Last night was a huge ride here in San Francisco, maybe 2500 or 3000 riders! The weather was ideal, warm and sunny, and daylight savings time made for a long evening. Whoever got out in front did a majestic job of turning and twisting around downtown for a good hour or so, stopping regularly, which made it a slow, chatty, friendly pace for everyone. Eventually we wrapped part way around Union Square, and did a back and forth on Post and Sutter before finally making our way uphill through both tunnels, to Polk, back south past City Hall and up Market Street to an unusual left on Dolores. The ride broke up after a long stall on Dolores and 18th, but we’d been riding a couple of hours by then, and everyone fanned out around the Mission, clogging sidewalks, restaurants, and thousands hung out in Dolores Park until late. It was a great ride, had a lot of nice conversations with old friends and new, fun playing my new coconut-like percussion device I acquired in Brazil (they’re actually Castanha do Para shells) along with my usual bells… Here’s the photo gallery:

We turned west on Pine as the March sunshine streamed towards us, near the beginning.

Critical Mass March 2009, Sacramento and Battery.

On Clay near Montgomery, you can see the riders in the distance on Kearny, far behind this part.

Nice guitar playing on a trailer!

Coming up Sutter before turning into Stockton Tunnel.

The entire Stockton Tunnel is full of cyclists heading north.

Sweet chopper on Sansome!

Rolling west out of the Broadway Tunnel

Vibrating downhill southward on broken asphalt on Polk

A long pause with bike lifts at 18th and Dolores before dispersing, mostly into the adjacent park...

Under steady rain, 100 cyclists took to the streets of Belem in the first Bicicletada in the Amazon!

It was a great night! Pai d’Egua! (That’s a charming idiomatic expression that local Belem cyclists have taught us: literally Father of the Mare, but translates as “Cool!” The Paulistas were charmed by this as much as me!) I don’t think anyone knew if it would work or not, and when it turned out to be a rainy night, doubts must have been raised. But one hundred enthusiastic cyclists took to the streets of Belem last night, bringing the global Critical Mass movement to the Amazon and the World Social Forum, under the Brazilian name “Bicicletada”.  They chanted and sang, we rode all over town, into a gas station, past the center’s Praca da Republica, and eventually into one of the city’s most posh public parks where Raoni had had his bike’s tires slashed by disturbed security guards the day before when he stopped there for lunch and had a tiff with them about rolling his bike into the gated park. The chants were funny and boisterous: “Mais Adrenalina, menos gasolina!” (More adrenaline, less gasoline!), “Mais Bicicletas, Menos Carros” (more bikes, less cars), and a few others that I’ll try to add later when I get someone to remind me of them… one was a song, “Motorista! Motorista! Olha a bike! Olha a bike! Deixa o Carro aí-í! Deixa o carro aí – e Vem Pedalar! Vem Pedalar!” (“Motorist, Motorist, Watch out for bikes! Watch out for bikes! Leave your car there! Leave your car there… and come and pedal, come and pedal”–to the tune of the nursery rhyme Frêre Jacques.)

The Bike Lift is an increasingly universal gesture of Critical Mass cyclists, here in the pouring rains.

Several times we passed local tourist hotels full of WSF delegates. Here we are at the Crown Plaza, with delegates cheering us from the balconies while we all chanted "Mais Bicicletas, Menos Carros"!

We took over this big Shell station for a half hour, which was taken in good spirits by all.

Allan was one of the locals from Belem who normally takes treks to the countryside on weekends, but found a new thrill in a Bicicletada in his home town... and it was his farewell too, because he's moving to Brasilia soon to work for the Supreme Court as a techie.

Bertina and Nicholas from Lyon, France. I met Bertina at the Big CM in Rome last May and here we found each other again at the mouth of the Amazon! small world...

The contrast between Critical Mass and the wider experience of the World Social Forum was pretty palpable. The excitement and energy, the camaraderie in the streets, the actual riding and being out in public instead of sitting indoors hearing familiar litanies of problems and “solutions,” all work towards something deeper and more interesting. One of my main concerns with the WSF is that it would consist of so many predictable and oft-repeated ideas. Seems that is true. But to reduce the WSF to the 2,000+ workshops is to miss the real event I think. Something rather different is happening in the halls, gardens, bars, and restaurants around the area. The authentic, unvarnished, unrehearsed conversations are the real deal here, and they happen informally, outside of the presentations. I’ve only poked my head into a dozen Talks, and as an avowed classroom-phobe, I quickly withdraw. It’s all very “educational” and the brief snippets of talk that I heard was always remarkably uninformative unless you came in knowing nothing at all. Was the World Social Forum really designed to be a place where you come and present the altogether familiar critiques of capitalist barbarities and ecological calamities? Because that’s a big majority of what’s out there. I really hope to find out I’m wrong, and that there are lots of great conversations happening in the formal sphere too, but I haven’t yet. During Critical Mass I met Paula from Lima, Peru, an anthropologist who is here and then heading to do more graduate work in Sao Paolo. She attended a number of the indigenous-led events (I missed them all) and was quite disappointed at the lack of new thinking, new information, or anything that departs from what’s been said for the past decade at these kinds of events.

