what's
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<< newer news (Jun 1998 through May 2001)
past goings on
31 May 1998
@ New flyer: Exhausted? Report smoking vehicles.
30 May 1998
@ New flyer: The Little Bicycle and the Big Bad Industrial Capitalist Ogre.
@ What an amazing Critical Mass ride last night in SF. I felt like we were flying together. I had such a great time. I hope I hope I hope I hope that this kind of exploration, cooperation, energy, fun, these things are all ahead of us. I hate the wars.
29 May 1998
@ New flyer: one brain / one vote. (9 June: outdated, gone, whoosh.)
@ Full life, full love, full involvement. There's a slogan. Live, love, coexist. Dump the manipulative bullshit, reach for hope.
23 May 1998
@ Keeping organic standards clean and local. On May 8, 1998, after more than 200,000 people wrote to the United States Department of Agriculture about their first (dirty) proposal for national organic food standards, the USDA is going back to the drawing board.
This is a big win, and also, a big question mark -- it's not clear what the new rules will be. The Campaign to Save Organic Standards is one place you can keep up with what's going on.
Since this first proposal has been beaten, I'm taking the S-O-S (Save Organic Standards) flyer and info off this site. Yay!
22 May 1998
@ Dear Napoleon Parasite:
No more praise for energy or determination until you learn to let go. Don't you realize how your antagonism narrows the actions others can take? When you win fights, it comes from the entire group's energy.
Check your ego, check your fears, and live within the means of your community.
Love, David
11 May 1998
@ New flyer: Please avoid eye contact. Help make commute alienation official!
@ The Critic returns. I've had a lot of rants in my head from this political campaign and other stuff. Plenty of rants, and good ones, about how likely a "bicycle friendly" San Francisco is while the mayor's put the city on the fast track to unlimited rents and neverending construction.
8 May 1998
Screed now carries a full line of flyers against the wasteful museum and garage plan: San Francisco propositions A and J.
Keep the peace in the park! Don't stuff it with cars and big new crowds. We need it as a safe space from the grow-grow-and-grow-faster of San Francisco. Election day is Tuesday, June 2: Vote NO on A & J.
@ More about the future private park: The Bay Guardian reports on private interests trying to take over S.F. public parks, and how Props A & J fit into that scheme.
3 May 1998
@ I've been really busy. I hope Screed doesn't feel too dusty for anyone.
@ Very Respectable Outing Society. Bicycle expeditions 2nd Saturday every month, 1 pm, Duboce Park, SF. Bring crazy clothes, noisemakers, and food for a potluck picnic. VROS also meets the Sunday after Critical Mass/SF, 6:30 pm, at different locations, to discover future destinations.
@ NO on A / NO on J! They don't need the money, we don't need the traffic, and the Park needs a better plan.
A and J are S.F. ballot measures that would begin the process of privatizing Golden Gate Park. Prop. A authorizes a $90 million bond to rebuild the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, and Prop. J creates a "public benefit authority" to build a parking garage in the Park.
The privatization comes with how the financing is done, and the powers given to that Authority. The bond frees up private money so that it can be spent on making the Park more friendly to for-profit operations, and the Concourse Authority gets to control that spending, over the entire eastern end of the Park. The Concourse Authority's decisions can be vetoed by the mayor (by proxy) -- the same mayor who thinks the Park "will have to welcome more commercial entities in order to pay its way in the future."
Beyond that, the de Young hasn't even tried to raise the money themselves (they have 3 years before they need to start building), Prop. J's garage will bring loads of new car traffic, and Prop. A and J together leap right over the 5-year public process that went into planning the park's current Master Plan.
I've never been inside a political campaign before. It's gross. The initiatives were placed on the ballot by people who are now our "opponents," even though we agree on a bunch of things, because they've decided they have enough well-intentioned but ignorant support to get super greedy. What a fun game!
@ Art. A bunch of us did a street performance, with large painted cardboard props, to demonstrate the effect that the garage would have on the Park. It was a great success, lots of fun to put together, got us good press, and was a good start toward bringing more art into the sustainable development crowd's efforts. Also it was really exciting to think of the next things we could do.
@ May Day. This was great! Saturday, May 2, 1998. Our procession and performance troupe marched through the city, drumming and dancing, stopping at Yerba Buena Gardens, U.N. Plaza, 16th Street BART, and Dolores Park to put on shows. I beat a cow bell (and was attacked by a giant Roisin McAliskey puppet when I got too annoying) and did some theater stuff.
Actually the event was called "Reclaim May Day," a strange name -- was the day a celebration, or a rally in favor of a celebration? I got a t-shirt just in case. I hope someone does a web site.
@ See? Busy. And it's been a lot of fun!
5 April 1998
@ Puppets! On March 28 I went with a bunch of people to a workshop on making giant puppets -- to use for street theater stuff, like some massers already did with the Williehead. (Psst, wanna know how they did it?)
The workshop was offered by Art & Revolution Convergence, in preparation for May Day, an international holiday for working people that the United States of Corporate America no longer celebrates but that doesn't mean we regular people can't do it for ourselves. It's Saturday May 2, it's going from Justin Herman Plaza (9 am?) to a big potluck picnic in Dolores Park, it's gonna be crazy, don't miss it!
