critical mass fri 29 december
We met at the usual time and place of 6pm at central library in Manchester city centre. There were about ten of us, numbers being a bit low becasue many people had gone to other towns and cities for christmas and new year, but making up the numbers we had people from Aberdeen, York and Swansea!
We rode around the roads for an hour and a half with the bicycle
soundsystem playing a mixture of Slayer and Country/ folk. Some people cheered us and some drivers tried to kill us by dangerously overtaking us and driving on the wrong side of the road nearly into on-coming cars.
One woman said that we were being mean to her children becasue we were slowing her down and so I explained that we were celebrating bikes over car culture because amongst other things (and in addition to other groups of society) cars give children asthma and run them over and so maybe she’d like to reconsider and support us, but she later overtook us slowing down an ambulance that we were making space for to get through, she didnt get very far, about 200 yards to the next lights! She would have been quicker on a bike (of course!) Oh well. but that was really the only randomly vaguely negative incident most people seemed pleased to see us or inquisistive about why we were riding.
It was a fun ride and nice that some new people came on it. Hopefully
we’ll see them again. After the ride some of us went for a beer in the bar. nice.
We were going to have a benefit night on the january mass but as its
pangea (a big student night) where lots of people seem to be going and lots of our friends bands seem to be playing at we thought that february mass would be better (its also my birthday!). But at the next one someone will hopefully come down and film and interview some people on the mass for a film about cycling in Manchester I’m trying to make. On that note can anyone that knows film stuff that might be up for helping get in touch.
thought you might like to see this too posted by someone in the GMCC
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/postbag/template/2006/12/28.html?1
