I’ve had it up to here with the monthly Critical Mass ride in San Francisco. For those of you unaquainted with this ‘protest,’ it is a semi-organized bike ride through the streets of San Francisco. The ultimate statement, I suppose, is that bikes are better than cars, and if you drive to work instead of bike, you should be summarily shot, sliced into little tiny slivers, and stuck into the spokes of a higher being’s bike tires.

In a perfect world, we would have less cars and more bicyclists and pedestrians. And I appreciate what Critical Mass is intended to do: Raise the awareness of bicyclists in the city, and push for more bike lanes, etc. As someone who braved the streets of SF on his bike for a few years before forgoing wheels for feet and public transit (and cabs, of course), I fully empathize with the tribulations of the urban cyclist. Shit, I’ve even done a movie about it. I get it.

But these little protests are fucking annoying. Rather than make the intended point, they annoy motorists, infuriate the poor folks stuck on public buses who just want to go home but are instead stuck on a bus, unable to move because of a loud and self-serving demonstration. As a pedestrian, I find these protests totally offensive.

This afternoon I walked down to my corner store to grab a snack, only to find Geary Street, a major thoroughfare, totally jammed up with thousands of bicyclists towing loud speakers with annoying music, doing their monthly Critical Mass ride. Why they were on Geary instead of Market is beyond me, but I would speculate they lost their protest permit for Market Street, so they are getting pushed to the backwaters. Next, their annoying ass protest be ought to be pushed over to Treasure Island, and that would be a good thing.

One would think that protesters seeking to highlight the need for less cars and more bikes would be sympathetic to people *not* in cars. I mean, shouldn’t these people actually endorse people like me, people who are car-free citizens who traverse the city on foot, on public transport and in cabs? I mean, I’m “one less car” too, right?

Wrong. Evidently, pedestrians are just as much the enemy as cars. Rather than heed the red light and allow me to cross Geary when the little green man said I could, these whack ass motherfuckers just kept on rolling through. When I tried to traverse the intersection, I was hollered at and jeered at by the protesters. WTF? This isn’t the first time I’ve been scorned by Critical Mass for going about my business on foot in the city, and it won’t be the last. But I hope someone from CM reads this and tries to create a more agreeable and effective disposition amidst the CM riders.

After all, the goal is to raise awareness and sensitivity about bicycles in the city, isn’t it? Or is it just an annoying, prolonged, aggressive migrating rant from the soapbox? I’m beginning to think it’s the latter. These cats don’t give a shit about any one but themselves, and that makes them just as annoying as motorists with a similar sense of self-entitlement. So Critical Mass, you can kiss my pedestrian ass.