As per usual, a hundred or so bikes gathered last night in Union Square for Critical Mass, the solidaristic bike ride that takes over streets in cities all over the country once a month. This time, though, at least half of the riders seemed only vaguely...human.

A plunger, a Joker, a husky dog, and all manner of otherwise outlandishly dressed cyclists made for a freakish parade as they flooded uptown on Park Avenue and then back on Broadway, through Times Square, into the East Village, and over the Williamsburg bridge to Brooklyn. Passersby stood dumbfounded on the sidewalks, not sure what to make of the whooping and cheering peloton.

The idea of Critical Mass is to have enough riders that you can shut down the streets, ignoring stoplights and stopping traffic for as long as it takes for the slow-moving herd to roll through. It didn't always work that way, as we had to filter in between cars on the narrower streets. And this time, the political content of the event was blunted somewhat by its absurdity of watching costumed hipsters trying to manage their fixie hipster bikes. Chants of "Whose streets? Our streets!" got muddied with cries of "Ice cream!", and the night dissolved in a phantasm.

More pictures after the jump. - LBD

Gimme a B! Gimme an I! Gimme a CYCLE!

Blazer, jacket, messenger bag, collared shirt, sweater vest: the Eye's guide to sartorial humanity

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Do you know what a cooked chicken breast sounds like?

South Africa has redeeming values despite its lack of a Metropolitan Museum of Art!

Kate Moss gets a "hearty" congratulations for getting clean

Republicans... they're just like us!

True fact: Sarah Palin doesn't eat babies.

Cars don't run into you in Riverside Park.

The stock market crashed! Now what?

Fight Club was released nine years ago. Don't you feel really old? Like, over nine years old?

Columbia wants to demolish and rebuild in every direction! Watch out Lincoln Center.

Columbia students may not like lines in John Jay, but they sure do like to spend their parents' money!

Zahra Khimji and Bwog editor Maryam Parhizkar write about a very long cycling trip with a very noble mission.

While in the United States people are constantly striving for ways to save the environment and stop global warming, Iranians too are striving for ways to promote peace environmental awareness. Somayeh Yousefi and Jafar Edrisi, an athletic couple who first met on a mountain peak near Tehran in 1998, are just such people -- this year, the Iranian cyclists began their journey to promote peace and environmental conservation, one country at a time.

Professor Dennis Dalton, well-known in the last few months for taking part in the recent hunger strike, introduced the event. "This word, peace -- that matters most to me," Professor Dalton said, while physically pointing to the word on the large banner hung on the table in front of the room. Dalton warmly welcomed the cyclists, stating that although we must work to resolve conflict that we had gotten into with Iran, "violence spreads like a cancer . . . we are plagued with that cancer now, and we must cure it."

Yousefi and Edrisi then proceeded to explain their mission, which involves cycling around the world and creating a "green line" of newly planted trees along the way to promote peace and environmental awareness. "No one will be living in a peaceful world without the environment," Yousefi, the English speaker of the two, said. Yousefi and Edrisi have been tracking every step of their trip and blogging whenever they have the chance. Starting from Iran, they have cycled through major parts of Europe such as Greece, Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands and have crossed the Atlantic ocean (by flight, of course!). As of today, the couple has planted a total of 14 trees, with 2 in New York State.

I mean, even monkeys can do this, I told myself. Riding a bike can't be that hard--and besides, I'm so good at the stationary ones in the gym! But after 45 minutes of ball-bruising, shin-banging fun, my body would tend to disagree.

Each time I tipped over when I started to pedal, I realized just how nice those stationary bikes really are. When I'm in Dodge, I feel like I could have a leg chopped off and beat Lance Armstrong. Out in the elements, the tiny drainage inclines seem like a mountain course requiring minute weight shifts so subtle and complex that I felt like my internal gyroscope must be either missing or fundamentally out of whack.

On Thursday, about 250 cyclists in varying states of physical fitness departed on the annual All Night Bike Ride, led as ever by the indefatigable Kenneth Jackson. Bwog has just recently recovered.

We started at the sundial, and departed under cover of darkness with a police escort and even a volunteer ambulance to take care of the weak. After the t-shirts were dispensed and waivers collected, the peloton departed in a whooping mass through the Amsterdam Gates, proceeded down Morningside Drive, and made its way over to Central Park West. What followed was an epic journey down the length of Manhattan, with adrenaline barely serving to keep some of us awake after a long week.

More photos and a sadly incomplete chronicle of the trip after the jump.

Chris Kulawik addresses reporters this morning outside the 116th St. gates.

The way he's holding his hands makes it look like he's sitting atop a bicycle.*

*Unconfirmed at press time

- JNW

Fairweather Bwogger Sara Vogel reports from the frontlines of Transportation Alternatives' Tour de Brooklyn bike ride with a gruesome tale of famished athletes after a free lunch.

Dyker Heights is far. Two trains and a bus far, and it always seems farther on Sundays. But Adria and I rubbed the sleepies from our eyes Sunday morning and waited for public transportation to take us to Dyker Heights Park anyway for some high quality NHS-style community service. We began slathering bagels with peanut butter and jelly for the flock of bikers that would be using the park as a rest stop on the Tour de Brooklyn that morning.

We even got to cut two cases worth of oranges with these nifty slicers, and to chat up the dozen or so high school volunteers from Brooklyn Tech about the newest MTV Laguna Beach spin-off, set to exhibit the young lives of their classmates next year.

And then the bikers arrived.