If you want to help at any of the open shop nights, ESPECIALLY if you’re a lady/trans person who wants to help out at the shop during women’s/trans night with other nice folks, LET US KNOW!!!!!!

You can e-mail Rachel at rdingfelder@gmail.com

From Bike Pittsburgh’s blog:

The International Bicycle Film Festival is on its way to Pittsburgh

The international Bicycle Film Festival is in its ninth year, traveling to more than 30 cities, including New York, London, Paris, Sidney and Tokyo. This year, for the first time, the festival will be coming to Pittsburgh thanks to Urban Velo and BikePGH.

The heart and soul of the film festival are the short films—contributed by filmmakers from around the world, both professional and amateur.  Additionally, two high-profile films highlight this year’s festival.  Made in Queens tells the story of New York City youths from Trinidad who attach 15,000 watt stereo systems to their bicycles.  Where Are You Go documents an incredible bicycle ride across Africa—from Cairo to Cape Town.

The weekend of events is now solidified, and tickets are available online.  The cost of the festival is $8 per night.  All screenings will be held at the Andy Warhol Museum in the North Side.

Buy your tickets now! This is expected to sell out the 120 seat theater.

Thursday July 2

7:00 PM | Program 1 - Bike Shorts
9:00 PM | Black & Gold Sprints : Over the Bar Bicycle Cafe - 2518 E Carson St

Friday July 3

6:00 PM | Program 2 - Where are you go - Premiere
8:00 PM | Program 3 - Urban Bike Shorts
8:00 PM | After Party - The Brew House - 2100 Mary St

Saturday July 4

10:00 AM | BIKE POLO and Picnic

8:00 PM | BFF GROUP RIDE

Check out the Film Festival’s site to purchase tickets and to see descriptions of the movies

See you at the party!

Lately, we have had a lot of awesome new people stepping up to train as staffers. We just want to say thanks to all the new staffers, old staffers, and our volunteers for keeping the shop running. Sorry again to anyone who showed up on time to work on their bike or their Earn-A-Bike! Thanks to two great Free Riders, we were able to open.

*** Saturday JUNE 20TH @ 9pm - ? ***

RIBBON DANCING performance by awesome ladies!
Break Away Marching Band:::: pgh’s radical marching band to perform.
DJ’s::::
Mary Mack
Drop That
D.H.
Jenny Jihad & Sean MC
+ more TBA

- “My So-Called Life” Video Remixes by Nutmeg B
- “Locker Lean” Photobooth
- ♥ seven minutes in a trapper keeper ♥ smooch smooch.. like angela and jordan’s “boiler-room” only in a giant walk-in TRAPPER!
- tons of CONDOMS, chapstick, etc. from planned parenthood!

$5-10 sliding scale at door
Free East End beer & drinks with ID

Dress: 90s style dress HIGHLY encouraged. plaids, denim, half plaid-half denim dresses, vests, chokers, pegged/ tight- rolled jeans!, scrunchies, light-colored jeans….or dress up like your favorite MSCL character! including your interpretation of the famously incognito (and never shown on the show), “TINO!”

*** All proceeds benefit Free Ride’s youth Mobile Bike Repair Project & Book ‘Em, Pittsburgh’s books-to-prisoners program! ***

ride yer bike <3

Free Ride! is offering a new summer program in collaboration with Urban Youth Action’s youth summer internship. It is designed as an immersion learning experience for high school aged teens. The objectives are to gain mechanical knowledge through bike repair, leadership skills in managing the shop, and a deeper understanding of the sustainability in bike travel.

Interns will manage a self-contained traveling bike shop mounted on a bike trailer that will be transported around the city of Pittsburgh. Instructors and interns will offer basic bike maintenance and fundamental repair skills for anyone who needs their bike serviced on location. This program begins July 17th and will run through August 22th and will appear at various city venues.

Free Ride instructors will select 4 candidates to join the program as paid interns. The interns will receive 40 hours of intensive bike mechanics training and will split into field crews. These crews will then spend 30 hours a week working for FreeRide’s Mobile Bike Repair Project. 

