Spokesman Without a Cause

Participants in Critical Mass, the monthly rush-hour bicycle ride that turned into chaos last Friday, say they have no single leader and no single representative. Yet for the past four years, Christian Lackner has put himself forward -- to the media and to local politicians -- as a spokesman for and leader of, a source of information about, and a human connection to Critical Mass.

Among some of the city's most experienced cycling activists, however, Lackner is deeply disliked, even feared. A portion of that reaction is clearly a matter of personality. But public records do show Lackner has two convictions for battery, one involving an incident in which he allegedly flung a woman against a storefront window. (Lackner insists that his detractors are relatively few in number, that he is not violent, and that the convictions happened so long ago as to be meaningless in relation to Critical Mass.)

Lackner was most recently portrayed as a representative cycling advocate in the numerous news stories that preceded the Critical Mass melee last week. Lackner scored what is perhaps his greatest media coup with a press conference that he called on July 14 and that attracted representatives from most major Bay Area media outlets. During the press conference, Lackner defended Critical Mass against criticisms by Mayor Willie Brown that the group's monthly demonstrations needlessly tie up city streets. S.F.'s mainstream media, focused on the growing controversy, gave Lackner and his strident beliefs heavy TV, radio, and print play.

Interviews with about a dozen well-placed activists suggest that Lackner, a 38-year-old UC Berkeley graduate, should not be portrayed as a leader of Critical Mass, but as a self-appointed mouthpiece.

Many of those activists refuse to speak about Lackner on the record, saying they fear him, or don't want to give him more publicity than he has already received.

But Lucinda Means, former chair of the Bicycle Advisory Committee, the panel charged with advising the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on cycling issues, says, "I feel for those who have encountered him."

Means says five prospective members rejected offers to join the committee during her three-plus-year tenure, citing Lackner's behavior during committee meetings.

"The only good things I can say are that he's intelligent and dedicated," she continues. "But those are so overshadowed by his inability to accept anybody else's point of view. He tries to intimidate people rather than persuade them, and if somebody doesn't have a strong will, he's very scary, very aggressive."

Erik Scudder, who's active in the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, has known Lackner for some time and has a succinct opinion about the sometime Critical Mass spokesman: "He's an asshole."

What's behind Scudder's strong language, and the almost palpable hostility any mention of Lackner evokes among these and other veterans of the San Francisco bicycle wars? Some Lackner detractors take issue with his efforts to make Critical Mass a larger and more confrontational event. Some argue that his proposals -- which include the idea of turning Jefferson Street near Fisherman's Wharf into a car-free zone -- are unrealistic.

Another source of resentment among Critical Mass participants is what some see as Lackner's attempt to seize control of the monthly ride by, they say, publicizing that month's route through fliers and on the Critical Mass online mailing list.

But Lackner says the reason for the split lies with his peers in the cycling community. "I feel a certain way ... and I don't compromise," he says. "They will run away from me, lest they lose an argument or whatever."

Lackner says he is "absolutely" a Critical Mass organizer, but has never proclaimed himself a Critical Mass leader. (Even the claim of being an organizer would seem to run counter to Critical Mass' long billing as a deliberately unorganized event.) Lackner also alleges to have his own group, Bicycle Mass, which he describes only as "a small organization [that] does not solicit memberships."

He also insists that he has many friends in the cycling scene. "I think in any kind of situation you're going to find people who are rivals," Lackner says.

"Rivals" is an interesting choice of words. Lackner's extensive list of foes includes most of the top names in San Francisco bicycling advocacy circles.

Among the targets of vitriol contained in e-mail posted from Lackner's address: San Francisco Bicycle Coalition President Dave Snyder, Means, and Scudder; Bicycle Coalition activist Joni Mehler; and longtime Critical Mass riders David Powers and LX Rudis. Lackner's online postings extend his enmity to the organizations themselves.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition's members "are acting more and more like politicians," he complained in a recent interview, because they deal too closely with local officials. And he dismissed the Bicycle Advisory Committee as a "classic bureaucratic organization." In postings to the two largest Internet e-mail lists on S.F. cycling, he used terms such as "Self-Destructive Group-Think-Bike-Clique Buffoons" to describe both organizations, which, advocates say, represent thousands of S.F. cyclists.

Lackner first became active in San Francisco's bicycle scene in the early '90s, offering himself to police as a Critical Mass representative in 1993. Since then, he's publicized several Mass routes, mostly on the two leading mailing lists, the one run by the Bicycle Coalition and the one he maintains for Critical Mass.