Rights of Passage
Certainly Michael’s preferred mode of transportation is out of the ordinary–he travels by bike. Were he a resident of Canton or Kuala Lumpur, this wouldn’t be unusual. But here in Chicago, pedaling regularly on busy streets makes him a revolutionary, and along with a few hundred fellow bikers, Michael hopes to send the city a message: the revolution will not be motorized. As part of a worldwide phenomenon called Critical Mass, hundreds of bikers will gather this Friday at 5:30 PM in the Daley Center plaza to take a leisurely ride through downtown streets at the height of rush hour.
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The bikers hope that their demonstration will become a monthly ritual and that these actions will eventually allow them to claim a slice of the pavement as their own. Michael, for one, is tired of being harassed by drivers. “Yesterday someone in a car actually swerved in my direction, trying to intimidate me,” he says. “I have to deal with that a lot. It’s very stressful. And then two or three times a month I come within inches of being doored. When you’re cycling, passing cars give you maybe five or six feet of room. The problem is if there are parked cars, someone might swing a door open and you have three seconds–less really–to stop or run into the door, probably flip over it, and maybe break your back. My brother in San Francisco was doored not too long ago, and he was in the hospital for a few days. So I ride out a little in the traffic lane. But the cars feel like you’re taking up too much of the road. You’ll get honks. You’ll get catcalls. The cars feel like they own the road.
Michael could be described as an organizer but disdains the term; he’s hard-pressed to state Critical Mass’s manifesto. “It’s not an official meeting. It’s not a parade. It’s just a coincidental convergence of bike riders. It’s just people who happen to get together to go on a bike ride.” The movement has no officials or leaders. Word gets around through a grapevine of coffeehouses, bike shops, bars, and other meeting places for commuters, athletes, and hobbyists. “No one’s trying to lead this thing.” Nevertheless, Critical Mass flyers have been popping up all over town, especially along the city’s main bike routes and its diagonal streets–Milwaukee, Elston, Clark, Broadway. “We’re creating a culture here called a xerocracy. People circulate flyers. Others xerox route maps.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo by Jim Alexander Newberry.
