raygunner

I agree, he didn't translate very well. He always came across as nervous but The Man Show & Crank Yankers were good.

Carbocation

Too bad you're not on the west coast. We get the Adam Carolla Show from 5AM to 10AM on weekdays. Some of the co-hosts are terrible, but Adam is in his usual good form. (If you're interested, I can PM you a torrent site where you get episodes)

Ira in Chi

so who's going?

giboyeux

i'm going. last mass in chicago for this guy!

tell me more about this "race," tho.

Ira in Chi

all i know is that there's a plan in the works

No_Minkah

Is it going to be like Ira fires a gun into the air and everyone in the know races to the park?

gorn

Same here, until August.

$0.00/Gal

I feel bad but I can't go. My dog got really sick last night so I was late starting work after being at the vet for 3 hours. Between taking care of him and working it's gonna be a late night.

Drink a beer for me.

No_Minkah

Well, that was the worst mass I've ever been to.

At Milwaukee, Damen and North the whole mass stopped. One of the busiest, yuppiest, intersections in the city. OK, well, all fun and games until it got rough.

There was a big black Ford pick-up with 2 guys and a girl trapped in the mass. When I got there they were out of the car, pushing and shoving with riders. Riders were hitting the truck with locks and bikes. Then the guys got back in their truck and just WENT. Hit the gas, right into a crowd of people. One guy looked like he barely got out of the way, and they dragged bikes under the truck. I mean, they were very nearly running people over. Nobody was hurt in the end. But it was straight-up attempted vehicular homicide.

They guy took off, and riders chased after him. They didn't catch up to him, but they did get his plate number (or so a cop told me). There were a ton of cops there, and soon after the truck barreled through they started assertively getting people out of the street. The cleared the streets- it's their job. And the cop I talked to told me that the plates of the truck are 'on the air', so they'll probably catch him.

OK, that all being said, it was ****ed up. I know that people almost got hurt, and the actions of the driver are indefensible, but none of this had to happen. Who decided to stop traffic at the North, Milwaukee and Damen intersection? Critical Mass is filled with kids whose idea of effective political action results in people getting hurt. They're not smart, and it's dangerous.

The CBF and Daley have done a lot for cyclists. This sets us back. What about the next cyclist those drivers come into contact with? We're endangering ourselves. We usually don't ride in big groups like this, where we can defend each other. We ride every day, alone, surrounded by people in cars. It makes it more dangerous for us.

From now on I'm only doing mass in the winter, when these fairweather fake punk pseudo-bikers are gone back to their dormrooms.

$0.00/Gal

Oh man that sounds awful. I am all for a fun ride with a bunch of people but you make a great point. The CBF fights the good fight and incidents like this completely set the movement back. Times like this you wish there was an effective way to differentiate yourself from those kind of cyclists...

giboyeux

bummer, dude. glad i went south instead.

absntr

This is the reason why I no longer do CM (I didn't do it regularly anyway -- always cut out early with people -- too slow) This just sounds bad. Unfortunately, since last summer, CM has been getting a bad rep and people are getting hurt. Not a good thing. This is also the second time I know of that they stopped at that intersection -- similar tensions were building and some people got arrested apparently. That was the last mass I did too, which I cut out of early, last summer.

kisha

I was wondering what had happened. I was riding west on North from a study session and bikers kept telling me to turn around and try another route.

$0.00/Gal

Study session or STUDY DATE??

ooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh

Zurich

Ohh Chicago, you sort of suck in a total non-boulder-centric type of way.... Gotta love the midwest..

Hey $0.00/gal...i checked out your blog and your buddy Super-rookies... most of the pictures he took at little five were of the team that I was coaching (in their pit; pink/green jersies...). Small world, good stuff.

kisha

don't sweat my game!

Technohippy

I second the thoughts about this being exactly the kind of biker-related activity I do not want to be associated with. Was enjoying the ride until this bizarre behavior started. Then it just turned into mayhem. And not the fun Fight Club mayhem either.

