D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
June 2008
Gearing Up
The Bike Works sets its wheels in motion — with programs for kids and adults — in a new home in Silver City.
Story and photos by Donna Clayton Lawder
The building itself is cavernous — industrial and, well, a little bleak, with a sky-high metal roof and almost echoingly empty. A heap of cots in the entrance and a bathroom cluttered with sleeping bags and gear are the few reminders of other programs once housed in the space.
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Dave Baker in the doorway of The
Bike Works. |
Consisting of not much more than a 3,000-square-foot concrete floor with a roof over its head and a few recently erected plain lumber workbenches, the building's atmosphere could perhaps be summed up euphemistically as having "a lot of potential."
Dave Baker is a man who recognizes potential. To him, this mostly empty building behind the Silver City Recreation Center is a godsend, fertile soil in which his budding project, "The Bike Works," can take root. After working for two years with local kids-program-and-cycling-nut Jamie Thompson — creator of the six-year-old "Cyclophilia" after-school bike program (see the April 2006 Desert Exposure) — Baker has teamed up with bike enthusiast Tsama (pronounced "Chama") Parsons-Pi_eda to take community biking a little further down the road.
Their vision, just now starting to take shape here, will include bike programs and workshops for both kids and adults. They hope to give kids a constructive alternative for their free time and to introduce grown-ups to a bike-friendly lifestyle.
Stepping around that heap of cots, Baker points out lines drawn on the floor, marks he's made on the wall, and illustrates the plans still in his head.
"Here's where I'd like to see a display case," he says, using his hands to encompass the height, depth and breadth of cabinets and tabletops he already sees in his mind. "Coming down here, we've got some racks for bikes, a log book here." Moving farther along the length of the imaginary fixture, he adds, "And here's where people would sign in and, here, pick up their tool kits."
In the middle of the space, he and Parsons-Pi_eda have constructed a series of shelves and workbenches. Opposite them are some simple open-storage shelves, running more than a dozen feet high. About 100 bicycles in various levels of ride-ability and rust lie neatly on their sides, stacked in four rows. Baker pauses to pick up a couple of bikes he identifies as new donations, and shuffles them into the organized pile.
"Jamie (Thompson) put the word out and all these bikes came in from the community," he explains. "Kids are already stopping in and asking me, 'Can I have this bike?'" he says with a laugh. "Well, that's one thing we'll be doing is getting bikes out to local kids."
Other plans include open repair-shop time when individuals can come and work on their own bikes with tools and guidance from Bike Works personnel or volunteers, workshops in which kids and adults can learn how to work on their machines and handle bike emergencies — like flats and derailed chains — while they're out on the road, coordinated youth rides and an "Earn-A-Bike" program.
"They'll get a bike, like one of these here that really need some work," Baker explains. "They'll take it apart and put it back together, with supervision, and at the end of a set number of hours, they'll get to keep that bike.
"I find that if you just give kids a bike, they don't respect it, because it just came to them, for free," he continues. "After working to earn it, and getting to really know that bike in the process, the kids come away really valuing the bike. That's important."
Getting more adults up on two wheels is a particular goal of Baker's, something he envisions conveying through local lectures and open-house events.
"The bike is not just a kid's toy," he says. "It's cost-effective transportation. It's healthy. I'm encouraged that so many of our local medical professionals are avid cyclists. And there are ecological reasons to bike, like cutting down on traffic and decreasing pollution."
Baker was a co-founder and coordinator of the very successful and well-known Austin Yellow Bike Project, a Texas program that puts free bikes out into the community. That project also operates a thriving all-volunteer bike-repair shop where community members can use the tools and get advice to repair their own sets of wheels.
Baker worked in Austin for six years, starting out fixing bikes at a shop called "Bikes Not Bombs" that sent bikes to Nicaragua. "One day I just said, 'Hey, we need bikes here,'" he says. The Austin program was modeled after a similar one in Seattle. Currently, there are about 110 Yellow Bike Projects of various sizes across the nation.
Here in Silver City, Baker says he has taken what he learned from Austin's Yellow Bike Project — including the nuts and bolts of how to set up a bike shop — and is incorporating that into his Bike Works program.
The project is getting its start-up wheels greased, in good measure, through the generosity of local businesses. Baker says that in addition to the building, made available through recreation center manager Mike Madrid, the project received $5,000 from Phelps Dodge (now Freeport McMoRan) for tools to outfit the shop. Mr. Ed's Do-It Center (now Sun Valley Hardware) donated a bunch of multi-drawer storage boxes the bike program will use to store and organize smaller bike parts. Foxworth-Galbraith donated the plain board lumber, out of which Baker and Parsons-Pieda have constructed the workbenches and shelving.
Volunteer effort is a necessary — and nourishing — part of such a community bike program, Baker says. Currently, he's looking for volunteers to help salvage bike parts from the pile of donated bikes, to sort, clean and organize small parts, and to generally get the place up and running.
In addition to working part time at Gila Hike & Bike in downtown Silver City, Baker is one of two paid staff (along with Parsons-Pi_eda) for the local after-school bike program for youth, funded through the Juvenile Probation and Parole Office (JPPO).
"Yeah, that's only 15 hours a week, though, and I'm putting in way more than that right now trying to get this place set up!" he says with a laugh. "I guess you could say I'm a key volunteer at this point."
For more information, contact Dave Baker, The Bike Works, 10th St. behind the
Silver City Recreation Center, 388-1444.