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Photos of London Critical Mass, May 25th

Ben | 26.05.2007 10:12 | Culture | Free Spaces | Repression | London

Friday nights critical mass was massive with with no indication that the traditional monthly critical mass bike ride was endangered by the recent court ruling that organisers of such a ride might be breaking the law.
[ Photos copyright (c) - available for use under creative commons non-commercial share-alike license. ]





























The atmosphere on the ride was really friendly with a few small sound systems and a variety of pretty mad bikes and trailers adding to the magic. There were loads of new faces and people of every age and background.

There were also plenty of cops. They had talked to a few people as the ride met up at Waterloo Bridge and were seen handing some kind of paperwork to the owner of one of the sound systems, but no sign of any significant attempt to curtail the ride. Far from being oppressive, they kept themselves to themselves on the whole.

I personally got a quite pissed off a few times by seemingly inconsiderate behavior from the ride itself - for example, not letting pedestrians cross the road. In another example, a bus coming in the opposite direction was blocked by cyclists on the wrong side of the road and held up for at least ten minutes as a result.
The cops did grab a few idiots and give them some stern words on several occasions throughout the ride for cycling on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic.

The police made fools of themselves at Parliament Square when they tried to block the rides third or forth rotation around the square and ended up stalling the ride there for a good half hour. The ride would have moved off much quicker if left to it's own devices as the ride likes to move and becomes impatient when people stop.


Ben

Comments

Hide the following 6 comments

Something to smile about

27.05.2007 07:54

Thanks for posting all these wonderful pictures - photos to gladden the heart! We need more CM everywhere, except in crap cycle lanes.

out of town cyclist


Why idiots

27.05.2007 11:59

Riding down the wrong side of the road on a critical mass is idiotic in my opinion for several reasons and it's not anything to do with breaching the highway code. I am perfectly happy as a cyclist to nip down the odd one way street if it will cut out a ring road, or edge around a left had turn at a red light. However, IMHO, cycling down the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic during the critical mass on Friday just put cops and motorists into a foul and unsympathetic mood, re-enforces prejudices and sends the wrong message. I hope we come across as reasonable and sensible people with a point to make but I fear we often mess that up. What do you think observers thought about the bus getting blocked in when the ride expanded to fill both sides of the road at Victoria?

a self confessed idiot


Manchester Mass ( not a police type person in sight )

27.05.2007 18:49

I attended the Manchester Mass ( 25/05/07 ), it was attended by about 70-100 bikers, and there wasn't any police to be seen ... now , I'm not sure if thats a good thing or not.

Maybe the police think the Manc Mass is so insignificant they don't have to bother with it. A police van did intervene about half way through the 2hr ride and instructed the bikers at the front to pull over to which they shouted to everyone else to " Just keep going" so we did and the police van drove off.

We did have one attempted assault on a masser by some git in a 4x4 , so the police would have been useful at that stage.

Nice pics and video on the London site.

Andy


Awesome!

28.05.2007 13:57

Hooray for London CM! How inspiring.

Here in NYC, the cops were all over us. No arrests this time (yay) but lots of summones for parade without a permit.

As they do every month, they break up the ride and harrass anyone on a bike. As a result, CM is getting smaller as we are really under seige.

Come over and join us! We need your solidartiy and plus, the dollar is really low right now.

NYC-CMer


Best ride ever?! and hello NY!

28.05.2007 15:50

(NYC we are in solidarity with u, Keep it up!! Tell your ride mates that London is with u! Im glad we dont (yet) have your policing, F them)

Well that was the best Crit mass ever in my book, I was so excited when I finally got home

Started just after 7pm and there were prob well over 1000 maybe 1200+ at one point. We finished just after 10.30pm at leicester Sq still 70 strong.

Ride was massive, took at least 20mins for everyone to come down the mall, and everyone cycled round and round that roundabout bit by Buck palace.
Parliament Square - over 1000 people cycled round for 2 lots of big ben chimes and danced with drummers. Whole square on all sides were cheering, amazing noise.

Ride got better as it got later and smaller. People were more up for it and we took some nice routes.. several hundred down Gower street and through Soho was good (9.30pm ish)
Kings cross, slight altercation, think a girl got arrested. But coppers were quiet and nice(ish) all the way through, good job, never seen so many tho.

Bring on next month - its far better when all the part-timers leave I think, but its certainly more powerful in big numbers (but can make it really slow)

Andy
mail e-mail: roweandy@hotmail.com


Xerocracy

29.05.2007 23:30

I think a lot of the antagonistic behaviour from massers in London derives from simple ignorance of what works and what doesn't when riding in a mass as opposed to in the simple self-preservation requirements of normal London riding.

Getting back to the roots and doing a bit of Xerocracy to let folks how to handle corking, intersections, and other potential flashpoints we now know from riding in the town would probably be a very good idea. Bring flyers next month.  http://jig.joelpomerantz.com/CMflyers/corkingfullflyer.jpg

Gee