Episode Four – US Bike Mechs: Rejuiced Bikes

Hello,

After working on bikes during a busy, and mild, winter season we are finally back!! It’s been a good winter: from being featured on the bike show, we received a donation of an awning that now keeps us and our outside tools dry from the rain! We also got some new lights for working outside, and had a workshop weekend of skill sharing our knowledge of internal hubs, disc brakes, etc over lots of tea and yummy meals together.

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This interview of independent bike mechanics features Johnnie Olivan of Rejuiced Bikes in Portland, OR! WOAH! In a nutshell, Johnnie recycles old bikes and bike parts and welds them together (hear about welding and Schwinn’s at 13:50) to create a bicycle with a (more) utilitarian function and keep the aesthetics at the same time; such as rain collecting, recycling, or aiding the handicapped. So rad! And so DIY!

“And there’s people since that are making old bike railers out of old bike parts. I mean, it’s happening, you know. And I’m not the first I think, but I just definitely know that people around me are doing exactly what I’m doing. And maybe they’re not doing the exact same thing but it’s so freakin’ cool to build something and ride it around town and have it serve a function.”

“When we were travelling [in Spain and Holland] it was all about, you know, tuning our bikes up and…I don’t really know. I just always went to the bike because when you go somewhere, when you move somewhere, it’s always like ‘I gotta get a license in this state,’ ya know, ‘I gotta get this in this state,’ and what’s easier than just getting on your bike?

The 2nd interview is me following Johnnie around as he shows me the different bikes.

 

Pics below include bikes that collect water (H2O flow), school bike, bike rescue bike (now a farmer’s market bike with a foldable umbrella), media quadricycle, waste bike (Trashy Trike)

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Tags: 56a, Arizona, atomic zombie, bike trailers, bike workshops, bikes, modular, Portland, Rejuiced Bikes, welding

Evil cars

 

Madison interlude

Also, L visited Revolution Cycles in Madison, WI. Unfortunately she wasn’t able to get an interview from this (especially since it was a politically hot summer up in Madison), but is sharing some of the bike hot photos.

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“They can build golden cages for us all to live in. They can make beds of silk, cuddle us in sheets soft and thin. Dress us in a tender caress, comb our hair with care and lift us from the dirty soil. Soothe us with delicate oil. They can cook us tasty meals, sugar and salt, but cannot make our hunger for real freedom halt. Go ahead, make a wall to divide us, it won’t keep us apart. Try to teach us biased history, we’ll swear to never forget. Firm hands pour cups of hemlock, but can’t force us to drink. They may control our space and time, but never how we think. Let every wasted seed of desire become a beautiful flower. Watch it unfold hour by hour, rise higher and higher. We pay for lives with our deaths, everything in between should be free.” – Lack, ‘The Gay Revolutions’

Tags: 56a London, bike mechanics, bike shops, Madison WI, Revolution Cycles

Episode Three: US Bike Mechs – The Bike Farm

“The bicycle doesn’t have to be a mysterious machine.”

Hello and welcome to episode 3 of independent bike mechanic interviews. The focus is now on the vibrant cycling city of Portland (damn straight!: around 6 percent of it’s citizens commute by bicycle – the highest in the US), where L interviewed five different groups/people involved in cycling culture.

First off is the Bike Farm, a “non-profit, volunteer-run bicycle maintenance collective .” It should be noted that The Bike Farm isn’t the only independent, collectively run, branded-awesome bikespace in town. There are others like the Community Cycling Center, Bicycle Repair Collective, North Portland Bike Works, Citybikes, etc…, but due to time constraints and the huge explosion of bike-related businesses in Portland since L last visited two years ago, the Bike Farm gets dibs! Also, the Bike Farm gets the first go because the atmosphere, organisational structure, and politics seemed a lot like 56a:

“We’re a resource for tools and parts where people can come and work on their own bikes and the volunteers, to the extent that some of us have some mechanical experience are here to point you in the right direction, to identify what needs to be done, and figure out how to do it.”

L also fronts some questions regarding gender and sexism in the bikeworld.

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More reading:

The concept of a “bike kitchen“
An article about The Bike Farm, from bikeportland.org.

