Bike collective looks to expand education, bicycle access, community space in Providence

PROVIDENCE — In a former mill off of Bissel Street in Cranston, Erik Berrio was adjusting the derailleur on a bicycle set on a rack.

"Shift it onto the smaller cog," PVD Bike Collective instructor John "Rosy" Rosenwinkel said to the class of eight students. "We only care about the rear, and we're going to move it straight forward to work on."

Berrio was one of the many students the PVD Bike Collective has taught the basics of bicycle mechanics, from how to change a flat to how the brakes and shifter systems work, how to adjust them, and how to repair them.

Rosenwinkel, who is also a member of the collective, said the group started in October 2020. The prospective members met in Dexter Park in the West End to talk about starting a community bike shop.

"The idea was, it would be run by the people spending the time there, run by the people working and guided by bigger political commitments beyond bicycles and that was the kind of place we all would want to hang out at, work on stuff, and teach people," Rosenwinkel said.

Berrio found the PVD Bike Collective's class when he went to a Providence Bike Jam meetup and started following them online. PVD Bike Collective members take their mobile bike repair station to the meetups to help keep the bike ride safe. Then, he saw one of their posts on social media about the mechanics class.

Berrio and four of his friends run a blog devoted to bicycling routes that stop at coffee shops, called Coffee Yes, Cycling Maybe, part of his long-standing love of bicycles.

"No one has ever taught me how to fix a flat, it's all been trial and error, and messing it up a bunch of times," he said.

The class focuses on both how to fix a bike and the principles behind how bikes and their components work.

"We get into the really nitty gritty, cable shifting, brakes, all these things that I always pay tons of money to bike shops for, and I love the idea, that I can start doing this myself," Berrio said.

A few of his cycling blog friends are mad that he signed up for the class without them but they will still benefit from his taking the class when he can adjust a derailleur or their brakes, he said.

Creating a community space around bikes

One of the larger ideas behind the collective is that of teaching. The days when the community bike shop is open, people can come in and use the shop and tools to repair or work on their bike for free, and if they need to a repair, a mechanic will help them do it.

Rather than doing the repair for someone, the group strives to help people learn how to do it themselves.

"From the very beginning, a goal of ours was, in its own right, viewing learning as an inherent good, that doesn't need more than that," Rosenwinkel said.

People can also come to the shop to volunteer their time, either helping others repair bikes they've brought in, or repairing bikes donated to the collective that need to be readied to be sent back into the community.

Currently, the shop is open on Monday nights, from 6 to 8 p.m., and on some Tuesday nights, but the group hopes to expand those hours after their current six-week fundamentals bike classes, on Wednesday and Thursday, are over.

Member Ronald Yuan said he got involved with the group this year. A student at Brown University, his classes have been mostly online for the past two years and he was looking for some in-person connection.

"It's been really welcoming, and I've been thinking a lot about the sustainability politics, because transit options are really important for the future as we move away from cars," Yuan said.

Looking to experiment with learning beyond bikes

The group has expanded significantly since that first meeting in Dexter Park, including to its current space off of Elmwood Avenue.

Rosenwinkel said he wants the group to stay committed to three things: keep experimenting with projects and programming, to keep finding different ways of doing things and to keep "doing weird stuff."

"We've ran workshops not at all connected to bike-related things," he said. "One member ran a workshop on the fundamentals of residential electric systems."

Rosenwinkel said the group and its space have been, and he hopes continue to be, a space for people to host hands-on workshops to bring more specialized learning to the community.

"I want the tools and spaces to be used, and I'd love to see us lead some experiments on our own, facilitating opening up our resources to other people to use," he said. "The thing that's missing here is a space like that, open to the public, specifically geared toward teaching and repair."

One class in the works is the basics of sewing, he said.

Member and spokeswoman Shelby Mack said anyone who wants to get involved with the group can show up on Monday night, bring by bikes to donate or contact the group with ideas for workshops or collaborations.

"We want to be a do-it-together space, where people can teach each other, and learn in a hands-on way, about real stuff in the world," Mack said.

