Citywide Joy on the 2024 Crosstown Ride

For the past three years, Phoenix Day has encouraged San Francisco to use our streets to celebrate community and togetherness, through dozens of block parties and open-street events citywide. For this year’s event on October 20, your San Francisco Bicycle Coalition partnered with Livable City, Phoenix Day’s organizer, and Spokes + Folks, everyone’s favorite biketastic web series, to imagine a different kind of community togetherness. We asked, how can we celebrate the rolling community of people who bike all across our city’s streets? Our answer: a big, fun, family-friendly cross-town bike ride!

A large group gathered across from the Ferry Building on a clear blue morning, from all corners of the city and a variety of ages and experiences. Some copped to never having ridden all the way across the city; others made sure that children on the backs of family bikes — road-tested by countless rides to school — had helmets fastened. A few dogs checked out the scene from their baskets, while participants handed out vuvuzelas and the Spokes + Folks camera teams got set up to capture the day’s adventures.

After an introductory talk from Livable City’s Tom Radulovich, we hit the road, slow-rolling down Market Street. After quick stops at UN Plaza to gobble down croissants and at Patricia’s Green to learn the history of how the Central Freeway that once cut through Hayes Valley came down, the ride eventually stopped at SFBike’s Market Street office. Here, Executive Director Christopher White greeted riders and talked with Spokes + Folks’ Sarah Katz-Hyman about all the work of the organization — all of which was captured for this just-dropped episode of S+F, which you can see below!

The ride was more than just a great excuse to get people together to ride bikes and eat carbs — it also highlighted the need for more fully protected or separated crosstown routes for biking, a key demand of our SF CYCLES campaign to pass an ambitious Biking and Rolling Plan in early 2025. The joy and power of such spaces was brought into sharp relief when, at the end of the ride, dozens of people pedaled together down the Great Highway, just two weeks before San Francisco voters would opt to transform it into Ocean Beach Park.

Watch Episode 1 of the Crosstown Ride series here, featuring Tom Radulovich, and keep your eye out for Episode 3, featuring Dave Alexander of Richmond Family SF!

Cross-Town Ride Map detail by Christine Innes