You may find the Free Ride Mobile Bike Repair Project in your area! Be sure to check the calendar for a location near you!

We are seeking community partners who wish to offer space at their site for the Mobile Bike Repair Project to set up shop. Interested parties can secure us a place and time during our hours of operation.  We’d appreciate assistance with publicity. 

Inquiries, please contact us at: freerideyouthprograms@gmail.com or call 412.731.4094.

This basic mechanic’s course is six weeks long, giving each student 12 hours of class time and walks students through the various systems of the bike. The class aims to teach you how to look at the bike and try to vision how to find the problem. For the Sunday Class, you must sign up for the full six weeks. Register here

If you can’t commit to the six week course, check out the Monday “drop-in” classes. The topics vary, and you can pick and choose which classes you want to attend.

Here’s a basic rundown of the six week course:

Week 1 - Tubes, tires and flats In this intro to the course we will discuss tube and tire selection and sizing, and have a thorough exercise in patching a flat.

Week 2 - Hubs and bearings An introduction to cup and cone bearing systems. We will disassemble, clean and reassemble the hub of a wheel.

Week 3 - Wheel truing How to prepare your wheel and make spoke nipple adjustment to make a lateral true and straighten the rim of your wheel.

Week 4 - The Drivetrain (chains, chainrings, cranks, bottom brackets)Learn how to remove, clean and fit a chain, how to remove cranks and replace a chainwheel or a bottom bracket.

Week 5 - Brakes, cables and housings Learn how to replace your cables and housings and how to make the basic adjustments to make your brakes work better.

Week 6 - Derailleurs Demystify one of the more complex components of your bicycle by learning its basic adjustments.

Quick note:
Tire recycling - Morgan and Jami to take care of tire recycling for now. Morgan has a truck to use.
CJ liaison - Rachel is taking over for Stuart. Zach and Caroline were also interested, and maybe interested for the future?

Agenda:
- membership
- programming committee budget
- Mobile Bike Repair Project
- committee updates
- 501c3-ification

Membership -
- a volunteer recently went through the membership binder and counted about 114 or so members, 32 with no hours, and only 10 people redeemed hours for membership stamp.
- collective council members should remember to log their hours and/or actually make their member sheet.
- staffers should remind Free-Rider users to redeem hours for membership on the member form
- TO CLARIFY: anyone who does an EAB becomes a member from doing the classes
- when people sign up their EAB, they should get a stamp on their card
- staffers should check member cards more often
- maybe we can have a volunteer go through and pull expired memberships at the end of the season, at least once every three months - maybe more often.

Proposal - notate on page when someone becomes a member with a stamp and a date (in addition to stamping the card). PASSED
Proposal - Tuesday night volunteers will go through and put people who haven’t done their member hours in three months into a separate binder. Scott G says he will get it started. PASSED
Proposal - Log meetings as volunteer hours! If you want to be a collective council member, you’re responsible for writing down that you went to a meeting on your member form. PASSED

MBRP -
- last year, we wanted to put mobile bike shops in public housing projects. Jami and Scott worked with Urban Youth Action (employment training org. for youth) and did presentations.
- some kids are eligible for a paid summer internship.
- 6 weeks youth internship with Free Ride - youth trained in bike mechanics for about 40 hours, then will put together a mobile bike repair station and haul it out to different sites and repair people’s bicycles for a donation
- kids will work 30 hours per week, in a crew fashion. (one crew: one instructor and 3-4 kids)
- Caroline interested in doing this too, to make a second crew, but we’ll wait for her to make sure she can do it.
- there is ALSO paid organizing time - about 60 hours at $10 an hour. Open to collective council members
- Buffalo Blues interested in putting up money for youth possibly? Could this be a sorce of funding?
- how will this program impact Free Ride?
- ordering tools specifically for project (one set per crew)
- do we need more money for tools? tool total might be higher than on Scott’s budget.
- this is the during busy season for youth classes, but we are going to work around that
- kids could participate in open shop to meet hour requirement
- plenty of oppurtunities for other council members to get involved
- will discuss party later - maybe a party can fund youth program
- need to make bike liability waivers
- Scott (and Caroline if she ends up being an additional crew leader) will be getting paid for this and needs to be on the payroll - not an independent constractor - BikePGH is fine with it.
- other things to consider like various insurances that go along with putting Scott G. and a second supervisor on payroll
- adjunct people need to be clear on how they are getting paid
- should we have one crew or two? might be a good idea to have one crew of three or four kids + one supervisor - would that reduce costs? the biggest cost is the instructor labor, but there are bigger picture things to look at
- is being thrifty important? we should be thrifty but there are these bigger picture things to look at
- two crew leaders can make it stronger because they can share work/ideas
- Urban Youth thinks there is going to be two crews - what should a deficit be?

