Mondays, we're monday people.

The shop has closed for the winter, at least on fridays it has... remember a couple posts back how i said we were going to start a spontaneous bike program at Whittier park? well it has happened, and happened well.

 Youngsters ready?!

This is the group that was waiting for us to get started on the build destroy build of bikes. we teamed them up with some younger and older mentors, and we made bike happiness all over the park. There were banana seats, bells, whistles, a couple of pedals here and there and ofcourse tires and air.

Like real mechanics.

Like taking a bike to an auto place without spending money, these youngsters diagnosed the problem and went to work. but spending less on getting your bike fixxed means that youll have to accept the jungle gym breaks every 15 mins. gotta love these guys. they work hard at a young age and take quality playground breaks. I had so much fun hanging with my crew that day too. (respects to loudon and Tiago and christian to name a few).

This is a man's world?

This is not only a man's world when a few ladies showed up to not only participate; but mentor as well. Brenda is showing out little lady friend how to take apart breaks and steering. way to go team.

Sorry the photo is sideways. One can see bikes are no match for this club. I took a couple Fridays off due to weather and sickness but I, like all of the Ppleasant Avenue Bike Club, returned and this time it was to return my bike. :( i don't mean return it like for ever though. the club has a trade a bike policy. My bike was too small for me and when I came to visit they had a larger one. so I traded and it was so easy, now that i have some skills fixing them up under my belt my and the crew stripped my old bike and put the parts on the new one recycling things that could be used for someone else looking to salvage parts.

The club is doing amazing things since Ive been going. Today the bike club will be doing a mobile  fix up shop in Minneapolis at Whitter park. That's on 26th and Harriett for those in Minneapolis looking for something to get into. the fun starts at 4pm today so join us and get your bike fixed.

Here is some footage of us at work. the space the ambiance and the love all in one alley way ha ha. as you can see we have Young, and older, we have little ones and big ones we have bikes for all. so check us out in the alley of 27th and pleasant. Next Friday being the last day of the club will not stop the heart of the club. they will switch to Mondays at Whittier. Ill keep you posted as I become even more submerged into the biking community.

New Blogger alert

The Pleasant Avenue Alley Bike shop has a new blogger. Now with this new blogger, who goes by the name Timbo, we will have posts more often and a ton more to talk about. This past week at the bike shop, the crew showed me the ropes and gave me some one on one with some bikes. I must say, when I was younger I thought myself to be a bike-a-neer. I soon realized that I was well over due for a refresher course.
The crew took me under their pedals and we worked on everything from stripping a bike to dressing a bike up. We had tons of fun, fransisco brought flan and we heard about an adult spat down the street. None of which broke our focus. This is the first of the many new posts for the bike crew. soon to be added will be some pictures and video of things that we have been doing.

What an incredible summer it has been for the Alley Bike Club here on the 2700 block of Pleasant. This summer the club established itself as a neighborhood hub that kids come to expect. As I walked through Whittier Park this summer, kids would ask me "When is the bike shop going to be open?" They came by the dozen needing tubes, chains, or a place to belong, to fend off boredom, to find new friends, new skills, and some solid self-esteem.

We were open 2-3 days a week all summer for a total of over 150 hours. We helped over 50 kids keep their bikes up and running, patching tires, tightening brakes, replacing cables, putting on pedals, tightening chains, installing pegs - just about any kind of bike repair imaginable. At times, the club was an absolute whirlwind of frenetic activity. At other times one kid worked on her bike in solitude for hours. We gave out 25 new u-locks to help protect bikes from theft. We stripped down the inoperable bikes and built up others.

Notably, the Alley Bike Club partnered this summer with Lamin Jarju, an immigrant from the tiny country of Gambia, West Africa to send over fifty of our bicycles on a container ship to his native land. This is the first partnership of this type for our club, one that we hope to continue next year and beyond.

