So the NYC Critical mass was extremely weakly covered today by the New York Times. Hopefully there will be a bigger writeup soon, given that the last paragraph of the article states:

Soon after the ride began, a freelance reporter for The New York Times, Colin Moynihan, was standing on a sidewalk at Sixth Street and Avenue A interviewing people when he was briefly detained and handcuffed. He was later released by the police without charges.

i had a run-in with the police myself, which fortunately ended OK for me. The numbers i heard for the arrest were more on the order of 30-40, not the 18 mentioned in the article.

What really gets me about this whole affair is just how completely non-radical the ride is. It's just people riding bikes! Yes, because the default in this country seems to be the dominant automobile, riding bikes is effectively a protest, but it's not a dangerous protest, except maybe to the gasoline industry. And maybe to the cyclists themselves, just for braving the streets of NYC in something less than heavy armor -- i saw a bike get swallowed up by an SUV last night, and it was terrifying. Fortunately, the rider jumped off just in time and seemed physically intact (though irate), and there were many people around to help out. The bike looked like it was a complete loss, though. I heard later that the SUV driver got out of his vehicle, picked up the bike (it was scratching the undercarriage of the SUV!), and threw it out out of the road so that he could continue on his way. What are these people thinking!? When did it become ok to actually run someone over out of frustration? and why were the police arresting the cyclists last night instead of idiots like this SUV driver? Where are our priorities?