Mon 2 Jun 2008
Critical Mass reprise
Posted by shelbinator under Local News, Media, Netroots
Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Stacy Shelton previewed the Critical Mass bike ride last week.
Starting about 6:30 p.m., more than 300 bicyclists plan to take over several lanes of traffic, shoving King Car aside.
They call it Critical Mass. It’s a rolling message board that says “Bicycles have a right to the road too!”
During last month’s ride, a few bicyclists “corked” the intersections at every traffic light, blocking cars for the mass of bikers as they pedaled through a couple of light changes.
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The event is both political statement and rollicking street festival, with some civil disobedience thrown in. … There’s no organized leadership.
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Critical Mass started in San Francisco in 1992 and is now replicated in hundreds of cities worldwide.
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To help defuse hostility and spread the joy of their preferred mode of transportation, riders during last month’s ride shouted “Happy Friday!” and “Thank you!” to waiting motorists.
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Rachael Spiewak, 27, a regular Critical Mass’er and executive director of SoPo Bicycle Co-op, a nonprofit bike shop in East Atlanta, said the rides are an important tool for empowering bicyclists and making drivers more aware of them.
Sounds a lot like the general storyline of my video report from April’s Critical Mass that went out over the Associated Press Online Video Network. Why, she even singled out the same local bike enthusiast, Rachael Spiewak, that shows up in many of the thumbnails of my video (seen left) on various syndicated sites. Whaddayaknow.
I don’t know why that coincidence came to mind this morning as I read Jeff Jarvis’s latest thoughts on cross-pollenation in journalism:
This leads to a new Golden Rule of Links in journalism — link unto others’ good stuff as you would have them link unto your good stuff. This emerges from blogging etiquette but is exactly contrary to the old, competitive ways of news organizations: wasting now-precious resources matching competitors’ stories so you could say you’d done it yourself. That must change.
You know, just as an aside.
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17 Responses to “ Critical Mass reprise ”
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June 4th, 2008 at 2:14 pm[…] Shelby is a quality blogger — I said as much in a comment I wrote a few days ago on his site. For whatever reason, it wasn’t posted. I tried again, with no luck. Since his comments are moderated, I assume I was censored (though I took no cheap shots). […]
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July 10th, 2008 at 3:53 pm[…] assisted, in part, by my 123,000 view-getting video of the affair,” lest I deeply offend someone’s journalistic professionalism — will hopefully add meaning and numbers to the experiment. The […]
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:01 pm
So everyone who writes about Critical Mass is stealing your material? Stacy could’ve found out about it anywhere; reporters aren’t dependent on bloggers to generate story ideas.
The duplicate source is Exec Director of the Bike Co-Op and a regular participant in Critical Mass — why wouldn’t she interview her? You don’t have exclusivity to a source, especially when they’re so active within the event. Again, that’s assuming Stacy saw your report. Unfortunately, you assume the worst about a conscientious reporter.
Bloggers bash journalists, and vice-versa. It’s a cliche worth discarding, for it discredits quality bloggers like yourself and professional journalists like Stacy. On top of that, it’s somewhat arrogant.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:46 pm
I know this wasn’t the point of the post. But I wish all the effort going into “civil disobedience” and jamming up the roads was instead going into something constructive like lobbying the City of Atlanta to build bike paths. Or raising the money to build those bike paths. Or whatever.
I would love for Atlanta to be more bike-friendly. Honestly, I would. It sucks that there are hardly any bike or foot paths that allow you to get from one part of town to another.
But, that’s neither here nor there. There aren’t bike paths. Just roads. With lots of cars on them. And it’s frustrating for us evil auto-dwellers to be stuck going 10 mph when we’re trying to get somewhere, all because some bicyclists are trying to prove a point, or to be “empowered.” Please.
I’m sure I’ll get blasted for saying this, but I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in thinking it.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:17 am
I saw this month’s ride; what a spectacle! More like 500+ than 300+. It was kind of like the marathon, except it was Friday evening instead of Sunday morning.
Kate: Get used to that 10mph. As more people start riding regularly, they’ll show up in lanes more often.
Blocking the intersections, however, is the kind of mentally deficient self-indulgence that will negate any good the rides would have accomplished.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:19 am
Yes, you’re going to get blasted, but I already knew this about you so I’m going to keep most of it in my head.
It’s one single rush hour of the 60 each month. Think of it like a parade, or a road race of some kind. Special event crap jams up traffic downtown all the freaking time so that people can move large quantities of cars into spaces that weren’t designed for large quantities of cars, so don’t even pretend like everything is always peachy keen until the Critical Mass shows up and screws up the road-raged car drivers’ perfect little world.
