So was there a Critical Mass event in Philadelphia last night (Jan 31)? I saw a smallish mass of bikers riding along Chestnut and not stopping at red lights. I say “smallish” because it didn’t look like it had achieved true critical mass, but it was a large enough contingent to attract attention, and there may have been more that I didn’t see.
First, you need to define “critical mass” as it refers to bikers.
Then, if you’re still up to it, relate this to the “Philadelphia Experiment.”
I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader…
Damn! How am I the last to hear of these things.
Although, I did WITNESS such an event in September. I just didn’t know what the term was.
Just down the street from my house in Akron, I was stopped at a redlight in the city. Around the corner came 100, …no, 200, …no, more motorcycles than I have ever seen in my life at one time. They just didn’t quit.
Guess it is just one of those modern “happenings.”
Sorry, motorcycles do not make a Critical Mass. It’s a bicycle thing. Not that motorcyclists don’t flock in large numbers, but they don’t use that term.
Critical Mass is an exercise in civil disobediance. I believe the idea is to make motorists aware that bicycles have the right to use the road too. They do this by basically taking over a street or at least a lane and then violating the traffic laws by not stopping at stop lights and stop signs. Also they sometimes go the wrong way on one-way streets or make illegal turns. And they often do it during rush hour.
While I’m a dedicated cyclist, I wouldn’t go near a Critical Mass, as I think they do more harm than good. However, this is drifting into GD territory, so I’ll stop now.
Sorry for mis-reading the OP. Here in Akron, you’d have a hard time getting a critical mass of bicyclists together. So my brain immediately thought “biker=motocyclist.” My fault.
Sorry for not being more specific in the OP. So no-one has heard of such an event in Philly recently?
Critical Mass events are held in many major cities around the world, on the last Friday of every month, usually around 4:30 or 5:00 PM. There’s no one in charge or anything, people just show up at a certain place and kind of decide where to go by a sort of general consensus. I have no idea about Philadelphia, but in Boston, last I heard, the meeting place was Copley Square.
So that’s why rush hour starts earlier on Fridays, eh waterj? 
Is it true that, on account of a mysterious ray being tested by a secret army lab in New Jersey, that Philadelphia mysteriously disappeared sometime in early 1985? … or was transported to Peru, I forget which.