The Bradley Street Bicycle Co-op’s 2019 Annual Report

I often think about what it means to build something from love. It starts with a little tickle in your mind, a tap on your shoulder. As it becomes more persistent, you begin to plan and orient towards it, testing it out, pushing to see if it could really work, iterating. And then the flywheel catches and you watch momentum build at a scale faster than you could have built yourself. People come together and join in the work, all believing in a shared vision. It takes work, but it is always worth it when you stop to look around. In 2020, with dirty hands and surrounded by friends, we took some of our biggest steps yet.

The Co-op centers itself around two goals:

• We repair abandoned or unused bikes to get them back out on the street and into the hands of people who need them.
• We work alongside friends, neighbors, and strangers from all over our city and beyond, sharing space with people who we might not otherwise get a chance to.

In 2019, we received 766 bikes, with over half donated by individuals who brought just one or two bikes down to us during shop hours, and another quarter from our amazing partnerships with Yale Facilities and the Probus Club. All of these bikes will be put to use and redistributed to those who need them.

We served over one thousand New Haven bike riders. We got 557 donated bikes back out and on the streets and into the hands of people who need them. 263 people worked on their own bike once during shop hours and another 241 members and volunteers came in more than once. These riders came from all over the city, from Fair Haven to Westville and from Yale to Hillhouse. And they all believed in DIY, in empowerment, in redistribution, and in doing things together.

119 different volunteers checked in 1474 times. These volunteers put in an incredible 2,729 hours of work throughout the year.

Volunteers are the heart and soul of the Bradley Street Bicycle Co-op. We are one big family, from every neighborhood, all building the city we want to live in together.

In 2019, we laid the groundwork for our next chapter. There are three things that we worked hard on that will add to our ability to serve our community better in 2020.

• Andrew Suzuki has been building our digital infrastructure for more than a year, and it is finally complete. We have a beautiful new website with lots of functionality, an incredible bike tracker and database, and a holistic reporting backend that allows us to understand what is happening at the Co-op over time.
• We formed the Connecticut Community Bicycle Workshop, which is the non-profit partner organization to the Bradley Street Bicycle Co-op. It received 501(c)(3) tax exempt status this year and is building out its board. Having a team of people who can help us with our bicycle donations, our continued educational work, and our growing advocacy will expand our capacity many times over.
• We hired our first employee, Kai Addae. It is hard for me to put into words what this will mean for me and for the Co-op, but I am endlessly humbled that she wants to join the team and completely inspired by her energy, the skills that she brings to the Co-op, and her love for the work.

In 2019, we had bread nights and baby bike races. We had alleycats and cyclocross races. We donated bikes to refugees, mental health patients, kids, folks returning home from the prison system, and people in our community experiencing homelessness. We supported and were supported by countless organizations. We sold bikes to people who want to tour across the country, or get to class. We had dirty hands and new derailleurs. We organized bike drives and went for weekly bike rides. We said goodbye to old friends and hello to new ones.

I have a vivid memory of one hot afternoon this past summer that often floods back into my mind. It was a busy shop hours, maybe a Thursday, and I was standing by the water fountain, taking a moment to look out at the space. Joel had just walked in, and immediately went over and stood by the fan, totally at ease and sinking into the current mood. A bunch of people were quietly working on their bikes, some new and some old friends, but all lost in their own mechanical problems. A great Sincere Engineer song was playing over the speakers. Josh was being so kind with a new customer who wanted to buy a bike, patiently explaining how something worked or why something was better on this bike over that one. Kai was talking to someone donating a bike to us near the computer. Standing there, I was overcome with a wave of emotion that almost brought tears to my eyes; the feeling of peace and helpfulness filling our space, as it so often does, was crystallized in front of me, so clear and so filled with love. This was the Co-op expressing itself, showing the shared vision of the world we are building together.

Thank you for an incredible year, and I cannot wait to keep riding with y’all in 2020!