Robert Reads

"'My first Critical Mass was really an eye opener,' Leah Shahum told me. 'I had never thought of bicycling as a political thing, as a part of a social movement. Riding with a
thousand people just felt so empowering. It felt different: I felt safer, I felt more confident. These were good feelings.'

That was 1996, shortly after Shahum had moved to San Francisco a few years out of college. It was the period when Critical Mass established San Francisco as the epicenter of militant bicycling culture, as thousands of bikers swarmed in a usually joyous and always chaotic monthly leaderless parade. A decade later, Shahum is executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and the public face of a new kind of grown-up bicycle activism. "