Community Bike Shops - Part 3

Over the last few years, I have had the opportunity to visit a handful of community bike shops around the United States. This is the third of five posts to show the shops I've seen first-hand, even if I stopped by when they were closed.

Community bike shops (also called community bike projects or co-ops) tend to be non-profit organizations with brick-and-mortar locations that serve the specific bicycling needs of a community. Some have large budgets and paid staff, others are completely volunteer-run. Most shops have a mission statement, which is the best way to learn about what they do and how they operate.

The general model:

• Reduce the barriers of entry to cycling by taking donated bicycles and parts to be salvaged, rebuilt, and sold at very affordable prices;
• Empower people with knowledge of how to repair and maintain their own bikes with either classes or DIY shop space and tool libraries;
• Host events; either for fun, education, or fund-raising; and
• (From my experience) they also function as safe spaces for people to learn and hang-out.

The shops I've been to are geographically distant from one another, but the similarities are evident. I highly recommend seeking out a co-op bike shop in your neighborhood or the next time you are traveling. Supporting them with a purchase or donation is a great way to share the love of bikes with others.

Vélocity Bicycle Cooperative

Alexandria, Virginia

From their website: Vélocity strives to "grow and empower a more inclusive biking community through affordability, education, and embracing the fun of riding."

 

I stumbled upon the non-profit Vélocity Bike Co-op while visiting my mom in Alexandria in March 2018. We were out for ice cream in the upscale Del Ray neighborhood (Tacomans would equate this area to their Proctor neighborhood.) Rents are higher here and it seemed an unlikely place to find a non-profit bike shop. Even though the shop was closed, a set of night owl volunteers let us in to have a peek.

It's a relatively small space, covered with everything bike-related from floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall. Bikes for sale would normally be outside on the sidewalk during business hours, but they were inside for the evening and it was a tight fit to maneuver our family inside. With spring just around the corner, the volunteers were working hard to add more used-bikes to their inventory.

My mom hit it off with the volunteers, explaining our interest in their shop based on our own bike co-op in Tacoma, 2nd Cycle. You may recall that my mom enjoys riding bikes, too, and once I even shipped her a folding bike through the mail while she was stationed overseas.

 

We quickly learn that they warehouse their overstock at a separate location and focus on using this storefront for DIY repairs, parts and accessory sales, as well as some classes. Not wanting to overstay our welcome, we thank the volunteers for their time and efforts and leave a cash donation. They gave us a water bottle and an area bike map in return.

With the smell of old tires and grease still fresh on my mind, I make time the next day to tune-up Mom's Kettler city bike that she picked up while stationed in Germany. I was planning to take advantage of the Mount Vernon Trail, which partly runs along the Potomac River from Alexandria to Arlington and would connect me to Washington, D.C. Mom offers to babysit that evening and I set out after dinner for a 15-mile round-trip to the Lincoln Memorial.

Only a few miles into the ride, the bike starts gear-skipping. It had been fine earlier on a test ride. Isn't this always how these things happen? It's now dark and I can't seem to locate the exact problem. Deciding to press on, I find a gear that seems to minimize the skipping. No sooner had I reached the Lincoln Memorial and taken a photo, my phone died. Great. Good thing the volunteers at Vélocity hooked me up with a paper map! The trail is not well lit, but I feel better about finding my way back home with the map in-hand. Somewhere around the Ronald Reagan Airport, I pull over again under a bright lamppost along the trail to take another look at the skipping issue. It's driving me mad. With the bike flipped over I can now see a damaged link in the chain that's sticking. I soft pedal back to Mom's house, knowing exactly where I'll be heading the next day.

Back at Vélocity, we grab an open work stand and point out the damaged chain to a volunteer. The rest of the chain isn't worn out, so he points us to a bucket of old chains and suggests finding a similar one and harvest a link. This works great and is essentially a free repair. In the daylight, we spot a few Vélocity ball caps that we can't live without and make another donation to cover our shop time. It was great to fix the bike ourselves in the neighborhood, just like we would back home in Tacoma.

Stay tuned for the next installment as we check out more community bike projects.

Swan Creek Mountain Bike Trails in Tacoma

I was excited to hear that MetroParks Tacoma partnered with the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance to build mountain bike trails in Swan Creek Park, the second largest park in the city.

A Grand Opening celebration is happening on March 29th from 10am-3pm with activities for kids and adults, including a Trek bike demo. If you are unfamiliar with Swan Creek, this would be a great time to check it out.

Lots of riders are already enjoying the trails. My friend Jesse has been out there several times and offered to give me the full tour a few weekends ago.  Jesse rides a full-suspension 29er that can handle everything the park has to offer. I rode my rigid drop-bar 29er, which is more of a monster cross bike, but it worked great. It was an overcast rainy day, so most of my photos turned out like this.

From the park entrance on East T Street near Lister Elementary, we rode south to the main trailheads. The pump track, outer loop and skills sections all start near the same spot. 

The outer loop starts with a few big drops, which I opted to ride around. However, most of that trail seemed like it would be manageable on every thing from an old 26" mtb to your singlespeed cyclocross bike. 

Near the end of the outer loop there's an optional downhill section. Jesse had already figured out my comfort zone and advised me to "stay left, it's a bit less...violent." The violent bit is a steep and fast down/up feature that was happy to avoid.

We rode the full outer loop with a detour onto the Braking Bad inner loop and finished where we started (the trail is one-way.) That first introductory lap took about 30 minutes, but Jesse said he usually rides three laps in an hour. 

There are three skills trails that offer varying degrees of difficulty with jumps, drops and berms and other features. We did multiple runs on the easy and moderatate skills trails, but I was still riding slowly and going around the big drops. It was tons of fun.

The expert skills trail was still under construction, but from what I could see it would have been way out of my league.

Overall, I had a blast and cannot wait to get back to Swan Creek. I think this is going to help make mountain biking more accessible for many local riders and allow seasoned riders to play in the dirt more often.