The Bike Club, operated by local residents
Briana Rocheta and Tash Verco, functions as a co-operative, where nothing is
bought or sold. Rather, locals donate old bikes, parts, tools and time and in
exchange can leave with a well-serviced secondhand bike.
The bike workshop is also a highly economical
alternative for students or those on a low income. Briana comments: “The one
time I got my bike serviced, it cost me one hundred and fifty dollars!” She is
shocked by this, considering that it is something she could easily do herself. However,
the workshop is about far more than economics. Tash comments that the workshop
also has philosophical and ethical roots,
seeking “to challenge throw-away culture.”
Ironically, it is throw-away culture that
feeds the bike workshop. Regulars of the workshop are always amazed by the
endless abundance of expensive bikes ready to go to the tip. Briana says,
“During Council clean-up we find a bike on almost every street. Often they just
have two flat tyres so we pump them up and ride them away.” Bikes are also often
bought from Council auctions for as little as ten dollars.
These activist philosophies have made
the Bike Club more than just a place to repair a bike. Tash, who runs the Bike
Club out of the spacious backyard of her women’s share house, “The Nunnery,”
comments that the Bike Club is “a place where people can get together that
isn’t a pub or a shopping mall.”
Many come to the bike workshop simply
for the satisfaction of bringing an abandoned bike up to working condition.
Others come to take part in the co-operative learning environment, either by
sharing their bike maintenance skills or to learn skills from others.
The Bike Club grew out of the July 2005
“Students of Sustainability Conference” in Melbourne. Activists sought a way of both
promoting sustainability but also fostering a sense of community.
From here it only took a few spare parts
to give birth to Bike Club. Beginning with only a few regulars, Bike Club now
sees as many as forty people on a busy night. In the future, organisers hope to
provide community bikes for Newtown.
Bike Club has also given birth to many forms of bike activism, such as creating
a bike fleet of more than fifty bikes used to travel to Peats Ridge Festival,
which occurred to celebrate the new year. At the festival a bike tent was set
up, hiring out bikes from the Club to promote cycling as a sustainable and
healthy alternative.
Mark Pate, another activist who attends
Bike Club “just to help out,” was involved in a project in 2002 to send seven
thousand bikes to East Timor. He is currently
working on a project to send even more to Ghana
in Africa.
For Tash, however, Bike Club is really
about the confidence someone can gain from learning to fix a bike: “If someone
can learn to do something for themselves, then they can take that into other
parts of their lives.”
To find out more about
Bike Club visit the website at bikeclub.wordpress.com
Source: South Sydney Herald February 2007