I rode in my first Critical Mass today. Here in SF it starts at Justin Herman Plaza at about 6PM on the last Friday of every month. Today's ride was the 15th anniversary of CM. There was a writeup in the Chronicle.
Anyway, here are some notes on various aspects of the ride:
Costume: Most people came in "biker chic", but there were a few who went above and beyond. Some wore wrestler capes and masks. Some had tricked-out bikes. One guy was wearing a furry hat and holding an enormous zucchini over his head. One guy was naked (well, except for sneakers).
Attitude: Judging by the crowd at the start (and it was quite a large crowd, and more joined on the way), most people who do the ride do it to have some fun. There's a lot of smiling, laughing, and just standing around looking cool. There were kids with parents and some older folks, but mostly the riders looked in their 20's. Very hip.
Later on, some of the riders weren't so cool. One guy blocked a car that wanted to make a turn *away* from the riders and he ended up in a verbal argument with a cop. I watched him curse and yell down the road for a few minutes, and then he stopped to yell at another guy in a car. The rider was really in this driver's face; it was totally inappropriate. There were a few other bad apple cases like that.
Non-Riders: Drivers seemed to be split about this CM thing. Some waved and honked in a friendly, "I can't do anything about the fact that I'm going to be stuck here for the next 15min," kind of way. They might not have been pleased with the reality, but they seemed to think clogging the streets with bikers was a fun *idea*. Other drivers got mad. They yelled, cursed, and honked. Since the riders generally took *any* honk as a rallying cry (honks were followed by whoops and cheers from the riders), this didn't matter much. Some drivers freaked out. One lady had panic all over her face. One guy in an SUV pushed his way through the bikes in a frantic attempt to get out. The police chased him down, to general applause from the riders.
Pedestrians generally liked the ride. There was a lot of yelling and cheering from the sidelines. It wasn't universal. Some guy yelled at me, "*I* have the right of way!" I don't understand this sense of frustrated entitlement. Sorry, buddy, if 50 bikes are clogging the road, no, you don't have the right of way.
Riding: CM is predicated on the belief that if you get enough people on bicycles on the road, then the power shifts into rider's hands and cars become second-class vehicles. And it's absolutely true. When I ride the streets of SF or any city, I'm always thinking, "How can I get out of the way of these cars so that they don't kill me." Today, for the first time, the thinking shifted to, "This is *my* street; they're going to have to get out of *my* way."
There seem to be a few things the CM people understand about getting it to work: 1) Don't stop at red lights. If you do, you split the riders into smaller groups. That's bad. 2) Do stop the head of the line occasionally, and don't go too fast. It's important to keep everyone together. The faster riders will tend to race to the lead, so they have to be held back. I was pretty sure I was near the lead at one point, but suddenly I found that we were merging with the main body. I wonder if the organizers deliberately had us loop back around to keep the faster riders from getting out too far. One thing they do to stop the line is have people ride in a circle around an intersection. This never really worked well; it was just too crowded. One time we stopped at an intersection and a police helicopter hovered overhead, shining it's floodlight at us. It was eerie. 3) Have volunteers block cross traffic. If there enough bikes around, 2 or 3 people can position themselves to block cross traffic. This helps keep everyone together through red lights (see #1).
Police: There always seemed to be some police riders around. They rode in pairs. There were also police on motorcycles and in cars, but I couldn't figure out what they were doing; they didn't follow along with the bicycles. They didn't do much except diffuse the occasional rider-driver altercation and help people who had taken spills. I also couldn't figure out what the helicopters were about. I think they were waiting for some kind of violence.
Later on things were different. I was part of a group that didn't wait (see #2) and ended up missing a left turn. We looped back to join everyone else, but when we got back on the route we were a couple of blocks behind the mass. Here's where the police attitude changed. Suddenly the motorcycles were everywhere, and it was hard to get past them. When I finally did get past them, the police on bicycles weren't being friendly or even hands-off anymore. They had this routine. Some riders were still blocking cross-traffic so the last of us could go through the red lights. The police would ride at these blockers, in pairs, yelling "MOVE IT! GET OUT OF THE WAY!" and the civilians would *take off*. The fun fantasy of bicyclists owning the road was over. One policeman was citing a biker, and as I passed I heard him say to his buddy something about, "...it's time to start picking them off."
By then we were only 2 blocks from my house, so I turned and went home. Now I can hear police sirens and helicopters, and I can't help but wonder if things have gone wrong.
I think the police understand that their job isn't to protect, it's to control. And of course you have to deal differently with a mob of 1000 riders than you deal with 3 or 4 stragglers.
Funny Bits: One rider was blocking a parking attendent from backing up into the flow of bike traffic. The attendent backed up very carefully and slowly, but he nudged the rider. The rider fell to the ground yelling, "Oh my god my leg it's broken my leg!!!" Then he got up and said, "Ha just kidding," and rode off. In retrospect I'm not sure that was so cool, but at least he diffused the situation. He had the right attitude.
About 15min into the ride we passed by the "Red Bull" car. They were giving out cans of Red Bull. There was a crowd. Some rider biked up to them and yelled, "Yeah! Gimme some of that! I'm fuckin' exhausted!"
PS: While riding down Market I took a spill. It's the first accident I had since skidding on some icy leaves in NYC about 2 years ago. I'm not sure if my front wheel got stuck in a rut or what, but one second I was riding at a nice 10 MPH and the next my front wheel was pointing perpendicular to where I was going and I flew off the bike. I took a face fall, and man am I thankful for gloves, otherwise my hands would've been lacerated. As it was, no damage was done, either to me or to the bike. About 10 people stopped to ask if I was OK. One guy said the fall was impressive.