Critical Mass was preceded by my Nowtopia Talk at a forum hosted by Ecologia Urbana of Sao Paolo, and though I felt I wasn’t as crisp and coherent as I wanted to be, and had to drastically shrink the argument for time and translation issues, it still was very well received. Earlier in the day Ecologia Urbana EU) hosted two other panels, one on the national oil company Petrobras, which they called Petrobras: Assassino! (Petrobras: Murderer!). Apparently Petrobras sent a dozen or more of their employees to harangue the presentation, and to cheer their own counter-speakers. Ze Paolo, one of my hosts from EU, has a Ph.D. in Economics (“But that’s fiction!” I exclaimed when he told me) and with that credibility he depended on stats he gleaned from their own annual report to make the arguments about the devastating role of Petrobras on the ecology and economy of Brazil. Interestingly, the chief greenwasher for Petrobras, a woman, approached them afterwards with what seemed to be a sincere desire to work with them. I can believe it. A lot of corporate pr people know they’re dishing out bullshit and given the chance, might easily become moles or even turn against their employers more substantially. Here’s a photo at the end of the night at the bar, with Jean Paolo on the left and Ze Paolo on the right.

At midday they gave a Talk on Green Cities, and I thought they did a really good job, very coherent and direct, discussing the impact of energy, transit and consumption choices on the possiblities of a green city transformation, but arguing compellingly that it is possible to do it, even on a Planet of Slums (they quoted Mike Davis on that), and specifically in a mega-city like Sao Paolo, if you take it one street and one neighborhood at a time. I was able to understand a lot of the presentation, as I was later able to follow my good friend Thiago’s wonderful addition to my Nowtopia talk, where he went on at some length about fear and isolation and the importance of Nowtopian initiatives for breaking those down and bringing people into social processes that reinforce themselves towards greater convivility and cooperation. I was surprised I could understand as much as I did (on the other hand, I still draw a complete blank about half the time when someone says something to me!)

Post-Nowtopia talk group portrait!

So among the hundreds of events here, I snapped a few photos of signs just to capture the breadth.

This sounds like it could be interesting....didn't get to see it though.

If you’re trying to keep up with any kind of serious schedule of attending all these meetings and discussions, you are approaching exhaustion by now! Even if you’re not, like me, being so far from home in a strange muggy climate with unusual surroundings and language demands is pretty exhausting in itself! Here’s a couple of shots:

These guys are grabbing 40 winks between sessions. With such an overwhelming schedule, anyone trying to attend a lot of events is becoming incredibly exhausted.

I’ve been happy to have this media center to work in. It’s air-conditioned and the internet always works!

My workplace here in Belem. This gym was lined in fabric and is now air-conditioned! Very comfy, and a very reliable internet connection too! Thank you WSF!

And now a couple of nature shots for the day…

Heavy rains provide lots of habitat for herons, grazing in a flooded field with a sleeping delgate barely visible in the vehicle in the background.

OK, ornithologists! Name this bird!

OK, a final note: I wrote a much longer entry a bit ago, and for the 3rd consecutive time, it got wiped out when I tried to save it. Something is wrong with the software, and it’s making me crazy! This time I wrote a lot of it here in the WordPress editing window, thinking that would save me, maybe it was a MS Word thing, but I got hosed anyway. So I’m trying to rewrite it, but a lot of good words got lost… SHIT!!!

Old friends from the Committee for Full Enjoyment, drumming during last night's Dia de los Muertos in San Francisco. (see below)

Haven’t been blogging much lately… The election is dominating airspace, and though it’s not dominating the small space between my ears, I haven’t been able to focus on any good themes to blog about lately. I’m reading the People’s History of the Civil War and Framing the Black Panthers, both good books, both kind of slow reading. I figured it would be good background reading during the election of Obama, even though he’s as far removed from the issues of slavery and 1960s’ black militance as you can get and still be black…

I hope he wins. It’ll be much more interesting than the other option, but a day ahead of the election, I still wonder if we won’t be “shocked” by the news that McCain somehow pulled out a dozen states that he wasn’t expected to win, while charges of electronic fraud and broken machines, and lack of ballots, pile up all over the place. Democracy Now! covered the story of a guy who is being deposed today, a fellow accused of masterminding the election fraud perpetrated by Cheney/bush in 2000 and 2004, by forwarding the results from various states like Ohio to an intermediary computer in Tennessee where of course the results were doctored to suit their goals.