The Bike Farm is located at 305 NE Wygant, Portland OR 97211. Thanks Shannon and Russ for your time!

Tags: 56a, bicycles, Bike Farm, collectives, independent bike mechanics, London, Portland

Bristol Bike Gathering!

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Last week the Bike Room took a little field trip down to Bristol for the second nation-wide bicycle gathering (first one was in Manchester) . Following up on the first gathering last March, this was a meeting for organizers of bicycle-based projects across the UK. London was well represented, with four of us in attendance from the Bike Room and one person from Cycle Training UK; other organizations included Cranks in Brighton, Pedaller’s Arms in Leeds, and the multi-cited Bicycology and Spokeswomen. The Kebele social center and Bristol Bike Project hosted the event, setting the bar high for future gatherings with amazing food and accommodation. They have our great thanks.

As a mechanic at the Bike Room, I was thrilled to see so many people excited about social projects involving bicycles. There are inevitably moments in organizing such a project when a person loses steam, dealing with inconsiderate patrons or failing to see any sort of large-scale system change. This bicycle gathering was a chance for me to be reinvigorated, partly for sharing and discovering practical strategies, but more so for being surrounded by so many inspired and inspiring people.

Workshops covered all manner of bicycle-related subjects, as organizers came from projects with widely varying missions. Several projects were based around helping people fix their own bikes, like the Bike Room, but others included cycle training, bicycle politics, a women’s bicycle mechanic network and youth mechanicship. Perhaps the most unique project to present a workshop was one that dealt exclusively with adaptive cycles for the disabled, a community that is often neglected among cyclists.

The next gathering will be held in Leeds in the spring, and the Bike Room will of course be in attendance. Again, our heartfelt thanks go out to the organizers of the gathering in Bristol and all of the participants. It’s not often a chance comes along to be so reflective which engaging with so many interesting people.

Tom Martin
Bikeroom volunteer

 

Episode Two: US Bikes Mechs – Gary Main

Hellohello. This is the second installment of our interviews on independent bike projects. On her recent travels in the United States, L met Gary Main of Big Rapids, MI. He happens to own the last remaining bike shop in town! This was quite a contrast to London (3% of people working in central London commute by bike), and also to Portland (5.8% commute by bicycle), where she later visited: ”Less people ride bicycles in the United States than in almost every country throughout Asia and Europe, with the exception of England, with whom the United States is tied (along with Australia).”

 

Netherlands 27%, 18% Denmark, ~10% Germany, Finland, and Sweden. In Tokyo, Japan, “it is estimated that more people ride bicycles to local train and subway stations each day — as part of their work commute — than there are bike commuters in the entire United States.” (Zack Furness, One Less Car, 4)

In Portland the bike business is booming, but in small town America local businesses including bike shops, are suffering not only from the recession but also from the big name/big box shops like Walmart that sell lower quality bicycles for cheap (see quoted passage below on the bicycle industry). L speaks to Gary on these issues, “corn-gas society,” as well as how Gary is keepin’ it real in MI.

“It would take an awful lot of education and some simple modifications of people’s driving skills, then there would be a lot of people riding bikes, just like in Europe. Yaknow, I mean I get people coming in here all the time, I say: ‘Why don’t you ride your bike to work?’ ‘Oh! It’s two miles!’ ‘Wait…10,000 ft. And you wanna buy a car, pay exorbitant insurance, pour gas like mad into this car by yourself, and drive four miles a day. 20,000ft. Instead of getting on it and riding a bike, and improving your health and maybe living longer. You cannot legislate morality. You cannot create common sense. There’s no cure for stupid.”

