lol, this forum is just as awesome as zelah said it would be.
#1 don’t listen to Zelah
#2 I will direct you to my sig
NAME DROP
Rad trailer! Do want!
UGH! So I decided to check out the Critical Mass action this evening cuz it was a protest ride against our dumb Governor’s bicycle policies (i.e. defund it all). CM has been a lame duck in Milwaukee for about two years and I thought it might be dead because there are so many OTHER more productive rides in the city. I should have known better.
Anyway, so there we were doing the same jackass stuff the CM always does, fighting for rights by breaking all the laws when some random dude gets a flat. I stick back with sup girl to make sure the guy could patch his flat and the rest leave without us.
We lost them and were looking around for them at the Art Museum when, off in the distance, we can see them ascending the Hoan Bridge, which is part of the 794 freeway. There is debate about putting bike and pedestrian accommodations on the bridge (Governor obviously says no coz crying about making cars go slow) so in the meantime it’s still illegal to ride your bike on a freeway.
Apparently these jackholes spread across the entire southbound freeway to block traffic.
And thus I sever my bonds with Critical Mass forever.
I had friends on the ride, but I’m not sure what their current status is. Hoping somebody snapped an iPhone pic or two.
I was on a CM one time and it tied up Lake Shore Drive, was pretty lulzy to tell the truth.
really proud of my former contributions to this thread
Classic stuff right here.
Good job. I love it when a thread gets bumped with me being awesome at Coleman or zelah or thehappyrobot back when… Proud moments.
[quote=littletinyfish]
We lost them and were looking around for them at the Art Museum when, off in the distance, we can see them ascending the Hoan Bridge, which is part of the 794 freeway. There is debate about putting bike and pedestrian accommodations on the bridge (Governor obviously says no coz crying about making cars go slow) so in the meantime it’s still illegal to ride your bike on a freeway.
Apparently these jackholes spread across the entire southbound ]freeway to block traffic.
And thus I sever my bonds with Critical Mass forever.[/quote]
Hence why I no longer am going to be doing the critical mass rides in Milwaukee. To many drugs and to many intoxicated riders. It simply is not an appropriate way to raise bicycle awareness.
haha there is not an appropriate way to raise awareness of anything
most bullshit activism or mostest bullshit activism?
I like CM but don’t bother going. Not that I think it’s an effective bicycle awareness activity, but as an excercise in taking over the roads for the sake of having a bike ride I like it. In terms of priorities I like the message of “fuck the orderly functioning of commerce, we’re playing in the streets” basically. I think the ideal of spontaneous recreation is one that has been pushed too far back for the sake of hurrily getting home from work to watch television or whatever other mindless act of consumerism people are into these days and I like CM as a counterpoint to that in that it causes traffic chaos for short periods of time but a lot of people have a lot of fun with it. In that respect I like CM and think that it makes just as much sense if not more to say “Get your car off the road we’re enjoying ourselves” as opposed to “get out of the way I’m trying to drive”. People being delayed from their commute for two, three, maybe even five minutes isn’t a big deal and people need to get over themselves.
CM as consciousness raising exercise is stupid, but CM as a huge bike parade through slightly out of the way parts of town with incidental inconvenience of people who have to get back to the burbs RIGHT NOW is actually pretty fun. The thing is that it has to be pretty big to work that way and if it’s not pretty big it’s going to be all drunks and consciousness raisers, so I guess it’s a catch-22.
This. Also fuck people from the suburbs being in any kind of hurry to go back to the suburbs. My property taxes actually pay for the roads, theirs don’t. Get the fuck out of MY way.
This. Also fuck people from the suburbs being in any kind of hurry to go back to the suburbs. My property taxes actually pay for the roads, theirs don’t. Get the fuck out of MY way.[/quote]
This.
A lot of the moaners in my area don’t even live in the same county. And I have a car. And I work in my county. I’m paying shitloads of taxes for these roads, I’m gonna ride the hell out of them.
Trying to attach a valid cause that critical mass stands for is pretty useless. I do know I had a lot of fun on some of the summer CMs a couple of years ago, though I guess not so much that I felt the need to go back…
The only time and place CM ever worked was in San Francisco in the early 90’s or whenever it first began. I don’t think it can really be replicated in the 'states.
CM was about to be my next entry on ‘bike parts that exist but you wish didn’t.’
But the moment passed. This seems a fine thread for passed moments.