My First Critical Mass
◊ My first Critical Mass kicked all ass.
I'd watched the mobs of people on bikes taking over Market Street before, and yesterday I finally got to join them. I showed up at the Embarcadero and Market at 5:30 p.m. and only saw a few dozen people. An hour later the whole area was jammed solid with a couple thousand people. The middle of the crowd, not surprisingly, smelled like hippies.
It being the Friday before Halloween, loads of people were wearing costumes. I spotted a Cookie Monster, a Tigger, plenty of devils, a praying mantis and loads of face paint. There was also a naked guy on a bike, wearing only a scrap of fabric or leather on his "thing," as a couple of embarrassed and giggling full-grown adults called his penis.
We poured down the street, stopping traffic for blocks. The route had been changed so we'd be heading past the hotels where striking workers were demonstrating. The cyclists cheered and clapped and chanted with the strikers — probably half of them in support of the strike and the other half howling and cheering because they liked making noise. We walked our bikes up and down steep hills in Chinatown.
You'd think that drivers in San Francisco would be more aware of Critical Mass, since it's been going on for 12 years, but most of them seemed completely taken by surprise. Some of them were on cell phones, looking perplexed and saying things like "I dunno, there are bikes everywhere and I don't know what's going on," some grinned and waved and some hung out their windows and high-fived passing cyclists. A few angrily honked their horns and yelled, but everyone just waved and started cheering when the honking got too loud.
At Critical Mass, there's usually someone hauling a trailer with speakers so they can blast music. This time there were two and one was all disco, all the time. At one point we turned down a narrow street and the pace of the mob slowed to almost nothing. Dozens of people lay down their bikes in the street and started dancing to "Do the Hustle" without a trace of sarcasm.
The ride tapered off after a couple of hours and a cluster of us stopped outside the Zeitgeist. I'd showed up alone and didn't know anyone there, so I walked up to a guy with long hair in pigtails and a beautiful, beautiful guy about my age because it looked like they were thinking of hitting the bar.
"Hey, anyone going inside?" I asked. "'Cause I heard you talking about drinking beer and I figured, shit, I'm all over that."
They laughed and said "Sure, yeah!" as I'd figured they would. There wasn't any room for our bikes in the bar, so they dug around in their backpacks for booze and within a couple of minutes I was sitting on the sidewalk outside the bar with Paul and Mario, passing around a couple 40s of King Cobra and being loud and happy as fuck. They passed around a pipe; I reluctantly declined, since I wanted to actually be able to ride my bike back to Pier 39.
A guy with long, fluffy black hair jammed under a top hat walked up, flapping his cape at us. Paul introduced him as Keny — just one "n," like "Kenya" without the "a" — the "full-blooded half-breed." Keny handed me and Mario what looked like wrapped condoms. Mario tore his open, fished out a bit of plastic, and two seconds later his mouth was glowing. Mini glow sticks! Keny opened his and popped it in his mouth, then I opened mine. And you know what? Smoking and drinking are way cooler with a glow stick in your teeth. Keny also said he had a foot fetish, and then he complimented my shoes.
We drank there for a while, got a couple more 40s, waved around Keny's sage smudge stick, talked bikes, talked music, and offered beer and Halloween candy to the people walking by. One or two sat down with us for a while, diving into conversation like they belonged there. I'd never seen so many cheerful, sociable drunks. One sober guy even took a piece of Halloween candy after he found out it was a miniature Butterfinger.
We talked to an incredibly drunk guy named Chris who kept telling us he was from Detroit and that one of his buddies had just ODed on Monday and that it kind of fucked him up. He kept hugging Paul and swinging him around, telling us with drunken earnestness how cool it was to walk up to strangers and have them be cool to him.
As Paul and Mario and Kenny stumbled around looking for their bikes and yelling "Hey, where we goin'?" and "Hey, Alisa — Annette — Arquette — Arlette," Chris cornered me between a wall and a parked motorcycle and kept repeating that he was from Detroit, y'know? And I used to play football all during high school and it's so cool here, not like Detroit, because I can just walk up to people like you and you're cool, and I'm not saying this because I wanna fuck you because it's not like that, y'know, you're beautiful but that's not what I'm trying to do here.
I took this to mean that he really was from Detroit, he was completely wasted and he wasn't going to try to fuck me but he wouldn't turn it down if I offered. Huh. Fat chance.
I escaped, barely, after he gave me his e-mail address and a flier for "live industrial music, man!" which was not what I expected from a jock-looking dude in a baseball cap. I gently rolled my bike into the street, nodding that "Oh you drunk motherfucker, you'll keep me here all night if I don't get my ass out of here" nod at Chris, and then we headed out for more beer and a place to kick it. Paul solemnly promised they'd get me back to Pier 39 if I went along, that he'd escort me there like a perfect gentleman.
And oh, man. Here I am, drunk, contact lenses so dried out that I'm afraid they'll pop out of my eyes, trying to follow a bike messenger and a couple of bike fiends on my bike, with its crappy derailleur and iffy brakes. I felt like a one-legged toddler trying to keep up with a herd of gazelles.
OK, drunk gazelles.
They shepherded me there, patiently waiting as I tried to fix a jammed chain by backpedaling, missed a green light or hit the Muni tracks wrong — which made my bike fly out sideways and hurled me to the pavement. I looked like I'd never ridden a bike before and they didn't even laugh at me, just made sure I was OK and gave me tips for not making an ass of myself the next time.
We chilled at a park for a while, passing around more 40s and being basic drunk fools. I hadn't really, truly gotten to be one of the guys like this for years. I mean, sure, Paul apologized for using the word "cunt," but Keny flipped him off and said "Lookit you apologizing! Bitch!" Mario chimed in with "You know, I don't think people say 'cunt' enough. It's a great word." Keny nodded at me and said to Paul, "It's cool, she's a tomboy, you don't have to apologize."
Mario headed for home, since he had to be up early for work, and Paul and Keny and I got burritos at a taqueria on Columbus. I bought Paul a burrito because all night the three of them had been supplying me with beer and cigarettes, demanding nothing in return, and I felt a little guilty for not chipping in. Keny took off, cape flapping in the breeze, and Paul led me to Pier 39. The Muni tracks got me one more time, and bad — the bike jumped sideways, I skidded across the pavement, and I came up bleeding a little. I hopped back onto the bike so fast that Paul was practically stunned. I shrugged. "Shit, man, it's not like I broke a bone or anything. You gotta get right back up on the bike, right?" I said.
Before I split off, Paul shook my hand. "You remember where we were hanging out, right? That's a cool place, go there in the day and you'll meet lots of bike messengers. They're cool people."
"Yeah, I remember."
"Cool." He paused. "Thanks. This ... tonight was awesome."
"Yeah." I grinned. "G'night, man."
So today I'm tired, I stink of sweat, my back hurts from riding around wearing a backpack for hours on end, I've got a couple of tender bruises, and my shirt keeps sticking to the raw patch of road rash on my hip.
And I am so goddamn happy.