Nowtopian

Had a nice ride out to the Sunset last weekend, in our typical weird week of summer weather in January. Standing at the edge of the Sunset reservoir looking eastward I took this shot through the fence, over the acres of solar panels sitting on the reservoir roof.

I’m posting a text I distributed at last night’s Critical Mass here in San Francisco, reflecting some of the discussions I’ve been part of during the past months. The ride last night was lovely, about 1000 riders, a good spontaneous route that took us winding through South of Market and into the Mission before heading back north and then west into Golden Gate Park. I bailed after about 2 hours at Fell and Masonic where I took these photos. There were at least five “circle-ups” last night, in lieu of stops at red lights, which I don’t much like, but it served the purpose of getting the ride regrouped, while also pointlessly blocking traffic in all directions at the intersections where it happened.

I like the way the guy in the foreground is a blur while the woman seems to be holding the peace/US flag (an oxymoron if I ever saw one!), but actually it was another guy behind her. Fun with digital photography...

A bike lift is starting at Fell and Masonic, January 28, 2011 Critical Mass.

Anyway, here’s the text I wrote and distributed as a flyer last night:

Protest or Celebration? Or Something Deeper Still?

As long as you have a bike to ride, you don’t have to buy anything to participate in Critical Mass, neither object nor service, nor an ideology beyond a desire to partake in public life on two wheels. When hundreds and thousands of cyclists seize the streets for a convivial and celebratory use of public space, many of the expectations and rules of modern capitalism are challenged. Individual behaviors escape the logic of buying and selling, if only for a few hours. Once in the street together, unexpected connections emerge, unplanned events occur, and serendipitous relationships begin. Unlike a trip to the mall or the market, the conversations are unburdened by the logic of transactions, of prices and measurements. It’s a free exchange among free people. The experience alters one’s sense of city life immediately, and more importantly, shifts our collective imaginations in ways we have only begun to learn about.

Critical Mass cyclists are among the most visible practitioners of a new kind of social conflict. The “assertive desertion” embodied in bicycling erodes the system of social exploitation organized through private car ownership and the oil industry. And by cycling in urban centers in the Empire, we join a growing movement around the world that is repudiating the social and economic models controlled by multinational capital and imposed on us without any form of democratic consent. This mass seizure of the streets by a swarming mob of bicyclists “without leaders” is precisely the kind of self-directing, networking logic that is transforming our economic lives and threatening the structure of government, business, and (as more imaginative military strategists are coming to understand) policing and war-making too.

Critical Mass has a new cousin in town: the San Francisco Bike Party (SFBP). The party-like qualities of Critical Mass have always been present, but the Bike Party model as developed in San Jose and other cities first involves an organizing (and monitoring) crew of volunteers who direct the fun. The first official SFBP happened a few weeks ago on January 7 and drew around 1000 riders on a bitterly cold night. It was a lot like Critical Mass in some ways—I enjoyed dozens of conversations with people I found myself next to in the ride, there were music machines, and friendly vibes from riders and passersby alike. We were dozens and hundreds of bicyclists filling the streets and displacing cars, just as we’d dreamed back in the first months of Critical Mass in 1992.

Continue reading Protest or Celebration? Or Something Deeper Still?