Critical Mass, Matier & Ross Flare-Up
Sounds like hemorrhoids and not that different either. So there’s Critical Mass last March 30th, and by Chris Carlsson’s account sounds like it was great. But in Matier & Ross’ column a woman in a minivan/SUV was surrounded and harassed, with 5K in damages to her car.
So I’d suggest reading M&R column first, then C. Carlsson’s, then forming own opinion. I of course have one…
Another friend who I mentioned the above letter exchange with suggested that he’d be willing to make a donation to the repair when AAA starts helping covering burial costs for the cyclists who have been killed by DUI drivers in the past few years.
Thats from C. Carlsson who got an odd bit of letter from someone about the M&R writeup. It pretty much sums up my feelings- some harassment from hundreds of mad bicyclists and wanting the damage repaired, compared to the medical bills of a car hitting a cyclist, which is what happens every day in this city.
I’ve been stuck in a car in traffic caused by CM, and I don’t mind because it is part of the protest, getting biking awareness going on in the City. Especially in North Beach, where Columbus Ave laughably is a biking street. Thats the scariest 10 minutes of my life, biking down Columbus. It’s not too much fun to drive, either.
My parents were stuck in the Castro during Halloween- men dancing on their car in thongs, making googly faces in the windows. Their attitude was: next time, we will listen to Anna’s advice to avoid parades!
I also just don’t care if there are children in the car. It’s like “Baby on Board” signs. So I can harass you when there’s no baby on board? They should have sat it out- not moved the car forward, and waited until the cyclists finished. Not that they deserved the car damage- but hey, sometimes actions have reactions. Pushing her way through a crowd of anti-car enthusiasts may not have been a wise move, especially with children on board. Does she think the kids on board gives her some special community status? “Because I have children, make way, make way” (grumble, grumble). It also presents the attitude that is most annoying in traffic: that the behemoth gets their own way at all times.
When a cyclist is in traffic, if they edge forward and a taxi scrapes their wheel, do they get any compensation? A write-up in M&R? “My bike was scraped by Yellow Cab #222833 8PM on Montgomery.” Also- the “tap” of a wheel is laughable. I mean, usually I like M&R, but that is just a joke. If you’ve ever been in a bike accident, tangled up with a car, it’s not a tap!
This also reminds me of walking against the crowd at the first Anti-War rally downtown. I was trying to find my sister, who said she was walking along the meridian. Approaching me was a union of teachers, singing “We will not be overcome” and they looked at me, standing in the middle waiting for my sister, with total hatred in their eyes. God, I’m laughing just thinking about it. So that minivan driver was just clueless, if she thought that simply driving on that road at that time didn’t mean anything. It might have been a $5,900 lesson.
Thanks Rocco for the tip on the flare up! “Critical Mass Shitstorm”
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Great post! I don’t drive or ride a bike,but I know when to not even be out on the street when Critical Mass comes around.Everyone just has to watch out for themselves,and this lady should not have been driving in the center of them[the bicyclists]and should have stopped her car and waited for them to clear,or turn off her avenue of traffic.It seems to me that CM had the right of way at that time,and she should have yielded.Isn’t that the whole point of CM Friday’s? Were the police called and a report written up? Maybe as the post above says,she learned her lesson about driving in SF period.
>I also just don’t care if there are children in the car. It’s like “Baby on Board” signs
The note that children are present is supposed to be a signal to others that, basically, given a situation: “Please, be cool, I got my little kid with me.”
Meaning, if I’m a lone adult or a group of adults, there’s a level if unfortunate intense interaction that I can probably handle. But, if I have kids with me, do not try to run me off the road, do not play chicken, do not jump up and down on the hood of my car, do not smash my windows in. Kids are imnpressionable and delicate and it doesn’t take much to be careful and cool around them, yknow? And parents (of which you aren’t one, I’m guessing) really love and are really protective of their kids.
One time, a CM mob almost ran me down in my own neighborhood while I was trying to cross the street with my infant in arms. I’d heard of CM as an activists’ monthly ride, and expected that as a pedestrian (with a baby) I’d be shown a pedestrian’s right of way, especially at a 4-way stop intersection (25th and Irving). Instead, riders blew through the stop signs, screamed obscenities, gave me the finger, and yelled threateningly at me while speeding past at full speed. I had to retreat back to the safety of the sidewalk for fear of being run over, just from trying to cross the street. I was really shocked to find THAT was what CM was like. I thought it was supposed to be about awareness and respect, and instead I felt more threatened, as a pedestrian, by CM than by a car. I didn’t have a BABY ON BOARD t-shirt.
Being a kid and having your car window smashed in by a random mob is pretty terrifying. I recognize that at age 11, I’d have no idea if I was going to be hurt, killed, or what. I honestly don’t know what I would have done in the same situation, had I not known about CM. I’d hte to have to find out, with my daughter’s screams in the air as a mob attacked us. But, I learned to avoid CM as I’ve learned to avoid most gangs.
It’s a shame you can’t sympathize. I kinda wished you DID care.
You’re being facetious, right?
