Mission Mission

Throughout October, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is sponsoring Gas-Free Fridays, an effort to maybe get us one babystep closer to being off oil once and for all. Every Friday this month, an Energizer Station will be set up at a designated corner, where cyclists can stop, congregate and load up on snacks and fair-trade coffee. This week’s corner is 12th and Market, but a future one will be in the heart of the Mission. See you on the bike bus!

Previously on Mission Mission:

We Love Heavy Metal Bike Shop

Bike Polo

When we found out Friday’s Critical Mass was all peaceful, we went off in search of one that wasn’t. Over at milkyboots, our favorite Louisville-based webcomic, Virginia (an avid cyclist) tells us about a pal of hers named Pat who had a bad experience in the aftermath of Friday’s ride. Virginia believes Critical Mass is about fun and community rather than messing with motorists, so:

It goes without saying then that I strongly disagree with the Critical Massers who looked up Pat’s address and then went out and SPRAYPAINTED HIS FUCKING CAR. How are we supposed to get anything accomplished if we repeatedly prove to this city what assholes bike riders are? Yes, I know we are better because we ride all the time. So start acting like it. Don’t let your anger control you. If you want to spraypaint something, spraypaint the fucking slaughterhouse. Or McDonald’s or something. People in cars aren’t the enemy.

They’re just cyclists who don’t know it yet.

But wait, couldn’t the slaughterhouse just be a petting zoo that doesn’t know it yet? And the McDonald’s a Gratitude? Read the whole story (titled “Critical Massholes”) here.

There’s a planning meeting at Sports Basement tomorrow, Wednesday the 17th (natch!), at 6:30pm. SF Bicycle Coalition is spearheading the effort:

17th St. has it’s challenges, but should result in significant improvements on an important East-West Bicycle Route. Stretching from Corbett St. in the Castro to Kansas St. in Potrero Hill, this project will add bike lanes on the whole stretch. The preferred design option calls for parking removal on the stretch between Harrison and Kansas, and lane narrowing on the western portion. Train track crossings present some issues, but can be solved by shifting the bike.

Link.

Photo by keightdee.

At Sunday Streets today, I put a bit of wear and tear on both my front wheel and front tire. Cruising all the way out to the tip of Heron’s Head Park might’ve had something to do with it. But I took it into Heavy Metal, and they fixed it right up, on the spot. Also, they have a badass website.

Becca wrote a love letter to them for us some months ago. It began a little something like this:

There was no school that day, and I was gleefully anticipating an afternoon overflowing with a bike ride which I intended to loop along the Bay, to glide past the Golden Gate Bridge, to wind south from the northern tip of San Francisco to Market Street, to coast victoriously back into the Mission by nightfall or, who knows, to see the sunset out at Ocean Beach. So the moment came to leave the office where I work mornings and out I went for about a mile of cycling as planned, until a screw laying innocuously in the bike path punched into my back tire. You know the sound.

Read the full story here.

From New to the Bay, a chronicle of one recent Mission transplant’s efforts to adjust to life (and cycling) SF:

I’m a New York girl. I’m a little high-strung. The other day, flying down Mission, someone started to open their car door and I screamed a string of obscenities that would hardly be out of the ordinary in New York. This is not quite part of the San Francisco culture. I’m trying to adapt. I’m hoping that I become less high-strung as the days go on.

Link. Is that right? Screamed strings of obscenities are out of the ordinary on Mission Street?

This Craigslist post asks why cyclists have to be so rude to drivers (click thumbnail to make larger):

I’m Sick of Non-Law-Abiding, Self Obsessed Bicyclists in the Mission! (mission district)

1. I’m stopped at a 4-way stop at Hampshire and 22nd, 4 cars at each corner. It’s my turn. I start to accelerate, then have to slam on the brakes because a bicyclist jets through the intersection without stopping or even slowing down. To make it even better, he slaps his ass and air kisses me when I toot my horn at him!

FYI– I am a resident of the Mission. I only drive when necessary. I walk to work and my children use muni to get to school. My autos run on biodiesel and hybrid energy. I respect bicyclists and am one myself. Why such anger, disrespect and dangerous behaviour out there?

Update (Friday morning): Debate is in high gear in the comments section, and it’s grown to include the ol’ bikes vs. pedestrians conundrum too. Meave says: “What, bicyclers, is your goddamn problem, that you are all over the sidewalks?”

Previously on Mission Mission:

Advice to Cyclists

Biking in the Mission Can Be Confusing

Flickr user keightdee saw some dudes playing bike polo in one of Dolores Park’s tennis courts recently. Lots more photos in her photostream. Click thumbnails to enlarge.

A herd/troupe/gaggle – whatever you call a big mass of bikers on a mission – made it over the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco last night, to give a talk at the Mission District Sports Basement about what they’re out to do. It’s a good thing: on bicycle, traveling from Vancouver to Tijuana down the entire Pacific Coast of the United States to raise money for microfinancing through Kiva. The basement of Sports Basement was speckled with stars of the microfinancing movement, including the folks who created Kiva, one of the founders of Global Agents for Change, and the Mission District’s own Jess Arnett! The bikers are staying in the Mission for a few days – keep an eye out for people with unreasonably huge thigh muscles – and will be participating in Critical Mass this Friday. They head south on Saturday (San Francisco bikers are welcome to join them for a day or two, if you feel like a challenge).

Since you’re on the internet already, take a look at what GAFC and Kiva are doing. The concepts behind these groups are pretty fabulous, and the microfinancing movement is becoming big news. This is the sort of trend that makes the internet a source of democratic power, and is a potential venue for action that can have help equalize the messed-up global distribution of wealth. Don’t mind the global distribution of wealth? Feel free to point someone towards kiva.org next time they start complaining about it. We live in San Francisco. It’ll happen.

Schedule’s been stranger than usual lately, so I hadn’t ridden my normal route between jobs in a couple weeks until today. That’s up Harrison and through the Mission from north to south, and things were a-moving and a-shaking! Some of the highlights:

1) Got to give a hello to the guy who sells fruit at 22nd and Harrison – I love this guy, and his $5 ten pound bags of oranges are the sweetest in the city. I’m always a little sad when I bike past and his truck is all closed up, although I don’t usually have enough space in my bag to pick up 10 pounds of oranges anyway. Maybe more on him later.

2) New contender for Not A Helmet! I watched a man bike by on 24th Street wearing a baseball cap, and using his hands to hold and eat a little bag of potato chips instead of the handlebars. I couldn’t see what flavor they were though. Any guesses?

3) Street light out at 25th & Mission, real live traffic cops instead! Did anyone else thank these folks? They seemed surprised when I did.

4) Important news for the adorable 3 year old I babysit for, a passionate connoisseur of construction vehicles and practices: if you promise to be careful, sometimes you can bike straight through a construction zone (now reaching the southern tip of Valencia) instead of going around like all the cars.

Then I got to work, and found out I was scheduled to stay an hour later than usual. It was alright though, I got to sing “Rakata” on the playground.