Critical Mass Granada
On Friday, I did what was one of my favorite things in the Bay Area: go to mass. I had seen a flyer for Critical Mass up on my way home from the archive, and figured that I'd give it a go. I've been pretty lonely lately, and I figured that it would be good for me to meet some people who like bicycles, who might even be about my age (I was going on some weekend longish rides with a group, but haven't been since the weather's gotten cold and rainy; the group is large, but there are maybe three people in it younger than forty. The rest are men in their sixties, who are a riot, but I really need friends to hang out with and bake cookies and maybe just take some walks with.)
It was a fairly small ride (the count was fifty-five people); one of the guys on the ride said that it was the largest ride Granada had had in a long time. Sigh.
The route that we took was not intuitive to critical mass, which I think of as occurring on main streets usually during hours of high traffic. Here, it started at a little past eight, and went on tiny little cobblestoned streets, and on main streets for maybe five or six blocks. Granted, Granada doesn't really have too much traffic even on the large streets (maybe there's a morning or a 2A.M. rush hour I don't know about?), but we could have ridden around downtown a bit?
The mood was festive all around, on the part of both cyclists and pedestrians; I don't think that any drivers were confrontational at all. This might be because waiting for a few dozen cyclists (some in pirate costumes, some in funny wigs, others of us dressed in our civilian cycling garb) differs from waiting for several hundred.
Afterwards, we went to a bar and got some beer and tapas. I talked with a couple of the people from the ride. One of them was some Italian guy who plays the didgeridoo (sp?) in the street. Not to generalize, but from the looks of it, many of them could have been substandard street performers (not that I've heard this guy, specifically, play the didgeridoo in the street. I'm just presuming here, that based on the quality of other didgeridoo players in the streets of Granada, he might not be that good.) Which led me to suffer from profound disappointment: when will I meet the people in Granada who I want to hang out with? At San Francisco critical mass I would always either meet up with friends or meet friends of friends, most of whom seemed to have things like jobs and ambitions. Not that jobs and ambitions are everything ...
Sigh. If anyone out there knows people in Granada who are awesome and who want to be my friends, let me know.
On Friday, I did what was one of my favorite things in the Bay Area: go to mass. I had seen a flyer for Critical Mass up on my way home from the archive, and figured that I'd give it a go. I've been pretty lonely lately, and I figured that it would be good for me to meet some people who like bicycles, who might even be about my age (I was going on some weekend longish rides with a group, but haven't been since the weather's gotten cold and rainy; the group is large, but there are maybe three people in it younger than forty. The rest are men in their sixties, who are a riot, but I really need friends to hang out with and bake cookies and maybe just take some walks with.)
It was a fairly small ride (the count was fifty-five people); one of the guys on the ride said that it was the largest ride Granada had had in a long time. Sigh.
The route that we took was not intuitive to critical mass, which I think of as occurring on main streets usually during hours of high traffic. Here, it started at a little past eight, and went on tiny little cobblestoned streets, and on main streets for maybe five or six blocks. Granted, Granada doesn't really have too much traffic even on the large streets (maybe there's a morning or a 2A.M. rush hour I don't know about?), but we could have ridden around downtown a bit?
The mood was festive all around, on the part of both cyclists and pedestrians; I don't think that any drivers were confrontational at all. This might be because waiting for a few dozen cyclists (some in pirate costumes, some in funny wigs, others of us dressed in our civilian cycling garb) differs from waiting for several hundred.
Afterwards, we went to a bar and got some beer and tapas. I talked with a couple of the people from the ride. One of them was some Italian guy who plays the didgeridoo (sp?) in the street. Not to generalize, but from the looks of it, many of them could have been substandard street performers (not that I've heard this guy, specifically, play the didgeridoo in the street. I'm just presuming here, that based on the quality of other didgeridoo players in the streets of Granada, he might not be that good.) Which led me to suffer from profound disappointment: when will I meet the people in Granada who I want to hang out with? At San Francisco critical mass I would always either meet up with friends or meet friends of friends, most of whom seemed to have things like jobs and ambitions. Not that jobs and ambitions are everything ...
Sigh. If anyone out there knows people in Granada who are awesome and who want to be my friends, let me know.
posted by AV at 3:59 PM
1 Comments:
AV, you can find people in Granada who will be good friends, but they won't be in the places and circles with which you are familiar and comfortable. Don't go to a Granada-style Critical Mass because that's an attempt to recreate the Bay Area in Granada and that can't happen. Try going to something totally different and being in situations that you wouldn't dream of in the Bay Area. And give Granadans a break -- some of the coolest people in the world live in the Bay Area and that's a high standard. Take care of yourself!
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