San Francisco Critical Mass History

Critical Mass is a group bicycle ride taking place once a month in hundreds of cities around the world. The first ride was attended by a few dozen people in San Francisco on September 25th, 1992. Today the San Francisco ride averages a thousand people every month. Originally the ride was intended to be a fun way to make bicycle commuters more visible to each other, to drivers and to the city planners. It was a pleasant way to get home after work on the last Friday of the month. The event was advertised by individuals passing out fliers to fellow cyclists and to passersby on the street. The idea quickly caught on and spread to surrounding cities and soon enough became an international phenomenon.

Critical Mass has a decentralized organizational structure; there are no official leaders or planers. Sometimes people make a route ahead of time, but often it is simply the people who happen to be at the front of the ride who decide where the Mass should go. There has been one notable conflict in San Francisco’s Critical Mass history. In 1997 then-Mayor Willie Brown’s limousine got stuck in traffic waiting for the Critical Mass ride to go by. He ordered the police department to crack down on the ride, stating that "a little jail time" would teach the riders a lesson. The next month saw the police attempt to stop Critical Mass before it began. 115 riders were arrested for unlawful assembly, jailed, and had their bicycles confiscated by the police. The rest of the participants scattered into multiple smaller groups riding around the city until the police forced each group to disperse.

The next month, about 5,000 cyclists definitely showed up and decided to follow the "Good Soldier Schweik approach" where everyone rode individually, following all the traffic laws. This was much more disruptive than a single large group of cyclists riding around town and traffic downtown was disrupted much more than ever before. After seeing that, the Mayor and police stopped the harassment of Critical Mass and things have been more or less calm ever since.

Today San Francisco's Critical Mass rides are a lot smaller. Many bicycle advocates have moved from a militant position to working for organizations such as the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. Others have started up bike party rides, which are less focused on advocacy and more about having a good time and partying.

The San Francisco Critical Mass ride is the last Friday of every month. It starts around 6pm at Justin Herman Plaza (the end of Market Street).