I wrote this for a class a couple of years ago. By this time I'd been to so many Critical Mass rides that I'd lost count. I was feeling particularly disillusioned, and it definitely came out in the paper.
I'm not sure how I feel now, but I can still identify with it quite a bit.
On a Friday night in September of 1992, a couple of dozen individuals, after responding to flyers passed out on Market Street, congregated in San Francisco with their bicycles. They collectively rode around town before settling in to the Zeitgeist Bar – thus Critical Mass was born. This was a time of increased bicycle advocacy. Many people were attempting to assert their legal right to the road as cyclists for a number of reasons, and Critical Mass played an important role in the effort to create a safe space for cyclists. It was direct action activism, and it usually was nonviolent. Critical Mass, whether warmly received or not, forced people to become more aware of cyclists in the road. Its atmosphere was fun, and beyond its initial goal of creating space for cyclists, it encouraged people to get on their bikes.
As times have changed and the efforts of bicycle advocates and (arguably) Critical Mass participants have changed the sociopolitical landscape of cities like San Francisco, the need for Critical Mass has waned. Now that space has been created and cyclists have come to feel empowered, Critical Mass rides are quicker to turn negative, and what was once an important tool in grass roots activism now hurts efforts to make the streets safe for bicycles and their riders.
In August of 2006, I had just returned from a summer in Paris. I had been warned about the culture shock that I might experience coming back to the United States after being away for a while, but I was still surprised by how frustrating I found things that had seemed so natural just a couple of months before. Much of it was superficial, like the tiny differences one might expect, but how I got from point A to point B seemed to unnerve me more than anything else.
By that point, the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, had begun transforming the streets of the city by reclaiming space once exclusively for cars and re-designating it for pedestrians, bicycles, and public transportation. This made the streets of Paris into places where people could live and not just a space through which traffic flows. The difference was something that I felt very much while I was there. I walked, and I took the train, both underground and elevated. I saw the streets on which I traveled. I breathed the air. I interacted with the people around me.
Returning to a car culture Mecca of the United States, like Los Angeles, was very difficult. It seemed that I needed my car to do everything. I was frustrated, and like many people who experience culture shock upon returning home, I was depressed. I tried walking, but “nobody walks in L.A.” I wanted to utilize the metro, but the train system in Los Angeles is inefficient at best. It was in this context that I first heard of the Midnight Ridazz.
“There’s a big bike ride in Los Feliz tonight. You guys should come.” My friend and I were intrigued, but it took a little more to actually convince us. The manager of the climbing gym I worked at explained, with little elaboration, that a bunch of people show up at an announced location; they then leave in unison for a predetermined location along a route described on the back of spoke cards handed out before the ride. He said that there’s usually beer and a lot of cheering. Later that night when we arrived at the meeting point, we found approximately 1300 cyclists of all shapes and sizes. There were people on mountains bikes, road bikes, beach cruisers, commuter bikes, and something that I’d never before seen, urban fixed-gear bicycles. The camaraderie among the participants was amazing. Everyone talked and joked with each other. It was a collective bound by one thing – our bicycles and a desire to have fun.
Moving forward we're inviting everybody to join in the fun.
The Ridazz that be have created this site to help empower YOU to
create your own rides, routes and good timezz. Start yourself a
recurring ride, have a bar crawl or even throw a one timer in the day-
light... It's your ride.
In the days that followed, I quickly found the website that facilitated communication between ridazz, and I was in. The rides were themed usually , such as “pajama party,” or “Warriors” (the film, not the basketball team). I began going to every monthly ride and many of the smaller rides people would have in between. After a couple of months, I noticed the postings on the site for Critical Mass rides. They seemed like the more politicized parent-ride of the Midnight Ridazz. I went on a Los Angeles Critical Mass ride here or a Hollywood Critical Mass ride there. By the following spring, I’d discovered the Santa Monica Critical Mass that a friend participated in every month. Something about the vibe of that ride in particular appealed to me. Before the ride, members of the Bikerowave, Santa Monica’s DIY bike shop/tool collective, would stand up and explain the loose outline of how the ride functions. They’d also make pertinent announcements about where the ride stood with the local cops.
On the rides, there was almost always a police presence of some sort. The first ride I went on was big enough that there was a police helicopter circling us (in Los Angeles they send out a police helicopter for everything). Twice during the Santa Monica CM, I stopped riding to speak to the police. Once, it was by myself because a police officer yelled at me for corking an intersection. Corking is a regular practice during big rides. Someone at the front of the group will stop in an intersection to block traffic in the case that a light changes before the entire group has made it through. I had actually been operating under the idea that it was semi-legal. I thought that it fell somewhere in the realm of parades blocking traffic, but the police officer and his partner, both of whom calmed down considerably in response to my earnestness, explained that my misconception was a little absurd.
