Disclaimer

Denver Critical Mass is meant to be a safe and welcoming space for everyone, regardless of gender, race, ability, body types, sexual orientation, or socio-economics. We value and celebrate the diversity that is Critical Mass.

Please understand that your ride stewards are trying their best, and we're not perfect. In overwhelming general, riders that come to Denver CM are friendly, courteous, safe and aware of their surroundings, and here for a good time, spreading the happy friday joy.

A large enough ride invariably mixes all types of personalities, experience levels, senses of comfort, and so on. The party atmosphere is not inviting anyone to turn carefree into reckless. If someone's riding or behavior feels uncomfortable, we find it's generally best to say something to the person. If someone tells you they're having an issue with your behavior, err on the side of respecting their experience.

Thoughts

Even though we get an overwhelmingly fun and celebratory response out of the people we pass in the streets, and yes, even many drivers do honk with support and excitement for the spectacle, and many many people and drivers do indeed wait patiently for our bus to roll through: How we are perceived by outsiders of the ride is not guaranteed to be positive and well understood by everyone. We are demonstrating one night a month, for a couple of hours, in small chunks of the city at a time.

It may appear incongruent with others' values, beliefs, opinions, and perceptions of the purposes, rules, and primary uses of the streets. Even among people in the ride, we also have different values, beliefs, opinions, and perceptions that make sense only because cars exist and pervade everything about daily life.

Think of this ride as a completely grassroots, cultural and social bike bus that can make itself safe for these couple of hours, by the sheer numbers of people doing it. We are challenging some norms when we put this demonstration on.

We want a daily city life shift of priorities for all of society toward the streets being safe for all people using them, all of the time. That is achieved by lessening our use of personal car trips, including uber and driverless taxis.

Most days and times, there are just individual bikes around, and other people walking, people on scooters, people on longboards or roller blades, people using motor-assisted accessibility, public transit and so on: that should all be easy, safe, reliable, comfortable, pleasant, and dignified. Maybe then, a big demonstration isn't even necessary to call attention to our need for it. Maybe streets that are just safe for people to be in will invite more human-powered social and cultural richness in new forms that more people can participate in.

Respect others, respect yourself, and respect the mission of Denver Critical Mass, which is to celebrate every person's right to dignified use of our streets with every day options besides a car–regardless of if it's a bike–and riders during our events are providing safety in vibes and numbers.

This is your ride as much as it is everyone else’s, and we’re all counting on each other to keep it going.