BIKES! Support your community bike shop!

As I mentioned in my last entry, 2008 was my bicycle year, so to speak. Twelve months ago, I didn't know my headset from my bottom bracket. Now, I commute to work every day and wander around every weekend on a Craigslist clunker that I completely dismantled and reassembled with my own two hands. Certainly, I had a lot of aid along the way: my roommate Daniel, with the patient interest and the well-outfitted toolbox; the late, great Sheldon Brown's encyclopedic web-ghost; Alex Ramon's incredibly helpful step-by-steps over at Bicycle Tutor. Helpful as they all were, though, there was one place where I learned so much and got my hands so greasy that I'm absolutely certain I couldn't have accomplished the task without it: the Yellow Bike Project.

Like many, if not most, the first time I went to YBP was for personal use. I'd just snagged the aforementioned Craigslist clunker, the appropriately banana-colored Western Flyer now known as Mellow Yellow, and even my untrained eye could plainly see that the warped chrome rims were way out of true. I walked into the sweaty, sprawling 51st Street shop not knowing what to expect at all, and walked out with something somewhat circular and a sense of accomplishment. After a second stop for the second wheel, I felt like I owed a few volunteer hours. A trip or two turned into a (sadly short-lived) Wednesday ritual, and as I found myself quickly going from knowing nothing to overhauling a three-piece BB, it was terribly apparent that even though I was signing in as a "volunteer," I was benefiting tremendously. Over a few short weeks, I not only learned all the basics of how the bicycle works, but how to make it work, and keep it working. As someone who has always been good at grasping abstract concepts but not necessarily so hot at the doing part, it was a big, big deal. The word "empowering" seems to get used to death these days, but yeah, it was, very.

Unfortunately, all these excursions were occurring right as Yellow Bike was preparing to close down the 51st Street shop. There was a month of great, super-productive volunteer-only shops, there was the glorious human-powered move, and then... that was kinda it for a while. I finished piecing Mellow Yellow back together (nothing will make you appreciate YBP like scavenging for old crappy ten-speed parts everywhere else), but the hours at the considerably smaller Treasure City shop never seemed to mesh with my schedule quite right, and my wrenching became limited to the constant care and attention required to keep Mellow roadworthy.

With one earlier exception, it was only in the last month that I found myself stopping by Treasure City. The first time was a Saturday scourged by Murphy's Law, as a brief shower in the midst of our long drought was forcing them to close up for the afternoon. Quickly realizing how much I missed it, I stopped by the following two Friday nights. With the sun setting early and the college kids off on break, the brisk, lamp-lit sessions reminded me of just how great picking up some tools and solving a strange bike's problems feels. Time seems to slow down a little, the brain balances out and calms down as it focuses on the task at hand - there's a unique parity there, between the effects of riding and wrenching. Once again, I found myself wanting to make a weekly habit of swinging by, but once again, my plans have been derailed by rough luck and bad timing.

The Treasure City location, which is basically a shed attached to the garage section of the thrift store, has run into some inspection issues that are forcing YBP to run the entire shop out of the shipping container they were previously using for storage. Services will be pared down even more than they already have been, pretty much making the entire space a repair assistance workshop. There won't be any room to receive donated rides, and for a volunteer such as myself who goes to spiffy up those ridiculously cheap sale bikes, it sounds like there won't really be anything to do. Limited as the Treasure City facilities have been, this sounds like a pretty major blow. Meanwhile, the contents of the old 51st Street location continue to sit idle on a patch of land at 12th and Webberville, waiting for a shop to be built up around them.

A couple of weeks ago, YBP sent out its only mass mailing ever, asking supporters to donate what they could in order to get construction of their new headquarters underway. The absence of a proper shop for the last seven months has been a big enough void as it is, but the issues that have just arisen at Treasure City make breaking ground at Webberville more urgent than ever. Pleas like this are usually not my deal, and one of the things I love so much about organizations like Yellow Bike is that they'd rather you offer your blood, sweat, and tears than your wallet. But right now, the reality of the situation is that they need capital to make this thing happen.

The Yellow Bike Project has given immeasurably to the Austin cycling community, from the lowliest dude on a rusty cruiser circling 12th and Chicon to the hippest fixter with the deepest V's on campus. All the yellow bikes released into the wild, all the earn-a-bikes that didn't cost their owners a dime, all the build-a-bikes and sale bikes that went for about as much as the average tune-up at a commercial shop. All the stands and tools and grease and education free for the taking, all the crazy piles of parts to be had for whatever you could give, all the relentless effort of the coordinators to make it all work for all these years. The only way of measuring the debt is trying to imagine what this city would be like if Yellow Bike never existed. I sure can't, and I'd rather not.

This is really not my thing (I worked for NYPIRG for a while, and can assure you that I'm a god-awful fundraiser), but please, if you've got anything you can spare, spare it. I know I'm too late for the holiday spirit and the 2008 tax return, but I'm not much one for Christmas or deductions. I know a lot of traffic to this site comes via local bike blogs, and I'm sure at least a few people reading this have benefited directly from Yellow Bike in one way or another. I know times are tough, but that's exactly why we need to be throwing ourselves behind things like sustainability, community, autonomy, and all the other great ideas that the Yellow Bike Project makes as tangible as a top tube. If you can, do it.