The second conversation with the authorities was with an L.A. Sheriff’s Deputy, though I wasn’t directly a part of the conversation. Quite a few of us stopped to support a participant in the ride who the deputy had stopped for not riding in the bike lane. The deputy attempted to falsely assert that we were not allowed to ride in the right most lane and leave the inside lane free for cars. The deputy said we should’ve been single file in the bike lane (this would, of course, stretch us out for half a mile). The deputy stubbornly held his position as one of the Bikerowave volunteers quoted the applicable county and city transportation codes. It seemed like it was going nowhere, but finally both sides gave a little. They agreed to open a dialog for the future and exchanged information (if I understand correctly, the present situation is that the Santa Monica Critical Mass is under serious threat from the Santa Monica Police Department. Most of the riding is now done outside of city limits – presumably under some sort of balance struck with the county Sheriff’s Department).
There is an awkward balance constantly being sought with the rides. Participants are actively engaging in direct action protest. It’s an act of civil disobedience, but sprinkled throughout the crowd are bicycle advocates, people whose overall goal is to create substantial space for bicycles in the overall picture of city transportation. The tone in the ride is “We are taking over the streets whether you make room for us or not.” This becomes problematic when a conversation is started with the people who have an influence over creating that space. For example, in the middle of the described conversation with the sheriff's deputy, a friend’s five-year-old screamed from the trailer in which he was riding, “Whose road!?! Our road!!!” Of course, he didn’t know any better, and he was quickly quieted. This scene, though, illustrates the problem perfectly. The action is successful in forcing a productive conversation between the cyclist and the authorities, but then the uncontrollable aspect of the action, something akin to the unstoppable snowball of a Warner Brothers cartoon, rears its head. How can an action, with all the tact of a sledgehammer, transition to the negotiation table? Is the problem that often the people carrying out the action are also the people engaged in politicking before and afterward?
In the 1990s, the bicycle counter-culture was building steam, and its advocates argued on its behalf for diverse reasons. Concern over the environmental impact of cars had become a significantly more mainstream idea than it had been in previous decades, and bicycles were becoming a staple in the freshly renewed green movement. Urban planners noticed the stark contrast between the American car-culture and the bicycle cultures of Amsterdam or China, and many American cyclists held their infrastructures as potential alternative models for communities in the United States. This also related to the belief that the behavior of the public and how individuals treat space is determined by how roads and the areas around them are designed. This all led to the rejection of the car to varying degrees and on various levels. Michael Replogle, president of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, stated in 1992, “It was the American Dream to reach this point, but we come out of it feeling cheated. ”
This discontent grew through the nineties as oil wars in the Persian Gulf and international trade agreements were made. The Internet made the world smaller and advertising narrowed what it meant to be a man, woman, or teen. Hierarchical control of societies, western and eastern and north and south, became refined – sometimes apparent, but very often it was more and more subtle. The Zapatistas described this system of oppression as neoliberalism, and it sparked a new kind of activism.
Activist collectives sprang up across the globe. In an oligarchical world, autonomous, direct action, do-it-yourself, grassroots groups became an important way for individuals to make their voices heard. The line between art and activism blurred as actions took place such as the Global Carnival Against Capital, a mass demonstration/street party that occurred simultaneously and with no centralized organization. It took place in over 40 cities worldwide on 18 June 1999, coinciding with that years Group of 8 (G8) summit. The city in which the demonstration was the largest was London where an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 participants swarmed the financial district from the Liverpool tube station. They forced they’re way into a futures and exchange building and completely shut it down.
During this period, Critical Mass grew as well. What had started as a handful of people became a global phenomenon within a few short years all under the banner of disorganization, that is to say no one is in control of the movement or even the individual rides. Mobs of cyclists meet, ride through the streets, disband, and then meet again the following month. In the same city, one month might have a dozen participants and the next month might have one hundred – without a single individual coming two months in a row. Herein lie both the beauty and the problem.
Critical Mass is not unified under one banner, theme, or issue. Not every individual is riding for the same reason. It is a modern stratagem needed for attacking monolithic socioeconomic systems; alliances must be created with those most likely to advance your cause, despite the exact focus, origin, or desired outcome of each individual. In such an incongruous group, determining overall goals becomes nearly impossible. If each rider is participating in the same action for different reasons, one person’s set of goals might be achieved while the other person’s may not.
How then is success measured? The short answer is: it cannot be measured.
From the outside it will always appear to be the same thing, cyclist making commotion because they’re angry about cars. The serious bicycle advocates could stop coming. The everyday commuters can avoid it, but it will keep going. The people who begin showing up are the people who are on bicycles because of the efforts of the early CM participants (both on and off their bikes). Angry, aggressive young people, unaware of the progress made over the last fifteen years in some cities, show up every month. People that need to blow off steam circle cars at intersections and kick car doors. But, the true believers in Critical Mass, the people who believe that there is no explicit political purpose to the ride would argue that Critical Mass, as a happening, will be that which the participants make it.
