Seattle Critical Mass

As I sat on the number 5 bus on my way to work one morning, I watched a man on a bicycle merge onto 3rd Avenue in front of the bus, seemingly without bothering to look. “These bicycles!” the driver huffed, “They’re all over the road, and then, if you hit one of them, they say you weren’t giving them enough room!”

This is why Critical Mass riders congregate the last Friday of every month, I thought, to combat this, er, combative mindset. The nuances of his language—particularly the way he said “bicycles” instead of “bikers” as though the man on the bicycle were an inanimate object—was strikingly callous. Cyclists are guilty of the same; from the saddle of a bike, it’s easy to view vehicles as large metal obstructions, to forget that behind every car is a human driver.

Critical Mass, though hard to definitively explain, is a monthly showing of bicyclists’ strength throughout the world. Participants aim to bring together a large enough group of riders that motorists are effectively stymied by the procession of tightly grouped cyclists. The event was originally aimed to raise awareness of drivers’ hostility and general disregard for cyclists, but because the ride is virtually unstructured and riders possess an array of personal motives, rhyme and reason are nebulous terms for Critical Mass riders. Because the rides have grown quite popular, traffic is often delayed several minutes while the “critical mass” of cyclists pedal casually through urban areas.

Sadly, some view the ride as confrontation, and contentious interactions between bellicose cyclists and similarly aggressive motorists is not uncommon. In several cities, Critical Mass has been beset with legal controversy. In Seattle, a man ran through a pack of bikes and was struck in the head with a U-lock. A New York police officer was given desk duty after a widely distributed YouTube video showed him shoulder-checking a bicyclist to the pavement. In San Francisco, the Mayor, after being detained twenty minutes by the ride, declared “War on Critical Mass,” a movement that gained little traction.

“Those who want to try to tie up traffic as much as possible and be confrontational with motorists,” according to the Critical Mass website, “are missing the point.” Seattle’s own ride begins at Westlake Center on the last Friday over every month at 5:30pm. After the arrests from the July 25th 2008 events, the police have taken a much keener interest in the event. Though they claim to desire neither to lead nor prevent the ride, their presence has brought on a more subdued celebration. Critical Mass has—to steal a techie expression—expanded virally throughout the globe. Seattle, an aspiring bike friendly city, was fated to have its own iteration sooner or later.

Until a lasting peace is brokered between bikes and cars, until the bikes stop cutting off the buses and the buses stop running into the bikes, we will all commute tensely together in the disputed territory of Seattle's streets.