Sigh
Tuesday night ride December 2nd, 2008
I’m here at my office preparing for trial tomorrow (injured bicyclist fighting with Farmer’s Insurance) and the Tuesday Night Bike Ride just rode past my office.
I stood outside and waved when I heard them all outside and one person somewhat angrily told me to get a bike. Perhaps he recognized me and was joking. I hope so.
Others waved back or rang their bells. I am pleased there is still such a great turnout on that ride! If any of my readers don’t know it yet the ride leaves every Tuesday night from the flagpole at the University Main Gate, which is one block south of Park on University Ave. People gather at 8 PM for a casual ride through town. By “people” I mean hundreds of people. See you all next week!
Erik Ryberg
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:36 am
For the newbies’ sake, let’s say it’s one block east of Park.
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:55 am
The ride last night left something to be desired. The kids on the BMX bikes doing tricks through the crowd and stopping traffic are part of the reason people hate cyclists. The rampant running of red lights also does not help. I think I’m through with the whole scene, it makes me a little sad.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:06 am
Erik, Sometimes there are people on the ride who talk mean to each other, and put each other down, and use language that offends some people and generally act disrespectful. I *think* they’re friends with each other, but I don’t know them, and as long as I’m not in on their private/loud joke, it’s just feels mean and ugly to me. I do my best to ride away from them, but still, it puts a little taste of poison in my mouth that takes awhile to go away.
The reason I go on the ride is to taste the sweetness!
Charlotte, I’ve been staying away partly because I don’t want to be associated with the BMX manchildren too. I hope we can self-regulate. I hate the notion that we need another round of cop escorts to make everyone play nice.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:17 am
Janet, the cops showed up last night! We were riding down 6th ave (not a great idea, really) and the cop roars by yelling “GET OUT OF THE STREET!” It made me laugh a little that the cop seemed to be implying that we should be on the sidewalk.
The worst part of those BMX kids is that they don’t have lights OR brakes. How does one stop with a free wheel and no brakes?! I’m shocked that they’re never the ones who get hit and killed, ya know? Dumb luck maybe?
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Please.
Ride Civil.
http://www.ridecivil.com/
Please bring this to Tucson.
I’ve watched the ride now two nights in a row, in addition to the many times I’ve bumped into it while I was commuting. I used to organize Critical Mass in Saint Louis. Antagonism like the Tuesday Night Bike Ride is the reason I stopped.
Let’s go multi-modal!
Car-free and full-on bike,
Archer
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Would anybody like some cheese with that?
December 3rd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
My perception of the ride since I started attending in August ‘07 is that it has always been quite dynamic as to how the mass generally conducts itself. It seems to change based on who is there and who isn’t there. It used to be that almost every week there was a sort of open forum before the ride in which certain people would speak one at a time (well pretty much shout to be heard) about things to remember for the ride that night. It seemed to help in unifying the way everyone conducted themselves.
Janet, you have got me thinking back to the police last fall…and sadly doesn’t it almost seem like those were the good old days? Though the police presence at some of the rides last fall was disconcerting and scary, I think it ultimately brought the ride to a point where there was the most solidarity among the riders. It felt like a victory when we finally got them to bugger off and give us our nice quiet ride back…and I think that the riders who had experienced the police presence had an understanding that we didn’t want that to happen again so we weren’t going to take our ability to ride as a mass and not be under constant police surveillance for granted. People on the rides then were pretty concerned about everybody staying in one lane….the idea was that if we could “police” ourselves, then we wouldn’t have to deal with the authoritarian presence of the TPD.
Gradually it seemed that people began to forget about the experience with the TPD, which, for those of us remember, was pretty horrifying…we aren’t talking about just a few cops sent out to oversee us…this was a full-scale operation that involved police cars, motorcycles, trucks, and bike cops infiltrating the ride as well. The motorcycles were particularly scary because they tended to blast up the side of the ride without much warning at all.
With new people showing up all the time…it is difficult to impart the reality of that experience to everybody…I am not really sure what the solution is. It seems like it’s time for some of us “old-timers” to step up and tell the newbies that this is not a critical mass…or time for someone to step up and say something.
I think that the ride exists somewhere in between the Ride Civil and the Critical Mass. It’s definitely never been as etiquette-oriented as Ride Civil nor as protest-oriented as Critical Mass….we aren’t really trying to make friends with the cars but we aren’t trying to be antagonistic either. Most of us are just trying to have a nice night time ride with all of our friends.
Archer, if you want to bring the Ride Civil thing to Tucson that’s cool. But I think we are better off trying to incorporate a few of the ideals of Ride Civil back into the Tuesday Ride. Those of us who have been on the rides for a long time know that it really is a good thing and it’s worth keeping it around.
December 4th, 2008 at 11:54 am
If Ride Civil came to Tucson, I’d gladly join it. And this is coming from someone who avoids group rides like the plague.