Critical Mass: Laborious Ride
(San Francisco) 31-Aug-2007

 

Some of us arrived by Caltrain a half hour after Critical Mass had started, and met up with the ride just as it emerged from Stockton Tunnel and headed into Union Square. A cable car of puzzled tourists stopped in the middle of the intersection. Some were confused, some bemused, but we mingled with them until they were amused. Well, most of them were, we think.

 Critical Mass by a cable car.

We headed to South of Market (SOMA), then headed east on Bryant St. For some reason the police decided to divert us onto Brannan St. The Bay Bridge was going to be closed for the entire weekend, starting at 9:00pm, and the mainstream media was making its usual groundless dire traffic predictions, this time including a scenario in which motorists who didn't get to the bridge on time would be trapped -- trapped! -- in the city by Critical Mass.

We continued east on Brannan because, duh, it's a one-way street that goes east. So of course this brought us to another freeway entrance, and of course the police were standing guard for some reason. There was also a helicopter overhead.

I have to admit, I found the whole thing pretty silly. How, exactly, was it going to help motorists get onto the bridge by blocking the entrances? Incidentally, there weren't very many cars on the road even at 7:00 anyway, which is always a very good thing. Critical Mass is working! One less car, a million times over!


Critical Mass rides up Brannan St.
Riding up Brannan.

As we turned onto 2nd St. I saw Martin Krieg on his penny-farthing bike, which had a folding basket attached to its smaller (farthing) wheel. The basket appeared to be carrying a laptop, and the bike had BIKEROUTE.COM painted on the frame. Not something you'd see every day in the 1870s. An out-of-the-ordinary ordinary.

 
Playing a horn on 2nd, under the freeway.

Anyway, we went up 2nd, past South Park. The building on the right is a place I used to work, back in the dot-com era. I had a desk by the window where I could see the steady stream of cars headed for the freeway onramp. At some point the city trimmed back all the trees to encourage cars to careen at high speed for that last half block, and --

Oh. Wait. Freeway onramp? Another one? D'oh!

Sure enough, the police were blocking this one off, too. The entire road was closed. The ride went right by (with one guy playing a little trumpet) and then hung a left onto Harrison.

Now, if you're keeping track, or following along on a map or something, you know this means we're going west again, and it's alongside the freeway. So, again we passed some freeway onramps and again the police were blocking them. At one point we were diverted again, against a one-way street and back onto Bryant! We ended up circling around The Hall of Donuts, just as we'd done 10 years ago when they'd jailed some activists there for riding bikes across the Bay Bridge.

Come to think of it, wouldn't a ride across the Bay Bridge make sense that night? I mean, after 9:00pm, when it was carfree?

Anyway, I was glad that we finally left SOMA and headed into The Mission. It was beautiful there, with the fog coming up and over Twin Peaks.


Fog and Critical Mass roll into The Mission.
Fog and Critical Mass roll into The Mission.

We went south on Mission and north on Valencia. It was beautiful. Police motorcycles were still running around, and it seemed that they went to the entrance to the Central Freeway at Market Street, but we went into Hayes Valley.

 

But only briefly, alas, because we went back into SOMA for another round of freeway onramp visits. People started leaving the ride. At one point there was a bike lift, followed by people just standing around. It was pretty boring. Deep was riding around with a sound system, kicking out the jams, and encouraged people to continue riding, though it took two tries. More onramps, more boredom.

It got to be downright laborious, not in the spirit of Labor Day at all.

 

At 9:00pm, we found a secret entrance and all rode on the bridge.

 Bikes on the Bay Bridge. 

But alas, we were to find that it was only some sort of vodka ad.

Related Links

  • Bike the Bridge! Coalition
  • National Bicycle Greenway (BIKEROUTE.COM)

    •  =J= Jym's Home Page   <   Critical Mass Pagejym©econet.org