By Steven T. Jones
Last night’s Critical Mass was big — a population that was also swelled by way too many cops — but other than that, it was pretty normal. As usual, there weren’t any major incidents. As usual, the atmosphere was festive. As usual, the only aggressive behavior that I saw came from overentitled car drivers. These basic, predictable facts seemed to surprise the writers at the Chronicle, who apparently actually believed their own bicyclists-gone-wild bullshit. So once they finally went on a ride, we were rewarded with the headline “Critical Mass pedals politely through S.F.”
Yet the real problem remained, the one the Chron still hasn’t been able to comprehend. My friend Tim got his bike run over by a car last night simply because it was in the path of an impatient motorist who was trying to drive into a crowd of bikes. And as usual, despite the 40 cops on the ride, the police refused to take a report or get involved. Critical Mass is many things to many people, but one of those things is an assertion of our rights to the road, which we’re legally entitled to whether or not we have the blessing of the Chron, the SFPD, and the rest of this city’s power structure.