Have you actually ever personally encountered a Critical Mass while you’re in your car trying to get somewhere so important? I’m dying to know. Because while I don’t know what your cycling experience is in Atlanta, I have spent plenty of time behind the wheel of a car in rush hour in many parts of Atlanta, including downtown. In fact, I did have somewhere really freaking important to get to downtown once — the FedEx office before they closed so I could return a phone I hated before it was permanently mine. I was gnawing on the steering wheel and spewing blood out of my eyes by the time I got through the nightmarish clusterfrack that is traffic, and guess what? There wasn’t a Critical Mass that night. That’s just normal, everyday ordinary life because we evil auto-dwellers are perfect and perfectly entitled to bring one giant car per human being into crammed quarters like downtown without thinking maybe that’s not such a great idea.
And when, God forbid, there is a Critical Mass? Here’s another guess-what: a lot of the time, we can go just as fast as traffic. Sometimes it’s the stupid cars holding us up! And if we happen to cross your path all perpendicular-like, here’s the final guess-what: most of the time we can clear the intersection in a single light cycle, so we cost the drivers to our sides one single green light. Three minutes of your precious time.
Meanwhile, plenty of the same rabble-rousers that ride Critical Mass are doing more pacified, less disruptive things like lobbying our ineffectual government. You know, in the other 29-30 days of the month that aren’t occupied with “all the effort” of a single leisurely bike ride. The Atlanta Bicycle Campaign is all over the city, county, and regional government advocating for (and even helping plan) improvements to alternative commuting infrastructure. The SoPo Bike Collective will install bike racks in front of business for a very small donation.
“There aren’t bike paths. Just roads.” Yeah, and staying quiet and out of your terribly important way did a whole lot of good for so many years, I can’t imagine why we’d want to stir things up now!
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:42 am
Ah, gotta clarify that mentally deficient self-indulgence, there, Mike. Like I said in my video, but the article didn’t point out, a big part of maintaining the integrity of the Mass is safety, not arrogance. If one, two, three bikes are tooling around downtown, obviously they should stop at red lights and obey all the other laws of the road. But when you’ve got hundreds of them out there, and it’s impossible to move them all through the intersection in a single green light, it’d be just begging for trouble to have it break up into smaller chunks at every light that turns read part-way through our transit. Then you start getting cars mixed up into the mass of bikes, and that’s when things get very dicey. It’s really better and safer for everyone all around if we maintain a single border around all the bikes and get out of your way (eventually) as a unit. And aside from just the safety aspect (which is significant), can you imagine how much more disruptive it would be to traffic and all those poor, besieged drivers in their air conditioning gabbing away on their cellphones while playing movies on the DVD player to have three or four sub-critical masses of 100 bikes each making their way around town? Best to just sit out one light cycle and let the whole lot get on their way.
Now, there are mentally deficient moves in every Mass, thanks to a few annoying, aggressive members, such as the ones who feel the need to spill into the lanes of oncoming traffic. They are definitely asking for trouble and making the rest of us look bad. But maintaining the integrity of a single Mass is essential.
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:57 am
That was keeping most of it in your head?!? Remind me to stand clear if you decide to let it all out.
But I confess that I don’t follow your logic. Take this quote, for instance: “we evil auto-dwellers are perfect and perfectly entitled to bring one giant car per human being into crammed quarters like downtown without thinking maybe that’s not such a great idea.”
How do you figure that it’s not such a great idea to bring a car on to a road? That seems like a pretty good idea to me.
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:11 am
Yeah I haven’t been sleeping much so my mental filter didn’t really work. But I also get extra testy when someone who’s supposedly a political ally sounds more like Neal Boortz. It’s like you are so dead-set against even trying to see things from a conservation/alternative commute perspective that the point of that sentence went flying right past you. I didn’t say “it’s not such a great idea to bring a car on to a road.” I said it’s not such a great idea to bring one giant car per human being into crammed quarters — i.e., we say screw carpooling, we always need our own ride at all times; i.e., we bought bigger and bigger cars that guzzle more gas (and require bigger parking spaces); i.e., we don’t spend a moment thinking about urban planning or mass transit, or lifestyle decisions like living near work instead of bringing thousands of SUVs from the dispersed suburbs into the very concentrated businesses of downtown. You can only fit so much steel on the roads in the same place at the same time, and that is what causes traffic (and pollution, and energy problems, and climate crises, and f’d up Middle East policies). But heaven forbid some bikes get in your way once a month! They must be the real culprits!
