Bicycle Collectives

When I pulled my bike out of the closet the other week, I found that I enjoyed putting it back together a lot more than I thought I would.


It's odd, I love to drive fast, but I don't very much like working on cars. Strangely, while biking doesn't give me anywhere near the same thrill as hitting the throttle and winding through the gears on an open road in my trusty Corolla (but much more of a thrill than sitting in traffic), working on bikes is fascinating to me. Maybe it's because everything is right there in the open, with only a few systems of cables and levers and screws, so it's a lot more intuitive than your average modern motor vehicle.


So, I decided to see if I could put my amateur bike repair skills to use, and sure enough, there are not one, but at least three local bicycle collectives that can use volunteers here in the L.A. area.


They are:


Bikerowave in Santa Monica,
Bicycle Kitchen in L.A.,
and Bike Oven in Highland Park.


These are great! Basically, a bicycle collective is a combination bike shop / repair facility / hangout where people gather to fix their bikes, buy used bikes or new or used parts, or generally BS.


The bike repair aspect is awesome. Basically, you bring your bike in, pay $5-6 an hour for stand time, and have free use of the tools and the guidance of the volunteers in order to fix your own bike.

Sure, it may take a little longer to fix your bike than just dropping it off at the bike shop, but you have the pride of doing it yourself, and the knowledge of how to deal with that problem the next time it crops up.


So if you've got a bike in your garage or closet you've been meaning to fix up, or you're looking to buy an old bike to build up the way YOU want it, or you'd like to donate an old bike that's no longer working for you, or you want to spend more time working on bikes, find your local bicycle collective and head over there ASAP!