God I love this town.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...NGQEEA5RD1.DTL
Wheels of revolution turning toward cheap, friendly transit
Tim Holt
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Americans are subjected to a daily catechism extolling the comfort, status, sex appeal and freedom bestowed on us by the Almighty Automobile.
This prevailing orthodoxy is just beginning to be challenged by local officeholders across the country, but a grassroots, two-wheeled rebellion has been brewing in San Francisco for more than a decade. It is anarchistic, playful and youth oriented, celebrating a level of freedom no longer delivered by the automobile. And it has spawned a wide range of creative expression, from bicycle ballet to bicycle rapping.
With minimal support from government, it skims along the borders of urban life, on a thin sliver of the city's streets, and in nonprofit groups that nurture an urban bicycling culture. It bursts out in the open once a month in Critical Mass rides, which have evolved over the past 13 years from a turf fight with cops and motorists to a celebration, complete with ear-splitting music and wild costumes, of the collective power of cyclists.
Like the outsiders who came before -- the "Monkey Block" bohemians of the '30s, the Beats, the hippies -- San Francisco's bicycling culture thumbs its nose at mainstream society and middle-class strictures. It trumpets an anti-consumerist message, reveling in its freedom from what Critical Mass co- founder Chris Carlsson calls the ball and chain of auto debt and expenses.