Nowtopian

Critical Mass last night, a very crisp and clear night… no, really, it was freezing! But being in San Francisco that’s not really so cold. It was a very exuberant ride. Something was in the air, who knows what? The crowd built up slowly at Peewee Herman Plaza before sneaking out the ‘back way’ into the Embarcadero, and went a whole block southward before u-turning to the north. Thus began one of the best rides in memory, 800 or 1,100 or who knows how many, but it was characterized by a dozen moments when many people collectively did the right thing(s)… from the creative beginning to the occasional stopping at intersections to allow folks behind to ‘mass up’, to the circuitous turns and twists, through North Beach, down to Fisherman’s Wharf (where a scuffle between a FtM tranny pumped on testosterone defending his car was defused in smiles and humor by everyone, even the scufflers who seemed to realize how ridiculous it all was, or so Joel tells me)…

This bus, going “Nowhere in Particular”, was stopped cold in the midst of the ride on Bay Street, the driver relaxing behind the wheel… clearly some pro-situ had programmed the sign somewhere long ago…

Back through downtown, around Union Square and on to Polk gulch, then, crucially, a surprising and wonderful left turn on Pacific to avoid the vortex of the Broadway Tunnel (people have compulsively gotten trapped in the tunnel for months now) where we went thumping through Pacific Heights on a new route (my favorite moment was when Jino’s sound system suddenly had a rockin’ Balkan tune animating our progress through the haute bourgeoisie, a taste of the global pulse of real life against the staid, fearful castles of the super rich), turning left on Fillmore, then out California to Divisadero, all the way up Divis before another surprising turn on Hayes to Scott when we ended up doing the wiggle eastward… which is how we came to be going east on the Duboce Bikeway, where I shot this video and these pictures:

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