Cyclists Roll to Rule Vancouver in Critical Mass Event

 

On the last Friday of every month, a phenomenon sweeps the downtown core of Vancouver. At 5:30 pm, the height of rush hour traffic, humans of all shapes and sizes and fashion sense, huddle over their handle bars and from the Vancouver Art Gallery on Georgia Street, set out to for a mass bike ride that brings car traffic to a complete standstill and renders pedestrians live Froggers, dodging and weaving across intersections.

Many of us simply stopped wherever we were and gawked at the seemingly endless mass of abiked humanity as far as the eye could see. Many of us took pictures.

This gentleman took it upon himself to be the traffic cop, and he appeared to relish the job. I must have taken twenty pictures of him and his entertaining gesticulations and expressive face.

I love the slightly mischievous twinkle in his eye. I hope I have as much sass when I reach his age.

Well over a hundred men, women, children, babies and everything in between participated in the most recent Critical Mass at the end of July.

Momentum Magazine describes the concept behind the Critical Mass Event:

we ride together in a big mass because together is more fun. That means we don’t go too fast and occasionally the front of the ride will stop and wait for the mass to bulk up so we don’t all become spread thin. This also helps make the ride safer and less confusing for those stuck in cars because we stay together. We don’t cut the ride in half at red lights but volunteer corkers stop and talk to drivers to get them to wait for us to pass. Since there is no leader of the ride, we are all responsible for watching out for ourselves, other riders and keeping it fun and safe.

I love the term “corker” for the official road rage diffuser position. I guess it’s like corking the bottle so nothing spills out – like homicidal urges to run over a cyclist.

I was impressed and a little surprised at how tolerant motorists were during the thick of it, at the intersection of Granville and W. Georgia where I took my photos and cars sat perfectly still in their lanes for well over 20 minutes. That’s probably 200 minutes in frustrated car driver time. Maybe they were as intrigued by the whole spectacle as the pedestrians. I’ve never seen anything like this in my city, and it was definitely inspiring to witness this temporary takeover of bicycles in our car congested city.

Everyone was having such a good time, the positive spirit of the event was contagious and strangers standing around began talking to one another. A man asked me if I would take a picture of his girlfriend who was somewhere in the Mass, and she appeared at the tail end, grinning ear to ear.

I got a few decent shots and her boyfriend was so pleased to receive them.

Lots of participants dressed up in various degrees of costume. From Superman, to pretty girls in body paint, the atmosphere was celebratory and light hearted.

 

 

Next time around, on the last Friday of July (July 31st) I intend to be right in the thick of it, butt on bicycle seat, helmet headed, and taking photographs this time from the inside out. I haven’t been on a bicycle in at least 5 years, so this should be a positive reintroduction to the two -wheeled beast. It’s something I used to enjoy so much, it’s hard to believe I haven’t cycled in so long.

Vancouver has a large, vocal community of avid cyclists, like VACC (Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition) who lobby for better cycling infrastructure such as more designated bike lanes, wider roads to allow for safer road cycling in the city, and more bike lockers.

One wish that has come true for member of VACC and others is the Burrard Bridge bike lanes trial, that begins today, closing an entire lane on the bridge to cars and devoting it to cyclists.

Today (Monday July 13) there will be various celebratory inaugural bike rides across the bridge, and the best one by far sounds like this evening’s ride organized by Momentum and the VACC for a ride over the bridge, followed by a picnic at Vanier Park, and a “Bike-in Movie” at the Museum of Vancouver (film will be “The Triplets of Belleville”) Meet at David Lam park in Yaletown at 6pm and it’s suggested you bring a blanket, food to share, and your own plate and utensils.

Critical Mass is opening up…the conversation about how we live and move around. This is not just transportation, it is about affordable housing (people “must” drive if the only choice is suburbia), the environment, and much, much more.

*Seymour St. sign and our pseudo coliseumVancouver Public Libary in the background. 

  *Even Morrissey-esque hipsters participate…

 …alongside the melancholy…

 …and the elaborately body-painted

Naked Bicycle People Power

It’s billed as “the craziest, wildest, most insane even of the year,” but organizers of World Naked Bike Ride have thrown in a serious message to balance out that decadence, lest the powers that be discover that people are biking around the city starkers for no better reason than because it’s super fun.

We face automobile traffic with our naked bodies as the best way of defending our dignity and exposing the unique dangers faced by cyclists and pedestrians as well as the negative consequences we all face due to dependence on oil, and other forms of non-renewable energy.

My special correspondent/life model extraordinaire, Guy, documented his day of naked decadence at the Annual World Naked Bike Ride.

I asked Guy if he wasn’t concerned about serious chafing in his bejeweled kingdom, but he shrugged and insisted it was actually quite comfortable riding a bike naked, and the more sensitive participants are encouraged to cover their seats with a towel. Personally, I wouldn’t opt for anything less than goose down, but then I don’t foresee a day  I would ever doff my chub camouflage to join the two wheelin’ nudies.

I guess I can vicariously enjoy the liberation that comes with shedding one’s inhibitions along with underwire bras.

Check out the trailer for the film by B.C.’s Conrad Schmidt about why he and hundreds of others around the world cycle naked once a year in cities around the world.

Check out the little promo video set to the appropriately chosen song, “Goin’ on a Naked Bike Ride,” by Dan and Kirsten Kaufman.

And here’s footage from Vancouver’s World Naked Bike Ride a few weeks back.

“I always feel so cheap the next morning”

My *cough* *cough * Masterpiece!

 

My Favourite View:

 

Happy to report nothing cracked, burned badly, or exploded! 

My no-hands technique is going to need some work…my model definitely had hands.

