Screen grab of video showing woman motorist – in black top – being thrown to the ground, where she is punched and kicked.
Several people in the beach area took videos of a large group of unruly and rude bicyclists who rolled through Ocean Beach and Pacific Beach on Sunday, May 17. Most – if not all – the riders did not have masks on and didn’t practice social distancing. They were also ignoring stop signs, red lights, pedestrians and motorists in their massive jaunt around the beaches, flipping people off who raised concerns of their behavior.
At one point in Mission Beach, several of the bicyclists punched and kicked a woman motorist who had gotten out of her car to scold some of them for running a red light.
10News collected the different videos and interviewed a man who shot some instagram video. Pacific Beach resident Steve Paen told the station:
“We were at a stoplight and then this massive bike brigade [started] rolling down Garnet, heading east, and it looked like there were maybe a 100 or 200 of them just rolling down the street.”
The woman motorist – in black top – is on the asphalt being punched and kicked.
“[A cyclist] starts to kick on her and picks on her and it just becomes this mob mentality of bikers on this one woman who was going to yell at this [cyclist] for basically running a red light. There was literally no one wearing masks or any type of gloves [and they were] all within close proximity of each other.”
“[They were] flipping their fingers at cars [and] spitting at people. They were just whizzing by stop signs and past pedestrians and cars. It just seemed like they had immunity to anything on the road that was against them.”
The brigade of bicyclists at Mission Beach.
Paen shot some video of the fight – and then he called police. His instagram video shows a woman getting knocked to the ground and kicked by at least one bicyclist.
A Mission Beach resident said the mass group rode through that neighborhood as well. And a short, blurry video was made by a person in Ocean Beach showing a large group at the OB Pier parking lot.
Blurry screen shot of video of bicyclists in OB Pier parking lot.
San Diego Police told 10News they were monitoring the brigade of bicyclists, that they had responded to the PB fight but neither party wanted to give a report, and no arrests or citations were issued. 10News had reached out to the group that organized the gig but did not receive a response.
This behavior is uncalled for and may set back bicycling in this town a half generation.
{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }
From the looks of it, not exactly cyclists. More like people who happen to have an unused bike in their garage they dusted off for the occasion.
Okay, but how did over a 100 people just happen to all grab their old, dusty bikes out of their garage at the same time?
For all the people who keep saying they are not cyclists get off your high horse. They are on bikes and by definition that makes them cyclists look it up in a dictionary. That being said it was a bunch of dip shit cyclists and people who ride on a regular need to be up in arms over this type of behavior because the reproductions will be against all of us who ride. I see “cyclists ” that do not obay the laws all time and when i do Ill call them out if I can . Like it or not they are on a bike and thus become part of the community of cyclists. They should have been sited for running lights and stop signs.
I’m a cyclist and I agree, these people give us a bad name.
Was this a critical mass group? I remember them giving people trouble outside Pizza Port years back with similar behavior.
Not to make light of the situation, but were these people using potato phones to take pictures?
They came through last week too, but in much smaller numbers. Many were mostly riding PK RIPPERS and variations. Nice bikes…
Anyway, they were total A-holes and blew through traffic and caused folks to sit at the stop sign for a while… but those people should probably be at home too. So, last I saw, two SDPD on 4-wheelers were heading towards the Sunset Cliffs/West Point Loma intersection to get to the head of the pack. Definitely organized by someone…
wondering the same thing: sounds much like critical mass organized but haven’t seen any confirmation.
Critical Mass riders were never this rude. IMO
Might have to disagree with you on this one, editor dude. My wife described encountering the critical mass group on several occasions taking over Harbor Drive. What she described was definitely rudeness. Had I been the one in the car encountering what she talked about, there would have been more than flies plastered on my grill. This kind of thing just widens the gulf between cyclists and non-cyclists.
Definitely agree with you Geoff (although not about using the car as a weapon – I assume that was hyperbole but you never know). I was caught on N. Harbor Drive during a critial mass ride and it was a very upsetting experience. I also was in Hollywood and a critical mass ride ended with the entire group “crashing” on Hollywood Blvd. and Highland, lying in the streets to block traffic in all direction.
This is definitely very different behavior than I have experienced in places like Paris where the critical mass riders are well behaved.
I dunno. Is someone started pounding on my car I would probably make them one with the grill. Might be a good learning lesson for them.
Always surprises me how utterly stupid humans can be! Dumber than rocks. Definitely a Critical Mess, not a Critical Mass… which is too bad b/c years ago, when the Friday night Critical Mass event first began at Balboa Park, it was (for the most part) an orderly, respectful demonstration of pedal power.
This? Just a self-centered display of insanity and belligerence. :/
Here’s a clip from 2012. The riders seem to be behaving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gDP-jKXJ14 I’ve done a couple CMs years ago and remember it being a lot of fun. Nothing like the people in this article.
That looked like a lot of chaos to me. The guy in the parking garage was not happy. Why was this at night? That makes no sense.
I guess it’s a matter of perspective. This clip didn’t seem that chaotic to me, at least compared to how a lot of people describe the typical critical mass. The two my wife and I rode in (about 2009/2010 from Balboa Park and through Hillcrest) were no worse than this one. At to why they’re at night? Not really sure. I guess just some sort of tradition.
yeah, I can’t actually remember why they were held in the evenings. I think the event started in San Fran, and if I recall it was always held the last Friday of the month. Lots of riders tricked out their bikes with neon and such; unicycles, tandems, and other wonderments of pedal design. It caught on in many cities nation-wide and I think the original concept was simply non-specific political protest. It was to make the point that grass roots gatherings/happenings can “stop traffic”, with non-violence, and get people to pay attention…to whatever the cause…and there were many then (2003) and there are many more more now. Now it seems, people rally in places like Charlottesville and just get run over by cars instead… THINK how times have changed in 15 years . Any outing these days can quickly become ugly and gun-laden. Its depressing :/
Update: bicyclist defends group of LA riders, says woman motorist started it; her boyfriend refutes it. https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/san-diego-news/cyclist-defends-san-diego-bicycle-riders-accused-of-fighting-in-video
“basically running a red light.””