Too bad. The Critical Mass cause just lost a couple more die-hard bikers tonight.

Ira in Chi

that's what happens when you skip out on critical FAST!

Landgolier

Ugh, glad I had to leave early.

The problem is that map makers always want to have a destination. Sometimes it's a quasi-mass event (polkaholics thing over the winter), sometimes it's an attempt to hijack the mass into going to some lefty BS (never works), and sometimes it's just "well, we gotta end it somewhere, how about Wicker Park?" (nobody wants to stand around in wicker park with way too many people on a friday night). The only good way for mass to end is just trickling off. Otherwise, you just end up with a bunch of bikers standing in the middle of the road, like what apparently happened tonight.

I wish people weren't having bad experiences at Mass. It's not for everyone, but it is the one thing we have as cyclists where a whole ****-ton of us, from fixed gear hipsters to bike activists to commuters to people with kids to freakbikers, get together and do something. I won't argue that there's any coherent useful or positive purpose to it beyond that, but I do wish more people here saw the value in that alone.

ChicagoDave

I left early too, about the time that the group was headed towards wicker park... I think most of us that go to crit-mass are peaceful, all of us do our fair share of taunting cagers who honk and throw their hands in the air in disgust over being 5 minutes late... However I've noticed that there is a small sector of CCM (probably 1%) whose entire goal is to cause a big ruckus - I rode last month as well and there was a group of 5 -10 people who were leading the way, and rode till the entire group dispersed... up until the end they were trying to get people to circle up in the 'crotch' or to go block lakeshore or some other ruckus causing move. I'm ok with a little ruckus, it's good to show the city the power cyclists have, we become more than a single nuisance to a driver on his/her drive home - we become a nuisance of 100's. I think there will be these people that like causing **** and seeing blue-lights, and there will be the rest of us who like taking over the street for a little while with a ****ton of other cyclists. I love crit-mass for what it is: a friday night with 1000 of my closest friends. Of course what would hanging out with 1000 of your friends normally lead to? Drama? Because just like anywhere else we have drama queens who just LOVE to cause some ****, even if that means more and more **** for cyclists and even CCM down the line. Ok, no more beer, no more rant... time for bed.

efarrar

That is too bad. I have seen drunk ****ing punks raising hell with motorists...hitting their hoods spitting on their cars, etc.

We need to start a new position in additon to corking, crowd control. I say 6-10 of us show up dressed like psuedo riot police, and keep the ****ing peace.

Landgolier

Also, has anybody noticed we had way, way more bike cops tonight? We barely had to cork. Not sure how I feel about this...

No_Minkah

Ira's right, Critical FAST! It would be cool if that were quasi-regular; get together where CCM starts, and race if we feel like it.

salome

ugh. agreed on all above sentiment about how CM has digressed into something ugly and all around bad.

had you guys RACED with us you would have had way more fun.

gorn

I'll weigh in because I was helping lead for a while. (Basically the people leading had not lead before, so we were just trying our best, aside from the end I think we were mostly successful. The guy that made the map couldn't make it so he gave it to someone else who I happen to be friends with. He asked for some help.)

There definitely was a group of fair-weather-punks at the front that wanted to cause trouble. They'd speed up and stretch the mass out, then they'd want to circle at every intersection, and they wanted to take LSD. If any of you guys saw me corking really early on, I wasn't corking cars, I was blocking the path to LSD to prevent people from following the fair-weather-punks.

The map was supposed to end at the park, not the intersection, but there was no way that was going to happen. Perhaps we should've thought about that and tried to route around it, but we weren't really in control at that point anymore anyway.

I much prefer rides that end at a park or the beach or something. Ending at an intersection just causes problems and is irresponsible. Ending at a destination like the Art Show just means we can't all fit and take over the sidewalk if not the street. A big park, or the beach, has plenty of room and people can leave at their own rate. But unfortunately due to the way CM is structured no one can really decide where it ends.