for the first time in 1999 during my first visit to SF from Chicago. Yeah, it makes me feel old, but it also grants a sense of time – of adventures shared, work happily (and yes sometimes not so happily) done and many accomplishments both personal and professional. Part of a life worth living, to be sure. Happy Birthday SFCM and CCM! — withSuz Po and 16 others.

Steve:

This caused me to miss my 3 year old daughters birthday dinner. Thanks.

Aaron:

I drive because it’s a 2+ hour each way by public transit, and ends up costing more than it does to drive. I do have to drive across downtown to get to where I can get on the freeway to get home. I work in SF because that’s where the jobs are, I live in a suburb because I can not afford to live in SF.

Anyways, I love critical mass, and think that public gatherings are a great thing (swing by the Burning Man building on 7th/market, there’s a block party there too tonight!). Love bike riders (wish BART would allow them on the train during rush hour as then I may be able to take public transit). Biking has improved the quality of life in the Bay Area, and if anything, a shift to biking makes traffic even less congested and easier for those who have no choice but to drive. And a happier city means merchants do better too!

Both sides will have disrespectful people who hate the other. Cars who hate bikes, bikes who hate cars. I’ve seen video of bikes being thrown through car windows at CM, but I know that is the exception, not the rule. Thankfully, no car has plowed through and killed any bikers, and hopefully never will.

Thanks for posting where it’ll end. Now that I know it’ll end towards Dolores, I can hang out near work and get some dinner or something for an hour, and I should have no problem driving down the Emarcadero around 7pm!

Have a great ride tonight! One of these days, I may get to join on a ride!

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Tonight We Ride!

September 28th, 2012 by Russel

20 Years of Critical Mass! See you down by the Ferry Building…
hearing rumors of people costuming up for tonight’s ride.
Be colorful and be CHILL….

For the Out-of-SF CM Riders, the Welcome Center (518 Valencia) is open today 1 to 4:30pm
This is the last day for the Welcome Center, so stop by and meet everybody before the Interstellar ride!

6pm
Justin Herman Plaza (foot of Market Street)
20th Anniversary Interstellar Critical Mass Ride

with special Kidical Mass contingent, parents, children, kids of all ages: meet at Justin Herman Plaza near fountain, plan is to ride with the main ride and then peel off to Dolores Park by 7 or a little after (less than an hour of riding)…)

A Girl and Her Bike  (an FB female cyclists Group) is hosting a women’s ride contingent as apart of the main Critical Mass ride: Girls Roll DEEP

8pm
Bikes on Film:  Vintage Bicycle Film Festival, Oddball Films (275 Capp Street), Doors 8/Starts 8:30, $10 (This is a Benefit for Neighbors Developing Divisadero)

20 Comments »

Many Voices on Critical Mass

September 27th, 2012 by hughillustration

Critical Mass and the SF Bicycle Coalition are often seen as one entity by the public or by the media. That’s a huge categorical error, and one it is often necessary to try to correct. On the one hand you have a leaderless street action, and on the other you have a nonprofit organization that works with city government. Those are two very different breeds! But happily there *is* a lot of overlap, and over the years lots of synergy and mutual support.

The SFBC chose to stop listing Critical Mass on their calendar some time ago, and just recently did not list the 20th anniversary and associated activities that have been put together.

Some people in the bike community were upset about this, so this blog published an open letter yesterday from Quintin Mecke to the SFBC, taking them to task for not including these events in their calendar. Quintin’s views are his own, but we were happy to publish them.

That’s why we started this blog — to give a home to many diverse views about Critical Mass, bicycle activism and bike culture in the Bay Area. We’ll publish almost anything! If you have an opinion about Critical Mass or bike culture and activism, send it to us. If it’s not outright hateful/racist/inflammatory/threatening, we are happy to publish it.

Though surprising, for those of us who moderate this blog and for those of us who volunteered to put together many of the activities this week, not being on the SFBC calendar is OK with us! We still appreciate all that they do at the SFBC. (Sitting through hours upon hours of meetings with city bureaucrats for one thing — not many of us can possibly face this! Thank god the SFBC has the patience!)

Looking forward to the Critical Mass ride on Friday!

— Hugh D’Andrade, LisaRuth Elliot, Chris Carlsson, Adriana Camarena

9 Comments »

Dear Bike Coalition, from Quintin Mecke

September 27th, 2012 by Russel

Dear Bike Coalition:

Sadly, I can’t say I was surprised when I read this week’s SFBC Newsletter and found absolutely zero mention of the 20th Anniversary of Critical Mass.  According to your own newsletter, apparently the only thing happening in the San Francisco bike world that is worthy of your 12,000 members knowing about on Friday, Sept. 28 is SFBC’s Valet Bike Parking at the DeYoung Museum.  Seriously?

This is the San Francisco Bike Coalition and you couldn’t even bring yourselves to stick a small mention of Critical Mass in your newsletter or on your website (or god forbid you actually celebrate/acknowledge CM and show some pride), a cycling event created here in San Francisco which has spread across the globe to multiple continents since its inception & inspired thousands of cyclists to take to the street?  It’s truly amazing that Critical Mass was on the cover of the Guardian this week and even SF Funcheap listed the event but SFBC wouldn’t even put a mention at the bottom in the “Upcoming Events” section, hidden away amongst all the SFBC sponsored events? Not even a listing of the critical mass website or the community events going on all week long?  Your website lists the celebration of the 15th anniversary of TransForm but not Critical Mass?

Wow.  I’m truly speechless.  How embarrassing but more to the point, how sad. Are you afraid of offending Chuck Nevius or Mayor Lee? I don’t know how, why or what SFBC has become as an organization at this point but it’s disappointing as a long time cyclist to see the city’s only (?) organized bike advocacy organization which continually touts how many members you have to not even show the smallest amount of solidarity to your fellow cyclists and to the city’s own cycling history.  That being the case, history will march on without you.

Contrary to our “biking” Supervisor David Chiu’s comments in today’s Chronicle (I always enjoy politicians running from anything deemed controversial), it’s actually SFBC that is simply one tiny part of a much larger movement made up of a variety of cyclists from all walks of life whose decision twenty years ago to ride freely in the street once a month for just a few short hours has laid the groundwork for cycling reforms, political action and transformative experiences across the country and the world.

What a shame that instead of celebrating all parts of the cycling community, SFBC has decided to distance itself from the historic roots of its own community in the name of moderation, families on bikes and political expediency.

Enjoy Bike Valet night at the DeYoung Museum, it sounds like an awesome event.

thanks,
Quintin

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