The 20th Anniversary Critical Mass Ride is 3 weeks away!  And that’s not all — the much-awaited 20th Anniversary book, Shift Happens!: Critical Mass at 20, will be in our hands in a couple weeks! As we count down to 28 September, we want to highlight some of the book’s contributions from the various cities worldwide where the conversation is HOT about Critical Mass.  As the editors, we wanted to know what has changed over the past 20 years, how Critical Mass has altered the landscape for bicycling, bicyclists, bike culture and the urban physical landscape. So, our book has contributions from 31 cities, and we’re gonna try to feature all of them in daily posts excerpting the essays here.

Today we focus on where it all started, here in San Francisco.  Contributors Hugh D’Andrade, Adriana Camarena, Lusi Morhayim, Mario Bruzzone, and Jason Meggs reflect on (respectively) personal transformation, our own limited perceptions of the ride, the move from counter publics to counterspaces, gendered performance within the CM culture, and the benefits and wrong turns of Critical Mass in SF. This selection of SF writers is a good indication of the diversity of style, angle, and topic of the essays in the book. Here is a taste of what you’ll read… (more…)