Westside BikeSIDE!

[Photo by Nicolas Cadorette Vigneau]

Community?

What does that even mean anymore? I mean, who needs community, when you have 238 channels on the television to spend time with, as well as a Tivo to record anything you might miss? Who needs social and emotional interaction, when you have Internet blogs to sound off on, to cry to, to laugh with? Who needs to use the village commons, when you have you have your fenced-in backyard kingdom? Who has TIME to spend with neighbors, when there are three million YouTube videos that you haven’t watched (yet)?

Well, apparently LOTS of people disagree, judging by the turnout at last Friday’s community bike ride. On Friday, November 3rd, on a mild evening just after sunset, nearly 200 of us took to the streets en masse for Santa Monica Critical Mass. SMCM is a monthly bicycle ride to celebrate bicycle culture, and to assert cyclists’ right to the road. It was conceived after the 2005 New Year, and the first ride occurred on February 4th, 2005. Starting with 6 riders, we’ve grown to as many as 225, on our October ride.

Although you might get a good workout, and break a sweat, Critical Mass is not a fitness ride. We ride at an accessible pace, enough so that families with children have been able to keep up. We usually ride for about 90 minutes, for about 10-15 miles, at a leisurely pace, and with a couple of stopping points along the way. Whether you’ve got an elite road bike, a single speed beach cruiser, a BMX or mountain bike, or a clunky old ten-speed. If you’ve been meaning to get out on a bicycle, “after all these years”, there is no better reason to make that happen than Critical Mass.

[Photo by Nicolas Cadorette Vigneau]

What is Critical Mass?

The original Critical Mass was started in San Francisco in September 1992. Critical Mass rides now take place in hundreds of cities around the world, including more than 200 in the United States alone. For a fleeting moment every month, these cities witness an alternative versions of reality, where automobiles are not the priority, and the streets are reclaimed as the public spaces that they once were.

“We aren’t blocking traffic, we ARE traffic”

This is a common slogan associated with the Critical Mass movement, and can be seen printed on buttons, t-shirts, and stickers, at. Yet Critical Mass is a free space for ideas; there is no designated political ideology. As a result, bicyclists participate in the ride for a variety of reasons. For some, Critical Mass is a protest against our society’s obsession with, and dependence on, the automobile. “Car culture” is so pervasive that we don’t really recognize that it exists, similar to the air we breathe. Others see Critical Mass as a community-building exercise, giving us the chance to meet new people and share ideas. In this modern age, we find ourselves atomized into perversions of ourselves, largely as “consumers”, and cut off from traditional village-like interactions. Still others, such as the activists and environmentalists among us, view Critical Mass as a demonstration of alternative energy, a form of transportation free from fossil fuels (and the resource wars that have precipitated). But for all of us, Critical Mass is a fun bicycle ride, and a rare FREE form of entertainment on a Friday evening.

“Whose streets? Our streets!”

This is another slogan often heard chanted by idealists amongst us. Behind the cliché, however, lies a substantive message. Largely up until World War II, our streets were vibrant public spaces. They were the original urban playgrounds, the original farmer’s markets, the original chat rooms, the original bike lanes. Sure, the few who could afford automobiles drove on the streets too, but with clear deference to non-motorized public use. Yet less than 50 years later, we the people now defer our use of the public streets to the rapid flow of motorized traffic.

Once a month, we turn the clock back in time with Critical Mass, as we reclaim the streets from the dominion of the automobile and oil companies, returning it to sane, public use. For too long have our municipalities have given a “blank check” to these industries: we have designed our neighborhoods around the free flow of automobiles, thereby bankrolling those that profit from their sale. Critical Mass is a “stop payment” on this check, temporarily redefining the hierarchy of street access, with bicycles at the top.

“Ride daily, celebrate monthly!”

On the day after, the auto-centric order is restored, and individual cyclists move to the back of the line for access to streets. But the previous nights experience was not in vane: using our strength in numbers, we stepped to the front of the line, demonstrating a vision of a slower, more human-scaled streetscape. This vision is enough to propel cyclists forward on our daily rides, as we look forward to next month’s Critical Mass.

Join us next month!

Santa Monica Critical Mass
Friday, December 1^st, 2006
6:30pm
Santa Monica Pier (Ocean Ave. @ Colorado Ave.)
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