Bike Winter is over: Forget Punxsutawney Phil. Forget March 21 and the cycle of the moon. Forget the city’s matter-of-course March snowfall. Right now, Bike Winter is over.

It went out like a lionette last Saturday night, sent out with a party in the ninth floor of the Century Building that featured a few cans of beer, a little mellow electronica, and a couple hours of wisecracks and sober ponderings about the daily havoc wreaked on the natural – and pedal-powered—world by Chicago’s monolithic "car culture." (after all, when the dust clears, somebody’s going to buy all those shiny, toxin-sputtering SUVs pedestaled at last month’s Auto Show.) Yes, people-powered fans, it was the annual Critical Mass Bicycle Art Show and about a dozen bike commuters joined by a lonely reporter were still hanging around at 10p.m., still musing about the relative virtues of bicycling and the relative evils of the internal combustion engine.

"You should have been at the opening party," said Bob Matter. "That was a real shindig."

Two weeks ago, the opening party for the Bicycle Art Show, it seems, drew a crowd of 400 people, curious and initiated alike. The show’s curator, Eric Anderson, said the party brought together disparate elements of the bicycling world who don’t usually meet out in the asphalt wilds of the city—bike messengers, weekend-warrior recreationalists and bike commuters, of whom there are more, apparently, than you might think. Warm weather can coax as many as 2,000 bikers-to-work into the streets, according to Anderson.

"People don’t realize how many people are commuting by bike, " he said.

But the Art Show was just the final round of Bike Winter, which began, not in winter, but in October: Sponsored by Critical Mass, Chicagoland’s grassroots bike advocacy movement, Bike Winter is a series of events: bike rides, bike races, protests on bike, bike workshops, bike fashion shows, and lessons in mid-cycle flirting along shady biking paths. This year’s most memorable event, according to a few party-goers, was the December "Santa Rampage." On the Saturday before Christmas, a score of Critical Mass riders dressed in red and white felt, descended on the Magnificent Mile, exhorting shoppers to save their money and celebrate the holiday without a pile of overly pricey presents.

"We got pretty good response," said bike rider Michael Burton. "I guess people can’t get mad with someone in a Santa suit."

Pointing to pictures of the rampage scrolling continuously through a slide projector [installation by Daniel Kopald] as part of the art show, Burton chirped that the group even convinced one or two people to stop shopping and go home. That’s the same effect he and others are hoping the art show will have.

"It’s not really a show that tries to sell things," Burton said. "It’s an activist show. Basically we try to break even if we can."

And even though the manager of the building, at 202 S. State Street, provides the gallery space for free, the staffers all volunteer their time, and the artists donate their work, breaking even is still difficult. The show’s budget, Anderson said, runs on the shortest of shoestrings.

"But it’s important," he said. "In our culture, we’re surrounded by images of the automobile as the dominant mode of transportation. I mean, you can’t watch 10 minutes of TV without a car commercial. So it’s nice for people to be in an environment that shows another form of transportation, and that makes it appealing."

Among the appealing bike-centered works: "Bicycle Jesus," [by Josh Deth] a crucifix assembled from loose bicycle parts by a man whose picture looks not unlike Jesus Himself; a display of short dresses and tight pants below a cheerful sign that read "Ride a Bike and Still be Pretty;" and tender photos of bikes, racked and unracked, from Chicago to California. There were also picture frames cut from bicycle tires, a bouquet of bike-gear flowers adorning stop-sign table, and chairs made from inner tubes stretched across bike wheels.

Sounding a more dismal note, a sales sticker mockup for the "Ford Extinction" offered statistics from fuel consumption to environmental destruction to "death and dismemberment." Constructed by University of Chicago environmental studies student Payton Chung, the Ford Extinction sales sticker boasted seating for a "baseball team + 1", a "wide-a$$ platinum" exterior, and financing by "extensive borrowing from future generations’ right to the ecosphere." "I wanted to get across that car culture costs our country a lot, and people don’t think about it, but they should," said Chung, who had more figures about the troublesomeness of SUVs at the ready than could have fit on 10 sales stickers.