The battle for the future of Critical Mass is on, this time right here in NYC. Others have tried in the past to stop it, most notably Mayor Willie Brown in San Francisco. He lost that battle in a big way. Now Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is trying a different approach, starting with the pre-RNC Critical Mass, where they penned in and arrested 264 people. The NYPD tried to stop September’s ride, which such tactics as illegally cutting locks and impounding bikes, so this ride was an important event to make sure that biking is not a crime. The courts have ruled against the NYPD, so things are looking good.

This ride was awesome, lots of people were in all sorts of costumes, bells were ringing, people cheering, thousands of LEDs blinking. The heavy police presence was imposing, but it was nice to have the cops stopping traffic while the pack biked thru, averting the usual honking and aggressive encounters with some drivers. But it also means that we didn’t get to fill Times Square completely with cyclists, which is always a highlight. And to cap it all off, right as we were coming to the end of the police designated route, a couple of people at the front of the ride started yelling “fuck this!! don’t go back to Union Sq!! Take a right!!!” The light was green, we were following the traffic laws, so the police watched dumbfounded as hundreds of cyclists broke from the police route, and went down the West Side Highway, and cruised around the West Village, with people stopping on the sidewalks, and poking their heads out of their windows to cheer the mass along, and the sound of lots of sirens in background as the police tried to regroup. Luckily the ride ended before the NYPD could deploy their RNC-style pen-and-arrest tactics, so the only people arrested were looking for some civil disobedience action.

Here’s a good thread about the legal issues:

http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=04/10/26/0042213&mode=nested&tid=14&tid=1

The NY Times has been covering it to, with their slant, calling it a ‘demonstration’ quite plainly, though many if not most riders do not aim to join a demonstration, but rather just participate in a monthly bike ride:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/30/nyregion/30cycles.html