By Davey Davis
Ogden
We’re open and operating! Watch for our Grand Opening party coming soon, follow us on Facebook for details! We had our first kids bike giveaway last week, which went smoothly, 50 kids receiving bikes so far. For those interested mechanics we are starting weekly volunteer classes in July, every Thursday at 6pm, come learn how to wrench component-group by component group in this free class, and help the Collective out at the same time.
Salt Lake
In Salt Lake we’re running at full-speed, putting dozens of bikes out a week through our youth programs, our goodwill connections, and people coming in to purchase bikes.
We’ve grown immensely over the last decade, and have reached a point where we can have both an executive director over our locations across the state, and a director dedicated to our programs in Salt Lake! In the next months we will be hiring a full-time director of our Salt Lake City location, reporting to our executive director. This is a tremendous opportunity for anyone who wants to contribute massively to the bicycling community in Salt Lake, and open up the world of bikes to new riders. Look on our homepage for more information.
Bike Prom has grown, and grown! We were totally amazed by the sheer number of dressed up beautiful people who came out to support us astride their fanciest rides. We had 950 attendees, and raised over $13,000 for the SLC Bike Collective this year! Thank you for making it happen. Those funds allow improvements so that our volunteers, night shop managers, and YOU have more time to focus on learning about bikes when you come into the shop. Thank you so much for the support, we’ll see you around town, at the bike valet this summer, and when you’re interested in brushing up on your bike repair.
Closing University of Utah Location
After years of being a bike-oriented labor of love, we’ve decided to close the volunteer-run University of Utah location. Staffed by students looking to share their passion for bikes, the U location was a gateway into learning bicycle mechanics and into the work we do at the Salt Lake shop. Unfortunately our model was not sustainable there, without bike sales and regular programming we were unable to create a location that could perpetuate itself.
Our hope is that in the vacuum of this closure, the University will create and support its own bike program that serves students and gets more people riding on campus. We will continue to work with the Bennion Center, Environmental Justice courses, and other parts of campus to get students engaged in the Bike Collective. For more information about bicycle resources on campus, contact Alex Zimmermann, Active Transportation Coordinator at the U: [email protected]
To learn more about the Bicycle Collective, visit bicyclecollective.org
