As I mentioned in the writeup of the Halloween ride, a chance encounter with Travis at Quencher's Bar led to a full-blown Critical Mass Art Show. It turned out that Travis is a curator for Lineage Gallery in the heart of Chicago's gallery district, and he was eager to put on a show. 

We decided to call it "Autogeddon: A Critical Response to Car Culture," and put the word out for pro-bike/anti-car artwork at the end of November. The response was overwhelming! We had conceptual installations, paintings, sculpture, photography and audio tapes. "Bighorn," (the rider from the Sept 5 ride with the "big horn" on his bike) who is a member of JellyEye, a choreographed drumming group, created a hanging clanging array of percussion instruments (titled "Gridlock") and a drum set (called "Brake Drums") made from discarded car parts. Travis created a sculpture, "Delay on the Eisenhower,"  from road-found car parts collected by bikers. There was a video installation with 2 monitors: one showing car crashes and evils of car culture, and the other showing the joys of biking. One was "Return of the Scorcher," by Ted White. (This is a great tape. Check it out) Another was "Velorution," documenting Cuba's changeover to bikes after losing their Russian oil supplies. One artist, Orit Zerouni, displayed a demonstration of the effects of various toxic car chemicals on the human body.  Josh, Michael and I put together an audio tape mixing traffic noise, songs with car themes, traffic reports, and even a bike report. (This tape is available. E-mail me if you want a copy.) Josh (the accordionist on the Halloween Ride) used his Goose Island Brewery connection to cop 2 kegs of Honkers Ale. 

We had a special Mass ride to the opening of the show from Daley Plaza. By the time we arrived at the gallery, the place was already packed and rocking. There was a performance in progress, to the beat of Big Horn and others banging on the hanging assembly of car parts. A crazy, noisy and chaotic scene already, even before us 60 bikers converged out front and locked our bikes to a rope Travis had strung between parking meters. Entering with our helmets, backpacks, and other bike gear, we joined an unlikely crowd of artsy types, after-work business men, bike messengers, and anarchists, a mixture you're not likely to find at many Gallery District openings in this town. 

The beauty of the whole thing was that we got our pro-bike, anti-car message across in a creative, interesting way with a positive spin. To top things off, Michael Glab wrote a right on review of the show for New City, a Chicago entertainment and arts weekly.