Baltimore Community Fellowships
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Baltimore, Maryland
2006
In June 2006, Beth Wacks, an experienced bicycle mechanic, helped open a new bike repair co-operative in Baltimore named the Velocipede Bike Project. Wacks is using her fellowship to expand the co-operative to work with more city residents to rebuild bikes. The goal is to provide affordable transportation to residents by repairing refurbished bikes that otherwise would be abandoned. Co-op volunteers are training people to fix their own bikes and volunteer in exchange for bike parts and hands-on help.
Back when co-operative opened in a midtown space on West Lanvale Street, volunteers didn’t even have a full set of tools. Today, the co-op has grown dramatically. It has more than 300 bikes in the shop and lots of buckets of seats and cranks and parts. It’s open three evenings a week, and as many as 35 people are crammed inside at any given time. And bike sales are healthy enough to support operations.
Wacks has conducted workshops on general bike maintenance and hopes to start a youth bike program. She believes it’s paying off. "I’m seeing more and more people riding their bikes around Baltimore," Wacks says. "In a year, our co-operative has grown dramatically," she says. "And the fellowship has allowed me to really focus on this."
While Baltimore has a sizeable population of bikers, it has only a handful of bike shops and lags behind other cities in its commitment to getting affordable bikes into the hands of people of modest means. "We can really help get more people transportation if we pump out a lot of affordable bikes," she says.
