"Massus Interruptus"
Ken Coughlin

They say never trust a man who lacks the capacity to play. The same could
be said of a city. The grim streets of New York are traditionally all
about
business — the business of moving cars, often at a snail's pace, to be
sure,
but business is business, and the city moves on oil and gas, doesn't it?Riding a bike in New York traffic can be both terrifying and exhilarating.
It requires constant vigilance, quick reactions. There is literally no
place for you, not even in the designated bike lanes, which are often
little
more than elongated parking lots. You share the road with impatient
cabbies, hurtling SUVs, all manner of fire-breathing vehicles that with
one
errant turn of the wheel could wipe you off the map. You feel the heat
from
the hoods, the frustration of drivers behind the wheel. he cacophony of
horns and revving engines builds in your brain. You sometimes ask
yourself:
"Am I nuts? Is this what I get for my 'clean transportation' choice?"

For the past four or five years, on the last Friday of each month, I've
been
part of an alternative vision, a playful dream of a different New York
scene: streets filled with bicycles. For an hour or two on these
"Critical
Mass" rides, we become a sufficient presence on the streets that,
miraculously, we suddenly are the norm. New Amsterdam becomes Amsterdam.
You ride down Broadway and all you see in front of you, behind you and
beside you are fellow cyclists. You feel safe, you feel happy, you feel
joyous. Pedestrians wave, tourists snap pictures. We wave back, ring our
bells and chant: "Whose streets? Our streets!" and "We are traffic!" As
we
ride, brave cyclists "cork" the side streets, blocking crossing traffic
for
the 5 to 10 minutes that it takes the mass of giddy wheelers to pass. But
often, when the chanting subsides, there's an eerie, other-worldly quiet
as
we glide through midtown's canyons. Bikes, after all, make very little
noise. These are my favorite moments.

Something about this vision is intolerable to New York's officialdom. My
sister, with whom I often ride, says it's all about control. How can
something like this take place on the city's sacred streets without it
being
managed? Who's in charge here, anyway?

And so, the city seemed to have decided enough is enough. Word had it
that
the final straw came when the Mass "took" the FDR Drive during the July
ride. We evidently crossed some invisible line. No, not the FDR, holiest
of holy limited-access shrines!

As most of the world knows, the crackdown began at the August ride, just
before the start of the Republican National Convention. The police were
ham-handed, simply throwing up nets, roadblocks, corralling scores of
cyclists at a time. What's the charge? Who cares. "Disorderly conduct"
will
do for now. The news went around the world. A friend got a call from a
friend in Somalia who'd heard about the arrests, 264 in all.

For September's ride, I packed for the jail cell. Candy bar hidden in my
sock, legal aid phone number scrawled on my leg. Rumor had it the city
was
determined to break Critical Mass.

At the Union Square North staging area, the media was there in force.
Helicopters hovered overhead. Tanned newscasters roamed the crowd for
biker
sound bites. The mayor exhorted us to obey the law. But the law,
according
to a flyer the police were handing out, provides that it is illegal to
ride
a bicycle in a procession on the public streets without a permit. (Was
the
traffic I'd seen idling bumper-to-bumper on the West Side Highway earlier
that evening part of a procession? It was hard to tell.)

At some undetermined signal we mounted up and began heading north up Park
Avenue South. For the first half-hour, the police were obliging. Officers
on scooters "corked" the side streets for us (and they can cork with the
best of them!). But we had an uneasy feeling. What was next, corporate
sponsorship?

At Park Avenue in the low 50s the police blocked us. Temporary confusion
and worry. Was this the mass arrest we all anticipated? The ride quickly
turned west and then headed south through Times Square, with the police
smoothing the way once more. But just before Macy's on 7th Avenue we were
blocked again. We tried turning east on 36th, crossing 6th Avenue.
Suddenly the riders in front of us began feverishly wheeling their bikes
around. We were trapped, 100 or so of us, on the block. We hurriedly made
for the sidewalks. The street cleared and a score of police scooters and
vans paraded past. We later learned arrests were being made farther up
the
block.

We wandered back to 6th Avenue in small clumps, disheartened, the ride
effectively over for us. From curb to curb, cars crept up the avenue,
horns
blaring, heat rising. We crossed in front of a phalanx of hulking SUVs,
hoods at chest level. We had been awakened from our playful dream and
were
back in the inhuman nightmare of New York's streets. Until next month.