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“There are a number of mitigating circumstances leading to the demise of the U.S. bicycle manufacturing aside from international competition, including mismanagement, corporate greed, and the failure of certain bicycle companies to adapt to particular trends…Rather, we are meant to see the company’s missed opportunities, lack of innovation, and brand deterioration as the hallmarks of its failure, as opposed to seeing the entire bicycle industry as a symbol of everything wrong with globalisation and the corporate race to the bottom…

Huffy Bicycle Corporation, then largest in the United States [July 1998], closed down its Celina, Ohio factory and fired the entire staff of nearly a thousand workers despite high overall sales that year (previous years were financially tumultuous)…Huffy went on to close plants in Mississippi and Missouri in 1999, firing 1,800 workers who were already paid $2.50 less per hour than Celina’s $10.50 wage. The company moved a number of these jobs to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where workers earned less than $4 per hour, before closing operations in 2001 in order to centralise manifacturing operations in a Chinese factory where workers earned 25 to 41 cents per hour while logging sixty-six to seventy hours per week (up to nineteen hours per shift).

Including Huffy, five corporations (Dorel, Dynacraft, Huffy, Rand, and Kent) and their subsidiaries now comprise roughly 80 percent of the U.S. bicycle market, while the other 20 percent of bicycle are largely produced by three additional corporations (Giant, Merida, and Ideal) that similarly operate via a network of supply chains and outsourced labour that is difficult to accurately map out. Consequently, it is incredibly hard to find out where most bikes are made, never mind gaining access to clear information about the actual labour conditions and environmental practices connected to specific bicycle factories ” (Furness, 214).

Tags: bicycle industry, bicycles, bike interview, bike sellers, independent bike mechanics, Michigan

Maya Pedal: Sikk Bikes!

More here (in English this time):
Maya Pedal’s website —-> build your own!!
Maya Pedal on Half Nomad

Maya Pedal operates in Guatemala fixing old bikes and making bicimáquinas - bike machines, or bikes with utilitarian purpose. For example, a bike that can grind corn or pump water. This allows the communities in San Andrés Itzapa to have an efficient way to do specialised work without relying on things like diesel engines. They thus rely less on a fossil fuel-based economy and more cooperatively on themselves. Sikk.

And when I Bike Chase I break your Speed-o-meter

I wish my boy/girlfriend was as dirty as my bike…

BIKE SMUT COMES TO  SOUTH LONDON!

Celebrating the sexiness of bicycles and those who ride them…
A CHANCE TO SEE THE HOTTEST BIKE-PORN ON THE PLANET(with lots of queer/feminist content) alongside bike games, performances, and an ALLEY RAT race…

http://www.bikesmut.com/
http://bikeporntour.blogspot.com 

THURSDAY 1^st SEPTEMBER 2011

THE FUN STARTS AT 8PM. ARRIVE EARLY FOR A GOOD SEAT. REFRESHMENTS AVAILABLE. 

at COLORAMA,52-56 LANCASTER STREET, SE1. 

For the ALLEY RAT – this will be quite a short, speedy, race – we’re looking for marshalls for the checkpoints, folk with cameras who can help capture the action, and of course up-for-it riders! Please get in touch if you’d like to take part in some way, or get more info: bicycleballet@yahoo.co.uk

Episode One: London Indy Bike Mechs – Jon of Old Street Bikes

This is the first installment of our interview project on independent bike projects. L of the bikespace has been interviewing some of London’s independent bike mechanics, and different independent bike spaces/people/projects during her summer travels in the US of A.

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Jon of Old Street Bikes (formerly known as Ganesha Cycles) talks about his racing past, working solo, constructing a bicycle, philosophy of riding and fixing a bike, changes in London, recommended rides and bike shops/mechanics, and he shows us some of his sweet refurbished bikes — check out the rim with the floating sprocket! His business is mainly out of his house in Whitechapel where he has up to 100 bikes! He also sells bikes at bike jumbles and the like around London.

“Really, I try and put bikes back to how they were when built. So I try and keep my original parts, and if I can I’ll improve them. So maybe I’ve got a ’30′s bike, maybe I’ll improve it by taking off the rod brakes and putting on a ’50′s drum brake. So a certain bike which would have been updated in the ’50′s, it’s a better bike than it was. That’s what I try and do; I try and either improve bikes or put them back.”

 

Jon can be contacted at 07five7218zero815 and operates out of 34 Mount Terrace E1 2BB.

Tags: bicycles, bike sellers, Buddhism, cycling in London, DIY, independent bike mechanics, interview, London, Old Street, Old Street bikes