East Bay Bike Path: It will have bridges again. What you need to know about the multi-year plan

Serving the community

While the bike shop is located off of Elmwood Avenue near the border with Cranston, at 73 Bissell St, the group constructed a trailer that is towed behind a bicycle, outfitted with all the tools needed for minor repairs and adjustments it brings to Kennedy Plaza in the summer, along with volunteers to help.

"I think one success we've had is meeting people where they're at," Mack said.

The plaza proved to be a great place to offer repairs because it was a focal point for people getting off the bus with their bikes, either to wait for a transfer or to bike home.

Rosenwinkel said he was really happy with the weekly repairs in the plaza because they were consistently busy.

"It felt like good repairs to be doing, and I don't think people would have done them otherwise," he said.

One of the most frequent repairs was trueing bike wheels, that is, making them more perfectly round again.

"The biggest safety concern we saw, was doing a lot of brake adjustments, brake pads and making sure brakes were aligned and adjusted, and shifting adjustments," he said.

This year, they repaired many bicycles that had brakes that were not up to the task of actually stopping a bicycle.

"Plenty of it was just pumping up people's tires," he said.

Yuan, who helped out during the summer to fix up bikes in Kennedy Plaza, said a lot of people coming in had problems that they just didn't have the money to get fixed, or looked at, at a traditional bike shop.

Looking for a central location

While the Bike Collective's current shop is in a great location for those driving, right off of Route 10 and Route 95, it is not great for those riding their bicycles.

The group is looking for a location closer to the heart of Providence to allow easier, and safer, access to the community bike shop.

From a park to chapel to mill, how the Collective grew

After the group started meeting in Dexter Park in 2020, it was clear that they had the people to start something, especially as the need for bicycles became apparent during the early days of the pandemic, as people avoided public transportation.

By June 2021, they moved into a side building at the Bell Street Chapel, a Unitarian Universalist church in Providence's West End that abuts the Franciscan Park.

"We had an amazing summer running three to five public events a week, getting dozens of bikes out the door through our community partners and we had our first iteration of our classes," Mack said.

Rosenwinkel said those first few classes were a little rough, but instructive on how they needed to build a curriculum for a fundamentals of bicycles class.

"We're teaching not just the processes, but also the principles," he said. "What we're teaching applies beyond bikes, we're talking torque and leverage, how bearings work, cable systems work, and fundamentally what allows a derailleur to behave the way it does," he said.

That first summer, and first classes, showed the PVD Bike Collective members that there was a hunger for their services. Each time they open registration for a bike fundamentals course, they get far more applicants than they have slots. They try to limit each class to eight people to keep a low student-instructor ratio.

Olneyville Recycle-A-Bike: Helping the community refurbish and access bikes, but it will close without help

Another of the core principles of the bike collective is that everything is offered for free, or on a pay-what-you-can basis. The classes operate on the same model, with students asked to pay nothing to $300 for the six-week course, while the group sets aside two $300 stipends to pay any students who need help offsetting the costs of attending the class, like childcare, transportation or missing work.

Distributing bikes across the city

Last month, the PVD Bike Collective partnered with Providence and the PVD Streets Coalition to take 100 bikes donated to the city, get them refurbished, and distribute them to groups whose clientele need bikes.

The collective took the used bikes to Kennedy Plaza and were met by 50 volunteers, of varying levels of experience, ready to fix them up.

All but five of the 100 bikes were fixed up for distribution, as five had to be scrapped as beyond repair.

Other bikes that the Collective gets as donations are either distributed to community partners or are sold, on a pay-what-you-can basis, during periodic bike sales.

How to engage with the PVD Bike Collective

The PVD Bike Collective accepts bicycle donations on Monday nights from 6 to 8 and they can arrange to pick up larger numbers of bikes. They also accept cash donations.

The group encourages people to come and explore the shop at 73 Bissell St. during their open hours, and is open to being a space for hands-on workshops.

They can be contacted at hello@pvdbikecollective.org or (401) 246-0830.

Thanks to our subscribers, who help make this coverage possible. If you are not a subscriber, please consider supporting quality local journalism with a Providence Journal subscription. Here's our latest offer.

Reach reporter Wheeler Cowperthwaite at wcowperthwaite@providencejournal.com or follow him on Twitter @WheelerReporter.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: PVD Bike Collective rides to the rescue with education, repairs