I think that with a kid or without a kid, regardless of a kid’s age, getting the finger and being driven off the sidewalk is not appropriate, ever. CM should clean up its act- harassing anyone doesn’t help.
At the same time, she was naive if she thoughtt she could drive through a thicket of cyclists without hitting someone. And yelling “baby on board” doesn’t help her cause. She shoudl have waited until they left, then continued. Seems so simple in retrospect.
F^F^
for some reason most of my post was cut off.
Anyway, these biker dorks have way too much power. It’s a f-ing bike, dickwad! Losers like this only feel secure when they are surrounded by others who are “just like them.” This city has too many ppl like this moving in, small minds, anti- social attitudes. Their days are numbered.
im only sad that children had to get terrorized and that the mom/driver didnt have the cajones to run the law breaking bicyclist over. carbon wheelchairs for CM members……now there is a goal that is techno solution we all can embrace… :)
No one should be run over.
Critical Mass lost any pretense to legitimacy years ago. These days they’re just a mob, nothing more.
If CM obeyed (any!) traffic laws as they rode, they would be making a strong and socially valid point. But when they set up blockers at intersections so that the mass can cruise through red lights; when they key people’s cars as they go by (don’t deny it, I’ve seen it) they go from engendering good will to ill.
If the quantity of cyclists makes you think that you own the streets, no questions asked, laws be damned, you’re descending to a “might makes right” ethos. Fine, but you’d better ALWAYS ride in packs of a hundred or more, because the other 29 days of the month you don’t have the might. If you ignore the law, you lose the right to piss and moan when other people do the same.
Speaking as someone who’s ridden his bike in the city for the past fourteen years, Critical Mass HURTS the average cyclist more than it helps.
You earn respect by showing some when you’re in a position of strength. Why is this so hard to understand?
I’m also a regular (daily commuter + weekend) biker in the city. I agree that CM does more harm than good for the image of cyclists everywhere. The sense of entitlement is obscene, blocking intersections for long periods of time, stopping cars, pedestrians, and even other cyclists who have a legal right of way. It doesn’t prove anything.
People should just chill out, be alert and courteous and remember that you share the road with everyone.
And Tyler82, if you hit me with your car, I will pull you out with both hands and fuck your shit up.
Why don’t you guys argue about abortion or gun control next? This is so tired and old. Not to mention surface scratching, short-sighted, and simplistic.
I am an avid cyclist and I believe that CM is doing FAR more harm than good. The only thing they have accomplished is creating a festering hatred of bikers among mainstream San Franciscans. If they truly cared at all about promoting a safe bicycling environment they would disband immediately.
david.. one word.
HA!
I was wondering how it took so long for MBSF to take a crack at this story . . . .
I love the analogy between what this woman may or may not have done and DUIs running down cyclists. Okay, maybe she made some bad driving choices, but I haven’t seen anything about her being drunk and reckless - more likely confused, naive, and boneheaded, at worst.
I’ve seen cars do stupid things with cyclists’ (and pedestrians’) safety on the line. Then again, I’ve also seen cyclists get unduly angry with drivers who aren’t breaking any laws. I had one flip me off last week as I tried to make a right turn across a bike lane after alternately speeding up and signaling and slowing down so he could pass by the intersection, all while he gave me the stink eye for . . . well, for what I don’t know. Maybe he was just having a bad day. I certainly didn’t run him over.
As one commenter mentioned, I’d have a lot more sympathy for Critical Mass if they actually made a valid point about bike safety and street access by following all the laws they are supposed to - rather than just by screwing up rush hour traffic because, hell, they’re a mob and they can. They do a disservice to the people who are just trying to remind drivers to use a damn mirror once in a while before making a turn or changing lanes.
(And, of course, it’d be nice if cyclists showed pedestrians the same courtesy they demand from cars.)
Maybe Critical Mass is NO LONGER as much about “bike safety” and all that as it once was. You have to attempt to view the rides as something different than what might seem obvious or as what they started as. They have come a long way from guys holding signs “Make Room for Bikes” 15 years ago. For many of us, the rides are more about community and celebration, and FAR more often than not, car drivers wink and smile and have a nice time or do nothing during their few minutes of idle-time. Of course, there will always be the agressive ones who lay on their horn and/or run over a bike and/or attempt to drive thru the crowd just as their will always be some numbskull that smashes someone’s window. Always is actually the wrong word. Occassionaly is probably better. Never a good idea, but let’s face it in any life situation shit happens. Extrapolating reactions to CM out, we ought to just shut down society.
In this case, the Critical Ass bikers went overboard. Not everyone who drives a car in the city is going to be hip to the bike scene- this woman was from Redwood City, happened to be in SF. Cut the drivers a break, folks. She was just driving some kids around, not trying to run over any bikers. It might come as a shock, but the SF bike scene isn’t the center of the world, and as someone who wants to bike in the city, I get annoyed each time I hear of Critical Mass riders pulling an obnoxious stunt like this. Stop giving bikers a bad name- bike riders have enough problems to overcome in the city.