Probably we’ll have President Obama, and then it’ll be interesting to see if he will break with his sponsors at Goldman Sachs and the coal and nuclear industries to pursue the grassroots-supported “Green Economy,” one which is fraught with contradictions itself, but is being pushed by countless small groups, independent political actors, and is somehow embedded in a lot of folks’ deep aspirational psyches… or so it seems. To some extent the analysis in Nowtopia taps this too, though my book of course tries to reframe these aspirations in terms of class and an anti-capitalist agenda.

I’ve been reading a lot at Automatic Earth which is written in England and is just a fantastic clearinghouse of bleak analysis and financial information. The breaking news on a fair number of economically minded websites is that world trade is collapsing. Whatever attention you’ve paid (or not) to the bailouts and the fluctuations of stocks and housing prices, off our radar in the U.S. to a great extent are numbers like the Baltic Exchange Dry Index which measures the cost of shipping worldwide. This article at the TimesOnline UK (via Automatic Earth) gives the latest amazing stats wherein the cost of a Capesize freighter in May 08 was some $230,000 a day, and as of last week the same ship had fallen to about $5,800 a day! Apparently the credit freeze-up has stopped a huge amount of shipping, and we may be entering a period of radical contraction in world trade. That’s not gotten much attention lately during the insanity that passes as “politics” here in the U.S. election crazy season…

Another piece of this unfolding crisis is the collapse of economies all over the world, from Ukraine and Iceland to the unravelling of Latin American economies too, underscoring how little the so-called “Center-Left Regimes” of Lula, Evo, Chavez, Kirchner, et al, really broke with the underlying dynamics of neoliberal world markets. Long-time socialist analyst of Latin America James Petras writes about this at length here (again, thanks to Automatic Earth for the original link).

Locally there’s the Gay Marriage initiative in California, which seems like it’ll be defeated, but it’s a toss-up. Marriage is such a dumb institution and many of my more radically inclined friends, past and present, among the sexually libertine of various persuasions, understand that a big impetus for sexual radicalism was to overcome the limits of marriage…. so it’s quite sad to see it become the rallying point for gay politics, but that really just confirms the obvious limits of gayness as a political stance… all that said, of course gay marriage should remain legal, with all the rights and responsibilities it entails, spousal and otherwise. Better if we could do away with marriage in general for everyone, rather than extending the tired, inhibiting and basically reactionary church- or state-based institution further.

In San Francisco we have a giant ballot, the presidential vote, a bunch of state ballots, state reps and senators, and then locally we have ranked-choice voting for our local city council, the Board of Supervisors, as well as another long list of propositions. We can vote to decriminalize prostitution, to name a sewage plant after George Bush, to raise fees and taxes in several ways, and perhaps the most important local initiatiave, that is almost certain to be defeated by the vast millions spent by PG&E, is Prop H, a clean-energy bill that has been attacked for months for supposedly “taking away our right to vote”!! A few local politicos, like Isabel Wade of the Parks Council, have shown themselves to be sycophants of PG&E by participating in their distorted and dirty campaign… Prop H would authorize the city to consider buying out PG&E (as it was mandated to do in 1913 by the federal Raker Act, affirmed by an 8-1 Supreme Court decision in 1941, ignored ever since) if it was determined that pursuing the clean energy goals of Prop H would be more effectively served by a publicly owned power utility… a process that would be done by issuing revenue bonds, a type of bond over which there has never been a right to vote!… at least someone managed to make this viral ad, which I caught on Colbert the other night in one of its only public airings besides the internet. Here it is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZuwXSbb6WA]

While all this is going on, life in San Francisco continues to be deeply satisfying, in spite of all the madness that prevails nationally and even in local politics. The end of October brings the biggest muncipal holiday, Halloween, which fell this year on Critical Mass Friday. The ride took off after rain a day earlier (which returned as a real deluge on Saturday, so we got lucky!) under blue skies and incredibly balmy warm weather.

Halloween Critical Mass departs, Ferry Building behind. Photo by Eduardo Green.

Halloween Critical Massers glowing to match the sky. Photo by Eduardo Green.

