Posts Tagged ‘video’

Budapest Critical Mass — It’s Huge!

April 28th, 2010 by hughillustration

Here’s an amazing video, beautifully shot by Daniel Fiantok and set to a Gnarls Barkley song, of the Budapest Critical Mass Earth Day ride on April 24. The Budapest ride is the largest on the planet, with tens of thousands of riders. Why is their ride so huge? Funny you should ask. Joel wrote a great piece a while back about this very subject.

Tilt & Shift Critical Mass from daniel fiantok on Vimeo.

Bike Video: All You Haters

February 11th, 2010 by hughillustration

I found this on the awesome Girl On Bike blog. Not sure I get the satire, but here goes:

Is the SFPD Planning a Crackdown on Critical Mass?

January 30th, 2010 by hughillustration

The January Critical Mass was an intimate affair, with only 100-150 riders.

Tail end turns on Powell from Geary as the traditional loop around Union Square commences. San Francisco, Critical Mass, January 29, 2010.

Tail end turns on Powell from Geary as the traditional loop around Union Square commences. San Francisco, Critical Mass, January 29, 2010.

That’s pretty tiny, but luckily a crew from KPIX was there to make us feel important.

Turns out, KPIX joined us to report on the news (brought to you by Honda!) (they repeat their absurd claims first reported last summer) that SFPD Chief George Gascon is reviewing department policy on Critical Mass, as part of his commitment to cut crime by 20%. Here’s the video:

Of course the police view our monthly ride as a nuisance and an expense — that comes as no surprise. But this report raises the question: if Chief Gascon were somehow able to stop the ride, what percentage would he claim he had reduced crime? I can hear him now… “Red light running by cyclists is down by exactly 4%!”

If the cops think they have better things to do with their time, we agree! (Let’s not begin to discuss their spending priorities, and how using phalanxes of cops on overtime to stop a 2-3 hour, once-a-month bike ride is a remarkably dumb use of public resources!) We’d love to see the police escort disappear (though we acknowledge that they have been helpful in calming dangerous motorists). But the idea that our monthly ride should be anywhere near the top of the list of law enforcement priorities for a city with real violent crime issues is laughable!

As Justin points out in the video clip, the police tried and failed to stop Critical Mass once before. In 1997, Mayor Willie Brown sent the cops out to ticket, harass and arrest dozens of cyclists each month, with absolutely no effect. In fact, the rides just got larger and larger, ballooning into rides of 5000 or more each month. In the end, the mayor backpedaled, the cops backed off, and we’ve had a sort of truce ever since.

If the police try again to prevent our popular movement, the same thing is guaranteed to happen. More people will show up, and we’ll just invent new tactics — a welcome opportunity, since our ride has been entirely predictable for years now. Hey, maybe we could try skipping Pee Wee Herman Plaza in favor of meeting in 4 or 5 separate locations. With ubiquitous cellphones and twitter messaging, organizing that sort of decentralized response ought to be even easier than it was 13 years ago!

We’ll stop short of asking Gascon to “bring it on,” but only because we’re not macho idiots, and we know he has more important work to do. Gotta get a jump on that 20%!

Orlando Critical Mass video

December 2nd, 2009 by hughillustration

This is a nice short video on the Critical Mass and bike scene in Orlando, FL. Curiously, the title is “We Are Traffic” — which happens to be the name of another nice Critical Mass film.

We Are Traffic from Bank Tangjaitrong on Vimeo.

The short is by Bank Tangjaitrong, which I learned about on CandyCranks.com.