Proposal: Deficit for entire programming committee shall not exceed $3,500 and that if it does exceed that amount, the programming committee will be responsible for making up that money. PASSED
*The 2nd instructor will be Caroline or no one else. If Caroline ends up not being able to work on this project, then there will only be one crew leader - Scott.

WE ALSO:
- went over programming committee budget
- need more instructors for youth classes
- community kids classes are intended to bring together kids with a mentor in a class setting - last year we were unable to attract enough kids. school year had just started, lots of kids involved with sports. we didn’t end up going through with it.
- will not be happening this year.
- trying to convince Braddock to take all those kids bikes in the shop SOON
- tubes - maybe we should try to give them away on craigslist
- maybe post something on craigslist about selling kids bikes for really cheap

Youth Program benefit party?
- fundraiser party - maybe have the party in late July? WHO IS PLANNING AND WHAT DATES
- Rachel will look into party planning options.

Updates:
Communication - how to get staffing training to happen.
- make shop map and work with shop committee to help organize shop
- bike processing guide (self-guided bike stripping)
- will be looking at web page to make it more straightforward for staffing stuff

- we should have a trainer there twice a month or so: Caroline, Zach, Jessica, and Rachel interested in doing trainings.

Finances - new accountant to start this summer.
- co-op money is now in pnc money-market account

Shop committee - trying to improve lighting, working with Home Depot. Coordinating with CJ. Proposal: Cap for lighting: $300. PASSED.

- organization of small parts ideas.. coming soon!

Programming committee - budget sums it up.

501c3 Stuff:
- we’re fiscally sponsored by BikePGH, doing business as Free Ride.
- we are now seeking our own independent status
- Morgan and Jake have been filing paperwork
- Duquesne Law School operates a clinic and will help us out with it
- semester just ended but we’ll get an intern team in August
- information for this is on crabgrass so you can follow along
- our non-traditional structure doesn’t match up with some of the legally-binding bylaws, but the law school can help us find a balance between something that is legal and something that suits us.
- bylaws and articles of incorporation need to be looked at by the collective
- Morgan in communication with bikePGH about spinning off.
- Duq. seems pretty organized and there is a professional lawyer overseer.
- the group should go through bylaws together.

This basic mechanic’s course is six weeks long, giving each student 12 hours of class time and walks students through the various systems of the bike. The class aims to teach you how to look at the bike and try to vision how to find the problem. For the Sunday Class, you must sign up for the full six weeks. Register here

If you can’t commit to the six week course, check out the Monday “drop-in” classes. The topics vary, and you can pick and choose which classes you want to attend.

Here’s a basic rundown of the six week course:

Week 1 - Tubes, tires and flats In this intro to the course we will discuss tube and tire selection and sizing, and have a thorough exercise in patching a flat.

Week 2 - Hubs and bearings An introduction to cup and cone bearing systems. We will disassemble, clean and reassemble the hub of a wheel.

Week 3 - Wheel truing How to prepare your wheel and make spoke nipple adjustment to make a lateral true and straighten the rim of your wheel.

Week 4 - The Drivetrain (chains, chainrings, cranks, bottom brackets) Learn how to remove, clean and fit a chain, how to remove cranks and replace a chainwheel or a bottom bracket.

Week 5 - Brakes, cables and housings Learn how to replace your cables and housings and how to make the basic adjustments to make your brakes work better.

Week 6 - Derailleurs Demystify one of the more complex components of your bicycle by learning its basic adjustments.