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Shelby, what exactly do you think rush hour will look like, once most people trade their cars for bikes? It’s going to look a whole lot like Friday evening, except the bikes will be travelling in clumps, as broken up by intersections and what’s left of vehicular traffic.
IMO, this Mass has missed a golden opportunity to demonstrate (if not usher in) the near future, for the sake of “getting away with something”.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
That’s a lovely future vision, Mike, but it’s not what we’re talking about in the reality of the present. I’m talking about the behavior of one monthly Critical Mass that is in part a public demonstration, NOT what I envision the future of bike traffic to be for all time. Do you really think I intended to suggest that even in some distant neverland when 80% of us are bike commuters, that bikes should not stop for red lights in the interest of riding in massive contiguous packs? Absolutely (and obviously, I thought) not.
Man, glad I wrote a post about media coverage just to have a couple of CM naysayers come in with their own soapboxes. :-P
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Easy there. I don’t think my dislike for bicyclists intentionally clogging up the streets quite qualifies me as Neal-Boortz-like. I mean, let’s not go crazy here.
I believe that my liberal values are alive and well, actually. I would happily pay higher taxes if it meant that Atlanta would provide services like bike paths and a sensible public transportation option like they have in other big cities. (Although, before I pay more taxes, I’d first like to ask what I’m getting for the $6,000 / year I’m already paying in property taxes since our street lights are burnt out, the crime rate in our neighborhood is terrible, and our sidewalks are so busted that you can’t walk on them. But I digress.)
I blame our government for sitting on their hands and doing very little to solve the transportation problems in our city. Or most of the other problems, for that matter. The City of Atlanta local government leaves a lot to be desired.
Do I think it’s realistic to carpool into work when I live two miles from the office? No. Am I going to take MARTA when it would take twice as long as driving? No. But that makes me a rational person, not a Republican.
As for bigger cars, yes, Americans like big cars. Like you, I have a mid-size SUV. However, as a good liberal, I’m very much in favor of tax surcharges on large cars or better yet, government programs that would force auto manufacturers to create higher efficiency cars and SUVs.
In short, I don’t think my views make me conservative. I think they make me a realistic liberal.
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Focus ppl… yeah that sucks, pretty much just transcribed your video report and didn’t give props. Guess s/he’s old-school media, pfft
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Shelby… keep speaking your mind. I like it.
Here’s a thought for Kate and other drivers, critical mass raises awareness about bicycles on the road.
I mean how often do people, behind the wheel almost get killed by a cyclist checking their blackberry and inching into your lane? I bet that’s never happened because people, in the car, are surrounded by tons of steel and air bags and seat belts. As cyclists who are also just trying to get to work, we know that when it comes down to it, the car/bus/taxi/suv/garbage truck/bull dozer/etc will win. Every time.
Critical mass is one time when cyclists are able to ride in a somewhat safe environment because cars are being blocked. If a driver really can’t stand it, they should can try taking the train or riding their own bike during that one friday per month. They might even like it.
of course, none of us are safe, did you see the photo I posted today? I’m haunted.
cheers.
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Was my comment deleted? That’s very sad if so.
June 4th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Alright, let me try this without being such a prick this time.
Sam raises a point that reminds me why I’m particularly testy about this issue. I myself am a lucky survivor of a scary car-bike encounter. I would up on some idiot’s hood because he was distracted by the worry of trying to make it to a baseball game on time. Fortunately, he was driving a sedan, not going too fast, and I was wearing my helmet and very aware of my surroundings (so I jumped). I walked away relatively unscathed (the bike needed work).
This once-a-month inconvenience to drivers isn’t supposed to go unnoticed. It’s supposed to be in your face, because a lot of the time drivers don’t notice bikes, and sometimes that means the biker dies. We bike commuters are out there doing the right thing for the environment and our energy demand and we’re literally putting our asses on the line to do it, trying to “usher in” this better future Some Other Mike says would be better served without the civil disobedience. Well, John Lewis did tell us YDs, “You must get in the way, you must get in trouble.” We’re going to keep pursuing our commute alternatives even if you aren’t, so why don’t we consider the few minutes Critical Mass might cost you once a month your small contribution to the cause? :-)
June 7th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Yeah Shelby!
And all americans should keep in mind we wouldn’t have the freedoms so many of us enjoy in this country if our fore mothers and forefathers didn’t participate in civil disobedience. For example, my right to vote…