Safe Street Rebel: The Guerrilla Network Keeping SF’s Streets Safe and Playful

Safe Street Rebel slowing traffic down on the Great Highway. Photo from Safe Street Rebel’s Instagram.

There’s a quiet rebellion keeping our streets safe and full of shenanigans. You might be part of the network.

If you’ve ever seen a video of someone “coning” a Waymo, you know Safe Street Rebel’s work. It’s a way to confuse a self-driving car by placing a rubber traffic cone on the hood, and it sort of makes the vehicle look like a unicorn’s less graceful cousin, the narwhal. This kind of activity is one of the many in the informal group’s portfolio of direct action, guerilla activism, and what we’d label as ‘creative placemaking.’ We at BrokeAssStuart.com can’t technically condone some of the stuff they do, although it’s often hilarious (just like us). 

What started as a Bike Twitter spinoff in response to the Mayor reopening the Great Highway to cars in 2021 has developed into a community that arrives on the scene faster than the speed of light when something goes wrong on San Francisco’s often dangerous streets. It’s almost like they have a Bat Signal (or a rapid response team that stays connected on a group chat). We spoke on condition of partial anonymity with several members of Safe Street Rebel to hear about their past and what the future might hold.

Three Cruise driverless cars that were coned. Photo from Safe Street Rebel’s Instagram.

Safe Street Rebel has no official mission, no org chart, no paid staff, and no leader. They’re not a registered nonprofit. Instead, it’s intentionally decentralized. It means that sometimes, according to organizer Austin, members won’t find out that Safe Street Rebel did something until it hits the airwaves. He says, “Sometimes I’ll see something and feel like, ‘Glad I wasn’t involved in this.’” In this dispersed model, everyone is empowered to “take on campaigns under the guise of Safe Street Rebel [knowing] there will be support to help spread the word.” But that doesn’t mean the community supports everything done under its name. Organizer Aditya explains, “If we’re going to use the name of this group and the following that we built together, we need to have some consensus.” They detail several accountability tactics and methods that keep their name from being co-opted and their community from being infiltrated by the ill-intentioned. 

For clarity, we’re calling this an organization, but the members we spoke to counter that and say they’re organized. They’re certainly not registered as a 501(C)3 or 501(C)4, although members are pretty tuned into the legislative scene. That might remind ‘old heads’ of a similar dynamic that existed in the 70s through 90s with the radical, badass and intolerable demonstration known as Critical Mass. A brief history, for those unfamiliar: Former mayor Willie Brown went to war against bike activists who were blocking the streets as protest. A different group, calling themselves the Bike Coalition, grew to be widely seen as what Aditya calls, “the adults in the room.” But after talks with the City failed, the Bike Coalition threw their full weight behind a huge rally with Critical Mass that turned the tide.  

Things eventually settled down. The peace was so great and lasting that the Bike Coalition is now a recipient of a fair amount of funding from the City, which might be why they’ve been undergoing what some call an identity crisis in the years since. It can’t help that their hands are tied by the folks who feed them; it’s a liability for an organization to get involved in disruptive activism that challenges the same city entities that pay the bills. Meanwhile, members of Critical Mass mindfully chose not to pursue the same path of putting on Dad’s suit and tie and going to City Hall to make things formal. Aditya says this is exactly where Safe Street Rebel comes into play: “Because Critical Mass had [a] big falloff in 2012 and because of the Bike Coalition going corporate, there was this latent niche in the ecosystem that Safe Street Rebel came to fill.” 

The energy Safe Street Rebel brings is playful. They infamously dressed as Governor Gavin Newsom and blocked the freeway entrance in 2023, beating the shit out of a Caltrain piñata. But they also installed slow-down signs that looked pretty official, so much so that only after Mission Local reported it did SFMTA come and remove them. An organizer explains, “We phrase [it] as a bias toward shenanigans.” They aim to provoke and upset, but not to do ‘massive property damage.’ Some of their recent projects include installing guerrilla benches at bus stations so little old folks can sit and rest their knees as they move around the City of 48 Hills. 

Safe Street Rebel infamously dressed as Governor Gavin Newsom and blocked the freeway entrance in 2023, beating the shit out of a Caltrain piñata. Photo from Safe Street Rebel’s Instagram.

So, is coning illegal? We aren’t about to Google that. Our fabled FBI folder is probably fat enough. But after some horrible sci-fi shit happened on our streets earlier this year when a Waymo hit a bicyclist, many San Franciscans refuse to get inside of one of the self-driving cars. Since coning involves getting close enough to the unpredictable, unmanned things to plop an object on them, we’ve gotta ask. Is coning dangerous? Also a maybe. But as Dasha, a participant and collaborator, says, “As a self-driving car, as a mass surveillance tool, there’s a physical danger of putting a cone on a Waymo but there’s also the contrast of that versus city-wide mass surveillance, and the Waymos blocking fire trucks and intersections and hitting pedestrians. There’s a balance between our risk and highlighting the risk of self-driving cars.” 

That being said, Safe Street Rebel organizers follow some broad guidelines. Three rules:

• Action shouldn’t be physically dangerous for anyone involved. 
• No coning vehicles with people inside to lower the risk of people inside getting angry. 
• No coning of vehicles on bus routes to minimize potential safety issues with buses having to navigate around them.

It’s a solid list, and with self-driving cars blocking the Fire Department’s response to emergencies, it’s great that at least one party involved is considering safety and not just corporate liability.

You can find out more about Safe Street Rebel on their social media accounts:

Twitter
Mastodon
Instagram
TikTok!

As they said in a 2022 tweet, “you might be the next Safe Street Rebel.”