 

No disasters for my first time out sculpting in clay, and I’m ready to keep foisting my humble Dollar Store tools onto another unsuspecting 10lb chunk of clay.

Shadbolt has drop on workshops for true beginners like myself, to those who are honing their craft, 3 days a week all summer.

Mondays, from 1:30-9:30

Wednesdays : 1:30 – 5:30 and

Sundays: 1:30 – 5:30

Movies and Mental Health: Pacific Cinematheque’s ‘Frames of Mind’ Film Series

I’m looking forward to seeing my first film at Pacific Cinematheque, a non-profit arts center that showcases local films, as well as the best in international cinema, film festival offerings, and now a monthly even developed in partnership with the Institute of Mental Health, and UBC Department of Psychiatry to promote education on issues surrounding mental health.

In addition to the movie screening, there are presentations and panel discussions following films shown every third Wednesday of each month.

June 17th will be the Vancouver premiere of Prodigal Sons, a documentary by Kimberly Reed, described by Variety as “Compelling…Tennessee Williams looks like Sesame Street compared to this.”

“A fascinating study of family dynamics…”

With that, and the old black and white photo of three cheerful looking kids in a family portrait, which for me is always an ominous foreboding of tribulations ahead.

The full excerpt from Pacific Cinametheque’s program:

A fascinating study of family dynamics, Prodigal Sons traces the history and disparate trajectories of three brothers who grew up in Helena, Montana, in the 1970s. Mac, the oldest, was adopted; his new parents, the McKerrows, thought they weren’t able to have biological children, and then quickly proceeded to have two: Paul and Todd. Paul, the middle child, was a golden boy: excellent student, captain for the football team, class valedictorian. Marc, held back in kindergarten and always under the shadow of his younger brother, had a harder time. He dropped out of school, was in prison at 19, and at 21 suffered a serious brain injury; given to emotional instability, he seems never to have gotten over his resentment towards Paul. But Paul had his own demons to contend with: After graduation , he moved to San Francisco and became a woman, transitioning into Kimberly Reed, director of this documentary. Prodigal Sons opens as Kimberly travels home to Helena for a high school reunion – her first time back as a woman, and her first visit in years with Marc. Add to the mix the recent discovery that Marc’s biological grandparents are Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. And that a family Christmas with youngest brother Todd, a gay man now working as an architect, ends with a 911 call to police…

Edgar Allen Poe and Poems For Melting Children – surreally?

I’ve been discovering some fascinating websites lately. In  A Journey Round My Skull, a blog self-described as “unhealthy book fetishism from a reader, collector, and amateur historian of forgotten literature” His recent obsessions are illustrations and graphic design.

One caught my eye: a gem a friend of his found in an old 1923 edition of stories by Edgar Allen Poe, one of my favourite writers.

The creepy yet sort of cheeky illustration is by Harry Clarke, (1889-1931) – only 42. He was a stained glass artist, in addition to his work as an illustrator.

Another delightfully bizarre nugget from those wacky humans circa 1920s: Poems For Melting Children from a 1925 collection of poems for children by Russian poet Osip Mandelshtam and illustrations by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky (1875-1957), also Russian, from the book Primus.

Tim Burton could do some serious damage with a feature film based on this warped (in the best sense of the word) collection that manages to be both unsettling and endearing.

In the first picture, raw milk is having a conversation with boiled milk, and raw milk boasts all the products that it can turn into, like yogurt and sour cream (personal side note: A disgusting list of rotting milk products). Then boiled milk responds with something like ‘hey, I’m no sissy! I have foam!’ So boiled milk is like Ralphie from the Simpsons, maybe. [...]
In the third illustration, Mr. Iron explains that laundry is his favorite activity, and he just loves to (I’m not kidding, these are the real words) glide and slide and rub all up and down on white shirts. His unfortunate dilemma, he admits, is that we could never imagine how much it pains him to be heated up — it really hurts. T.M.I., Mr. Iron.

If Pigs Could Talk…

More videos from Animals Australia

About this video:
Meet ‘Lucy’, an Australian sow. She is as intelligent as a three year old child, yet she spends days on end trapped in a tiny metal cage so small that she can not even turn around. Her piglets are subjected to painful surgical mutilations – without anaesthetic. These sensitive animals need your help.

AnimalsAustralia.com has an impressive team of not only  highly skilled, creative artists working for them, and it goes to show how easy it can be for us to ignore the day to day mind numbingly barbaric factory farm practices that hopefully one day will be looked upon with shame and disgust by future generations.

It’s so easy to ignore issues surrounding where our food comes from.

That’s why it must be such an enormous challenge to reach the public and educate people on the reality that really is so hideous I find myself just wanting to avoid thinking about it altogether. Because it forces one to really take a hard look at not only our individual choices, but to look at our society and what’s deemed acceptable.

The EU wants to ban the importation of seal hides from Canada because of the cruelty, and this is a commendable step, but how can this be applied to only certain animals. Is it because seal hides are not food, or because they’re more photogenic and appealing to the heart strings?

What about pigs, and cows?

We cannot plead ignorance about whether or not animals have feelings, intelligence, and the characteristics we apply to determine whether a creature other than ourselves is deemed sentient enough to warrant us refraining from treating them as objects.

Gone are the days when people could justify their actions by claiming than animals like pigs and cows have no feelings, and no thought processes worth acknowledging. Science has proven otherwise, and I think even without science, our hearts tell us otherwise.

I suppose that’s why organizations such as these try to appeal to the heart and conscience of people who know with their hearts and minds that animals should not suffer like this. Sometimes it takes some imaginative media campaigns to get the point across.