Boston Critical Mass

"Every time we choose safety, we reinforce fear." - Cheri Huber



At five o'clock today, I biked to pika, where I met up with Woon to ride over to Copley Square. Passing 77, we picked up another pikan, Suzanne.

Just an hour ago, I had run into a couple of music friends in Building 4 and mentioned I was going on a "bike ride at 5:30," and D. Somach had immediately followed up by asking if it was Boston Critical Mass. He had been a few times himself. "Watch out," he chuckled, "there are a lot of bike messengers and people really into biking - some of them are kind of crazy."

About two hundred bikers were already gathered in front of Trinity Church when we arrived, and more trickled in during the next fifteen minutes. We parked to the side, by the bronze statues of the tortoise and the hare. Looking around, I saw a vast range of riders. Hipster guys in tight skinny jeans. Hippies with long hair. Regular unassuming people. Old friends. New acquaintances of the minute. The crowd was definitely young, though. I recognized MIT students within fifteen feet of me: Wesley from two floors down, and the grad student who had visited SEVT this past Saturday. A farmer's market was set up in the square, bringing a sense of festiveness to the atmosphere. One guy had strapped a resonant plastic container upside-down to the front of his bike, and was banging on it with a stick like a drum.

Around 5:45, riders spontaneously began to ride in a circle in front of Trinity and to whoop. I watched for a few minutes before joining in. When the circle became so dense that it was hard for more riders to join in, people exited the square, pouring onto Boylston St in a massive, traffic-clogging force of nature.

I had read up on the event, but it ended up being much more than I expected. What I interpreted as a relatively civil parade of cyclists turned out to be a spirited protest on wheels. I imagined the event as a parade that would occupy one stretch of road at a time; instead, we started out a moderately dense pack, but soon petered out to a long, long swarm that wove in between lanes of vehicles, paralyzing traffic. I was surprised when we did not stop at our first red light. "Fuck the red light!" someone yelled. Some riders were leaders - they parked themselves in front of traffic at intersections to block any cars that would even attempt to travel through us, and waved us on. "Ride! Ride! RIDE!" they shouted. A chant started up amongst the riders: "Whose streets?" "Our streets!" "Whose streets?" "Our streets!" That chant and "Fuck the red lights!" were repeated often throughout the ride, especially when we passed large intersections. The man with the plastic container drum -- and a clanging cowbell, as it became clear -- rode with one hand and drummed with the other, providing a beat to the people around him.

It was a sight to see. Right in the beginning, maybe four hundred riders, pouring through the streets. A sea of bikes stretched out in front of me and behind. We passed the Common and the Four Seasons Hotel, where valet parkers grinned at us and swanky guests whipped out their cell phones to take pictures. Through Chinatown, where I almost ran into a Chinese lady trying to cross at a crosswalk -- as if this hoard would, or even could, stop for her -- through Government Center, up to the North End, the seaside, then down through Quincy Market -- more cameras here; in fact, cameras everywhere we went -- and then I was lost, separated from Woon and Suzanne. Turning back wasn't an option.

I saw a woman join the group from the sidewalk, and greet a man in front of me. "Hey, just caught you guys!" There was a rollerblader in the group, and a guy riding a "two-story" extra-tall bike. Someone exclaimed, "I'm so glad drum-guy is here!" Some pedestrians on the sidewalks yelled at us, or to us, I couldn't always tell. Some rooted us on; others sounded angry.

I began to feel uncomfortable with what we were doing, though, the farther we went along. So many angry drivers; were we accomplishing anything positive? Were we effectively garnering attention for bicycle rights or more bicycle lanes or whatever (I wasn't even sure what this protest was about), or were we just pissing people off? Then we heard the police sirens. First I saw a police car with flashing lights passing us going the other direction; then one turned to follow us. I rode faster.

Looking at those guys stopping traffic, and hearing the drivers honk back, I could sympathize with the drivers. Friday evening, people were just trying to get home, home to their families, home to Away from Work. A commute out of Boston can be bad enough; did we have to make it worse?

But another part of me couldn't help but think, those guys stopping traffic... are huge badasses. And I thought, those guys must've been like me once, taking this ride for the first time. They probably got the guts to do that over time, with each successive ride.

And then, who were the police going to arrest? Everyone? There were no named leaders of this 'critical mass' - only those riders who stopped traffic, whom most of the rest of us couldn't name. A faceless mass of civilly-disobedient two-wheeled individuals imbued with verve.

I found I was near the front of the pack; and now, forty minutes into the ride, the pack was finally dwindling, with still at least seventy bikers. The level of spirit was tangibly lower than before. I still had no idea where we were, except I'd seen Mass General Hospital a while back. And then we were riding up the ramp of a bridge, which meant, oh good, going to Cambridge. Back home. I knew this bridge. Pedal pedal pedal pedal up to the peak, and then coast coast coast down down to Broadway St. There was a guy next to me, taking this same speedy slide down the hill on a unicycle with an enormous wheel - at least three feet tall. No brakes, no helmet!

About five minutes later, the crowd was headed deeper into Cambridge. People were stopping at red lights now, and it seemed most of the group didn't know the area. "I think people are about ready to call it a day," I heard someone say. "Mass Ave's to the left," I pointed, before turning around. I was going to be a little late for dinner at pika. Still, as bikers saw me passing by in the opposite lane, they shouted to me, "You're going the wrong way!"