Chris Ryan

Lower East Side punks may know Chris Ryan through his underground band Team Spider, headed by 80-year-old poet Zack. Or they may know him as the guy with the camera who organizes shows in Tompkins Square Park. Some know him as the Viking Lost in the Bronx from his independent film collaborative “Warriors: The Bike Race.” He is also the television producer of “Team Spider Television” on Manhattan Neighborhood Network.

Ryan took a moment out of his nonstop work schedule to sit and talk with me about two documentaries he worked on concerning the arrests at Critical Mass --a collective bike ride which gathers at Union Square Park on the last Friday of every month-- since the Republican National Convention (RNC) came to New York city in 2004.

His first documentary of the series to come out was, “Still We Ride,” a collaboration finished last year and shown at the Bicycle Film Festival at the Film Archives, and Fuck the System movie night at CB’s 313 Gallery. Ryan is reworking the second documentary “Criminal Mass” and would like to hold a double feature showing of the two when he is done. They are both currently available for sale through his website teamspider.com.

Your Show Team Spider is mostly bands, but you also do a lot on critical mass and the protests. What’s your goal with the show?

The little catch phrase we came up with is punk rock, poetry, and politics. So if it fits that parameter, then I feel it’s worthy of inclusion. Any one of those could make a show, but the three of them combined makes a stew.

When did you start doing shows on critical mass? Was it after the RNC?

No, we’ve been shooting on critical mass rides for years prior to that. It used to be a lot of fun. It was crazy. It was wild. Believe me we did things that you probably should be arrested for. Now it’s so angelic and coached by lawyers. We used to take over entire tunnels with bicycles.

What you shot for the show turned into two documentaries. How did that come about? Was it because you got arrested?

I was always shooting critical mass rides and it was always fun. I was bringing critical mass to the screens on TV. But the RNC 2004, that’s when they really started the persecution and I was arrested on that ride and handcuffed. I managed to get some video from my handcuffed hands and they kept arresting and kept harassing and I kept getting arrested. And I kept filming it.

How many times did you get arrested?

I got officially run through the system twice, but there were a couple of other times where I got handcuffed and they let me go. And one time I snuck my camera into the paddy wagon and did interviews there.

I went to the Lost film festival which was this traveling film festival, which I had a bunch of films in, and some people had like a four minute or five minute maybe six, short film. And it had interviews with people outside the Guantanamo on the Hudson facility pier 57. And I was like, “Oh Wow,” because I couldn’t even see what was going on. I said, “I have to meet these people.” So I asked the film festival director who they were and he pointed them out. I said “hi,” really quick when I was walking out the door. My initial thing was, “Yeah, we should trade footage.

Now you are working on a Second Documentary on the same subject.

Still We Ride is very much the political end and documentary. Criminal Mass was more my personal story. I’m the thread that carries it. What’s it like? With all these images of people in handcuffs. What’s it mean? You spend the next year and a half of your life to prove you’re innocent.

Out of all of your projects which is your main love?

That’s tough (pauses to think).
I mean, I really enjoy playing music live and I really enjoy shooting live. You know, filming. So sadly those seem to be the small percentage of the time it takes to finish anything. You can play a song in three minutes and it’s over and it’s great. You get instant gratification sharing with an audience. You record that song and you can spend weeks on it or hours on the snare sound. And that can be crazy but that lasts forever. The same with film. I love to shoot but I hate to edit. I hate to go through. I can make all this stuff but it’s hard to prioritize what projects are more important now. Sometimes I’m a media news person. Sometimes I reflect a year and a half later what really did that event mean. That’s my problem. If I really enjoyed one more than the other, maybe I’d drop one of them and be more successful at it.