This summer it became clear that more than just a biking program, we are a youth development program. For the first time, two of our kids have gained enough skill to merit the title "Bike Leaders" and can now do many repairs on their own. These two are now mentoring younger kids, "Bike Assistants". We need better titles for these positions but that'll come. I was intrigued by the model that Youth Farm and Market uses where kids more through different stages of responsibility as they grow older. Something along those lines is emerging in our program as well.

The ABC is also a place of language and culture. We added several new languages to our wall this summer including Tibetan, Nepali, and Mandinka. All the languages on our wall were actually spoken here at one time or another. Language and culture happen so naturally in this place. Our space aims to be one of tolerance and integration. Many cultures mingle here peacefully and the tone this summer was overwhelmingly positive with respect to all the different cultures. Over bikes we talked about real stuff - identity, conflict resolution, family problems. Kids opened up more this year.

Budget 2011:

Cash on hand at beginning: $131

income:
Bike sales/repairs: $3,000

Liabilities:
Staff: $2,460
Supplies: $ 611
Total: $ 3071

Current cash on hand: $60

GOALS 2012:

• Further develop our work as an experimental neighborhood bike program for youth and families.



• Communicate clear youth development goals, mission, and vision through varied media. Fine-tune our outreach to organizations and individual bicycle donors.



• Improve the physical area of our space, including traffic calming elements that alert motorists on our alley that they are entering a "kid zone" and should proceed carefully.



• Continue to give youth Bike Leaders greater and greater responsibility for the every day workings of the shop.



• Partner with other emerging bike programs to learn from them and share our successes and challenges and expand our type of work to more and more people in Minneapolis.



• Lay the groundwork for a long-term sustainable model whether that be as an independant non-profit, partnership with another organization, an LLC or some other model.

The Alley Bike Club thanks all of the generous people who donated bicycles, Sunrise Cyclery, ReCycle, and Quality Bike Parts, and the Wellstone Bike Club, our partner program of Minneapolis Public Schools.

We look forward to 2012 and more Alley Bike Club fun and learning.

Do you have a bike gathering dust in the garage? DONATE IT TO THE ALLEY BIKE CLUB TODAY!!!!! Call 612-813-0116 or e-mail jcarl001@mpls.k12.mn.us.


Jeff Carlson, Director
Alley Bike Club
"Viva la bicicleta!!!!"

The Alley Shop / El Taller del Callejón

Aqui estan Emanuel, Prudence y Edith en el taller. Somos un taller comunitario de bicicletas, sin animo de lucro, ubicado en el callejon entre Pleasant y Pillsury, #2729. El año pasado reparamos mas de cien bicicletas que de otra forma habrían terminado en la basura. La misión de nuestro proyecto es proveer y reparar bicicletas a buenos precios a los vecinos del barrio Whittier en el sur de Minneapolis. Aspiramos enseñar a jóvenes a reparar bicicletas para que puedan hacerlo con sus propias bicicletas, y tener la posibilidad de ganar dinero como mecánico de bicicletas. Finalmente, buscamos mejorar el medio ambiente de Minneapolis reciclando bicicletas en vez de botarlas, promoviendo la bici como forma no contaminante de movilizarse en la ciudad, y expandiendo la comunidad de ciclistas para incluir comunidades de color e imigrantes. PAZ!

Here are Emanuel, Prudence and Edith working on bikes in our alley shop. We are a non-profit community bike shop located on the alley between Pillsbury and Pleasant, #2729. Last year we repaired over 100 bikes that otherwise would have ended up in the garbage. Our mission is to provide low-cost sales and repair of bikes for the Whittier neighborhood in South Minneapolis. We seek to teach young people basic bike mechanics so that they can fix up their own bike, and perhaps gain employment in a bike shop. Finally, we seek to better the environment by recycling bikes that would otherwise end up in landfills, promoting the the bike as non-polluting form of transportation, and expanding the bike community to include communities of color and immigrants.

YO!