Begun in San Francisco in 1992, Critical Mass is a deliberately leaderless happening (thus its anarchist cred): a regularly occurring, yet informal, group bike ride. These days it's taking place in hundreds of cities around the globe. It started up in Manhattan in 1993; currently it leaves from Union Square Park at around 7 p.m. on the last Friday of every month, destination unknown. "Because I went on the ride, I was able to get used to riding in traffic," says Barbara Ross, spokeswoman for the bicycling and environmental group Time's Up! Acclimating to city streets is something the administration presumably would support. But, Ross said, "Our feeling is that since 2004 the city has been trying to stop the ride, or at least the NYPD [has]." On Aug. 27, 2004, just days before the last Republican National Convention opened here, the ride took place with thousands of participants – and mass arrests by the police.
Four years later, when asked if the city has an official stance on Critical Mass, neither the Department of Transportation nor the NYPD would articulate one. In terms of policy, however, chief NYPD spokesman Paul Browne wrote this in an e-mail: "Groups of 50, whether cyclists or pedestrians or whatever, require permits under the law. Permits allow groups to do things that would otherwise be illegal, such as bikes taking all lanes or traffic, or running lights – if the permit provided for it." Regarding an incident described below, Browne wrote: "Officers who observed violations on Friday, such as running lights, stopped cyclists in the vicinity and issued summons. It may have appeared random to some, but it was for observed [traffic] violations."
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I’m a middle-class, middle-aged Manhattanite. I have a white-collar job in the nonprofit sector, vote in every election and primary – even the boring ones – never litter, own my apartment, and dutifully write checks to my favorite charities. Oh, and for the last 25 years or so, my primary mode of transportation has been my bicycle.
So I had mixed feelings when I stumbled across the Critical Mass ride on August 29 as I was cycling home from a Friday night dinner with friends on the Upper West Side. I’ve never been on one of these monthly rides: Sure I was curious, but my appetite for getting ticketed or arrested is pretty minimal. Yet my mounting annoyance over the NYPD’s ongoing, overkill response to the rides ever since the 2004 Republican Convention, combined with too-fresh disgust at the You Tube posting of a rookie cop slamming a random cyclist to the gutter during the July ride, got the better of me. I pedaled faster and caught up with the group at Seventh Avenue and Central Park South.
Although I was the only biker wearing seersucker shorts and a button-down shirt, I can’t say my fellow riders looked like the wild-eyed anarchists depicted in the media. Mostly, they seemed similar to the 20-something computer guys and design chicks working in my office building in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Wearing backpacks and messenger bags, they seemed to have come straight from the office. (It was refreshing to be in the midst of so many – maybe 200 or so – un-accessorized bikers; how nice to be reminded that cycling doesn’t require hundreds of dollars of spandex accessories.)