I came up with a costume the night before: The Pyramid Scheme! Someone told me it’s not legal to photocopy bills, but I did it without knowing, and made this up… it has a small sign on it too, saying “Two monsters in one: a CDO riding an SIV!” (CDO=Collateralized Debt Obligation, SIV=Structured Investment Vehicle)

The Pyramid Scheme at the start of Halloween Critical Mass, San Francisco, 2008. Photo: Eduardo Green.

It was another wonderful ride, winding all around town, at one point we piled up on Broadway while the riders ahead decided to go east or south…

Stalled on Broadway, the party is ongoing!

Broadway and Columbus ahead.

On my way home much later that night, I ran into the $700 billion bailout and we had someone snap this photo:

Pyramid Scheme meets $700 billion bailout, Halloween 08!

Then, on November 2, here in the Mission we have a big Dia de los Muertos procession, which is a remarkable event. It’s very embedded in this neighborhood, with its strong Latino population, but this event has been thoroughly transformed (some would say co-opted) by the strong embrace of the youthful hipster scene, the folks who have been moving in to this neighborhood steadily for over 25 years.

Dia de los Muertos gathering point, 24th and Harrison.

Face painting has its day (of the dead)

Revering and remembering the dead happens via memorials, altars, installations in local galleries, and just somberly joining the march with a candle. Simultaneously hundreds of people are drumming, dancing, and carrying on like it’s Carnival, heavily costumed, and in altered states.

Mona, Ruby, Nick, and Adriana

Finally it’s a syncretic concoction of local art, culture, politics, music, and a huge street seizure for hours on Nov. 2 every year, almost like a Reclaim the Streets event. (At the end of the night I heard a report of the police becoming belligerent with some friends, arresting two, in what can only be seen as yet another manifestation of the Culture War locally. The police just hate seeing so many people have such a wildly good time, without exacting some kind of “price” for the revelry.)

One of the more impressive get-ups along Harrison.

Something new this year, beyond the usual Aztec drummers, a samba troupe, and two other drumming contingents and many many dancers, was this Vehicle of the Apocalypse, drawn by six cyclists welded to the wagon… quite an impressive piece of work!

The Ringmaster of the Apocalypse!

Tomorrow we’ll finally be done with this quadrennial madness that passes for politics in the U.S.! I can’t wait! But I’m glad real life continues to percolate in so many ways, all too often out of sight, but if you’re living it, it’s a great antidote to the sad, lonely, empty rituals of modern America.

So it’s almost done! In fact, both big digital efforts are almost done… this blog got moved, thanks to Cathy at Pajamadon (link at bottom for a bit), who did all the dirty work and helped me get up and running. The Shaping SF wiki is getting there too, a much more daunting project… I’m up to 1017 screens “fixed” with maybe 200 more to go… Been adding a lot of stuff too…

Two worthy events just a week ago: Critical Mass had its Sweet 16th birthday. It was a fine ride, but I can’t say I felt particularly tickled or magical due to the anniversary. The front of the ride went off like a shot, as it has been doing lately, and thus, the ride spread out all over town. Must’ve been between 4,000 and 5,000 cyclists though, so there was quite a large dense pack for a long time. Here’s a few shots:

Critical Mass near the beginning of its 16th birthday ride, Sept. 26, 2008.

Critical Mass 16th birthday rides past Union Square, San Francisco, Sept. 26, 2008Critical Mass heads south on Polk Street, Sept. 26, 2008.

Critical Mass heads south on Polk Street, Sept. 26, 2008.

Last Saturday, Sept. 27th, was also the unveiling of Mona Caron’s new mural, a spectacular dyptych on two walls facing each other across the Noe Valley Ministry’s parking lot on 24th Street between Vicksburg and Sanchez… the city’s CAO Ed Lee showed up and declared it “Mona Caron Day” which added a note of hilarity to a great day.

SF CAO Ed Lee helps declare

I gave a brief talk, following Mark Growden’s musical contribution, which included playing this Nowtopian instrument: a set of handlebars!

Mark Growden plays the handlebars!

Mona isn

Rupa and the April Fishes played, and about 100-150 people laid out blankets and lawn chairs to enjoy the brief Utopian moment in the parking lot. I missed a big puppet show, and a lot of other words from some fine speakers, but all in all it was one of those especially fun San Francisco moments.

Rupa and the April Fishes rock out the mural opening, Sept. 27, 2008.

Mona and her mural managed to produce in real life what was depicted on the walls.

Mona Caron

Mona Caron

Utopian San Francisco echoes real life!