“It was an angry passenger that got out of her seat because we were holding up traffic,”
A bunch of out-of-towners running red lights and holding up traffic. Why don’t they do that shit in their own towns? Funny no video has surfaced of this woman allegedly jumping little girl.
Don’t worry. With SARS II/Covid-19 about to radically jump in numbers the next 2-5 weeks and a TOTAL lockdown happens that’ll make this one look like a child tea party, these yahoos are going to be up for Darwin Awards just like the over 30 dead (mostly) Deep South dumb-ass Protestant evangelical pastors that refused to close their churches down because of ‘religious freedumb’ and, incidentally, removing both themselves and members of their congregations from the gene pool.
Who says you can’t fix stupid?
sealintheSelkirks
Ah, but, seal, they are all in a better place now, maybe this was just their way of hurrying to paradise a little sooner without the appearance of suicide.
Hi Seal- hope you are keeping safe, home, and well. Freedumb- good one! :-)
Geoff, best watch it with that ironic humor streak you’re showing…it’ll get you in trouble. Take that advice from the voice of experience! ;-)
Hi retired kelp lady! Hope the same for you ya know? I’m home and not going freaking anywhere though it has been raining for most of the last two freaking weeks anyway. With lightning and deluge T-storm downpours! But I’m buried with the final edits on the PDF of my book that the publisher sent me. Literally line-by-line read-thru as I can’t afford a professional editor’s cost. Should have the last corrections in by Monday, he’ll insert them, and the first copy gets printed for the copyright ISBN #s and sent with the paperwork to Library of Congress. When that comes back they’ll get a bar code and it will start being printed for real. Not just online writing anymore, a real book with 115,000 words, 50+ pictures, and about 250 pages in an oversized paperback.
On the dryer days I keep working on fire breaks, widening my safe zone as best I can. Gonna be a hell of a fire season I think. Warmest April on record bodes ill…
You still have the same mailing address?
Best to you both!
sealintheSelkirks
I think, I know I’d like to read your book. Please do keep us informed.
Thank you for the compliment! As ornery as I get sometimes writing on the Rag… The book is…different. I planned on sending one to Frank if he has the time to read it since I said that I would a couple of years ago. And the OB Library since some of the photos are OB back when parts of the story were being lived there….
sealintheSelkirks
I may have missed it, what is the subject of the new book?
Seal, I do, and would be quite interested in your book. I expect posting the book and where to get it might not be allowed on the Rag, which I understand, so when its available let me know. I can shoot you a line via your website or other-
And congrats- quite an accomplishment :)
kelp lady: I’m just glad to finally have it out of my brain. I can literally feel the space where it has been. It is a very strange sensation… It’s been 4 1/2 years since the initial first draft let me go, and I finished the final text edit of the PDF last night. At 4am! Over 600,000 characters…
Today I have to review all the picture placements and captions the publisher asked for, and then I am truly FREAKING DONE.
NOTE: Frank: If I’m breaking a rule here, delete the rest of this post! I’m just answering…
This is/isn’t like the first book ‘The Lunch Counter Trilogy’ 3-parter that was published on the world’s riversurfing magazine out of Austria in 2015/16 (a free read/novella with vids & pics at riverbreak.com), or the Summer of ’67 short 3,300 word ‘Memories of a Little Surfer Kid from Ocean Beach’ story published here on the Rag in 2017. But in a sense it is because it, too, is non-fiction and entirely based on life experiences as both those pieces were.
And honestly, I have NO idea how the publisher is going to categorize it because…it encompasses…oh hell. The title is:
‘Massacre Sites; Working for the Dead.’
And I don’t know how to write fiction! How’s that for obscure? HA!
The 15 or so people (from a very wide variety of backgrounds, education, and life experience) that have read or edited one or another of the rough drafts the last few years, all said to publish. And want a copy! And the only reason it has been written is because I was literally given permission in a meditation to do so.
Now I get to work on the other two that have been pushing against the inside of my skull. One is a preK children age 13-photo picture book with minimal text which will be fun to do (I taught PreK), and the next book is…another that takes up space in my head like Massacre Sites did. I’ve already got a title to that one, too, and from the same source. How weird is that?
Geoff & ret kelp lady: This book is a side of me that you don’t see in my writing here on the Rag.
11:15am on a Sunday morning. So I guess I’d best get to transplanting four girls into the large final-size fabric pots I sew up since I have a gloriously brilliantly blue-sky day here in these mountains (there’s a pic of this here in the book). With another break in the t-storms that have been rolling through for three weeks, it is time to do a little gardening. Then I’ll get back to the picture review and send the completed list of changes off to the publisher tonight. Whew!
Do something fun today. I am!
sealintheSelkirks
Geoff,
After picking through the PDF again, I realized there is a line in the introduction that says it best. This book is about Connections, in a big way.
sealintheSelkirks
Well, ok. Why don’t you post a sample of it, I’m sure Frank would not mind.
Geoff, I have no idea what tiny part of a 115,000 word, 600,000+ character book would make any sense whatsoever. Too much out of context to be of much use in trying to understand it. I can’t see the story as anything but a coherent whole. Perhaps retired botanist and Frank should read it to see what they come up with as a teaser because I sure can’t. HA!
Looks like a second day of 80’F bright blue sky sunshine in a row. I’d best get out there and get busy with more chores and off this damn machine.
sealintheSelkirks