If you're interested in more about puppets, check out Wise Fool Puppet Intervention and the Puppetry Home Page.
@ Critical Mass happens in San Francisco on the last Friday of every month. Some people think Critical Mass is the bike ride that starts from Justin Herman Plaza. I think it's the entire city that night, it's something in the air, for everyone.
DildoMan said something like this: "There's only one right time and place to talk about Critical Mass, and that's during Critical Mass." No individual, no small group, can do better than all of us. When we are together, when we can all have a say, when we can act together or separately as we see fit.
So I say, if the SFPD is developing a new plan for dealing with their favorite "Alternative Bicycling Event," there should be a conversation between riders and cops right at Justin Herman Plaza. Let it go all the way into the night. Let it get nasty and stupid -- there are nasty and stupid feelings on all sides of this issue and until we express them we can't address them.
I don't know who would facilitate this, if anyone needed to. I want to see it happen. We're all out there and we ought to do right by each other. Maybe massers and cops will never see eye to eye on what "traffic" is and how somebody "blocks" it. Or maybe someday we will?
4 April 1998
@ I think I'm going to put up GIF versions of flyers, too. DildoMan talked me into it. I put up GIFs for Celebration Demonstration to work out easy instructions for printing them. (They're 150 dpi images, anti-aliased.)
31 March 1998
@ New flyer: Celebration Demonstration. Like I said, the streets need shaking, let's do it!
23 March 1998
@ When does this page get updated? I have a few more things to put up here, along basic lines, but things won't get updated very often. Why?
First, this site isn't a news site. If you want regular news about the SF ride, check the SF-CRITICAL-MASS mail list (which you can read on the web).
Second, right now there's conflict with the police. Some stuff regarding the police is difficult to talk about on the web, as the SFPD knows its way around a web browser. And Screed already pays attention to that stuff at Dealing With Cops.
Third, all of this stuff works better in person.
16 March 1998
@ Finally, finally! got Beat the ticket, beat the cops working correctly on a particular fancy printer.
@ Good weekend out of town. After all this talk about cops and Mass and the SFBC, I partied down with dozens of new friends at some old friends' wedding. It was great and I learned a few things, too.
10 March 1998
@ Critical Cats! or, What we did on our summer vacation.
9 March 1998
@ New image: An Amoco-ble Solution. Found for someone by someone else ... whoever did this one, thanks!
5 March 1998
@ Got rid of the "submit" page. For the time being add your stuff goes to the "how screed works" section of About.
@ Clinton to Drop Da Bomb on Iraq. Did you see the PDF poster of the battle chart at Justin Herman Plaza last Friday?
@ Another little tweak to Beat the ticket, beat the cops because if you stop in the street to support a rider who's getting cited, you might just get cited yourself. (I guess they really don't have anything better to do.)
4 March 1998
@ Bay Guardian: "Hey, SFPD, stop picking on cyclists, and leave Critical Mass alone." Dammit.
@ What a wild ride on Friday. Lots of contradictions. The SFPD was out in force, keeping themselves entertained on a slow night ... while most of us, drenched in stars and night poetry, made our way.
At the start of the ride, we had what I hope was just the first of many "town meetings." It's great that we can speak and listen before we leave. Also trusting each other again.
1 March 1998
@ I'm famous, because the cops are misbehaving. Also, there's a picture.
25 February 1998
@ Great bicycling ingenuity imagines a permanent tailwind.
24 February 1998
@ New flyer: Police hotline stickers. Standard address label stickers so people know to call 415-289-6503 if they get or witness special attention from the police during CM/SF.
@ Quotes and thoughts on massing.
@ Cool pictures of SF Critical Mass!
@ Added this to About:
Is Screed counter-xerocratic? Maybe. After all "xerocracy" is when people share their own ideas or collaborate by sharing flyers. I think of Screed as a kick start, and maybe an introduction into the flyer culture inside Critical Mass. Also if you think a flyer is cool, you can redistribute it.
23 February 1998
@ Big rallies and some police conflict last week. The SFPD sent riot cops, joined on Saturday by Federal marshals, to monitor and control two peaceful anti-war rallies. This could mean trouble for SF Critical Mass on Friday. Everybody, cops included: please be cool.
@ Small change to Beat the ticket, beat the cops, encouraging people to be polite when asking if they're free to go. Be cool.
@ Fun Car Facts, a back page for Love your city - Ditch your car, and other flyers.
@ Screed joined the Critical Mass Web Wheel. It's so exciting to see resources like this popping up! (Screed was one of the first sites to join, which means it's way down at the bottom of the list.)
22 February 1998
@ Oooh! A news page!
@ I fixed up the Bikes, not bombs flyer, from Saturday morning's rush job.
@ Still getting used to the process of making PDF files from all sorts of different sources. It can take a long time, depending on how close someone's computer setup matches mine.
Much easier to get image files from people. Then people would download the image, throw it into a word processing program, and print from there.
Thank you for reading to the end of the news. That's very nice of you!
Anti-© 1998.
Last changed:
22 July 2005
