It happens this way every month. The tattooed hipsters in tight pants migrate from throughout the valley, riding their bicycles down one of the most commercial streets in the nation - the Las Vegas Strip.
About 75 people, mostly twentysomethings, gather on the sidewalks in front of The Forum Shops at Caesars for Las Vegas' 10-month-old version of Critical Mass, a bike riding event that has been part of other cities' social consciousness for 15 years.
The rides on the last Friday of each month started in San Francisco, where thousands of riders still pedal each month, clogging traffic and making statements about environmental awareness - or simply out for some good old-fashioned chaos.
Critical Mass happens in more than 200 cities across the U.S. and has spread to Canada and Europe. But it's not always just a peaceful ride around town.
In August, 19 bikers were arrested during a Critical Mass in Minneapolis. That same month seven riders were arrested in Chicago. In July a 10-year-old and other cyclists were struck by a drunk en driver during another Chicago Critical Mass.
For years rides in New York have been greeted with arrests and bike confiscations. In May a Berkeley, Calif., ride made the news after a biker was accused of smashing the windshield out of a minivan.
The San Francisco events have occasionally been marked by violence, from clashes with police to fights between bikers and drivers.
But if San Francisco is a Bob Dylan protest anthem, then Las Vegas is Britney Spears forgetting the words to a pop single.
This is a city where even Broadway doesn't typically make it and voter turnout hovers at about 15 percent. Critical Mass riders here don't have much of an agenda, other than to take a bike ride. The whole point is not to have a point.
"I just like coming out and meeting new friends and hanging out with friends," said Erica Morrison, 22. "It's just fun."
Jose Montoya, a Metro Police spokesman, said there has been no trouble with the riders so far. And riding your bike on the Strip is perfectly legal, if hardly the safest way to spend an evening.
"We have a big problem in Vegas with people not paying attention to riders," said 27-year-old rider Josh Evans.
If you really want to make it about something, bike rider awareness would be the issue. The bikes briefly clog turning lanes, led by a "corker," the guy who stops his bike in the middle of the street, preventing cars, cabs, buses and trucks from mowing down 10-speed riders.
Judging from the four-letter responses from many drivers, however, the "Share the Road" message isn't reaching its intended audience.
In the documentary "We Are Traffic," filmmaker and transportation activist Ted White calls Critical Mass a "leaderless grassroots movement."
That's true. Nobody wants to take credit for being "in charge" of the Vegas ride. Matt, the 25-year-old guy who initiated the ride, refused to give his last name because making himself the center of attention would go against the spontaneous spirit of the thing.
In January he started the Strip ride with a MySpace page and a few fliers at local bike shops. He got about two dozen participants. Last week that number more than tripled, boosted by tourists in town for a bicycle convention.
In the meantime, other Critical Mass rides have popped up every Saturday night starting at the Whole Foods on Charleston Boulevard and the first Friday of each month starting at the Whole Foods in Green Valley.
But the Strip Mass is the marquee event on the area's marquee street.
From the Forum Shops, the ride heads south with detours through the valet lanes at casinos, crosses the Strip near Mandalay Bay and proceeds back uptown via Tropicana Avenue and Koval Lane before cutting west on Sands Avenue back to the mall.
"Riding the Strip is a little crazy," said Drew Carter, 22. "It's something different every night. Sometimes the cars are cool and they don't care. Some nights the traffic is out of control."
And there is something strangely exhilarating about riding a bike next to a moving billboard adorned with a scantily clad woman promising, "Hot Girls Directly To You."
If nothing else, like most everything else in Vegas, Critical Mass seems to prove that there doesn't have to be a point for something to be fun.
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