If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you give a man a bicycle, teach him how to keep it in tip-top shape, and advocate for there to be safe spaces for him to ride, you’re a bike collective.
Iowa’s bike collectives are nonprofit community programs that focus on making bikes and cycling opportunities more accessible and giving local commuters an alternative to cars.
“I’d like to think that every year we’re improving transportation for the entire community, whether that’s a child who wants the freedom of having their own bike or a new refugee to Iowa that is completely reliant on getting a bike there for transportation,” said Jeremy Lewis, executive director of the Street Collective in Des Moines. “That at its core is why we exist.”
Lewis used to deliver copies of the Des Moines Register on his bicycle. Today, he delivers bicycles to adults and children in need.
“When you present it to a kid that doesn’t have one, it just opens up [their world],” Lewis said. “It’s freedom.”
The Street Collective worked with volunteers and other nonprofits in the Des Moines area to give away over 350 bikes last year, according to the organization’s 2023 impact report.
Many of the collective’s bicycles are donations, either from nearby retail stores or people who don’t need their current bikes. Volunteer Steve Starks first walked into the collective to donate a bike, then stayed to work on the others.
“Their bikes are so varied that every time you come here, there’s something you’ve never seen before, and you’re not quite sure how to take this apart or how it works,” Starks said. “There’s the tools available, and there’s somebody that will show you, and suddenly you get it apart.”
Starks comes into the shop a few times a week to rebuild or deconstruct bikes, and said he appreciates the opportunity to expand his mechanical skills among good company.
“Even if they come from different backgrounds than me, we share bikes together,” Starks said of his fellow volunteers.
In 2019, after conversations with local leaders, the collective decided to broaden its focus to more than just biking, furthering its goal of seeing fewer cars on the road. They have since advocated for adding more sidewalks to Des Moines area streets and public transportation.
“We understand that biking doesn’t work for everybody, and most everybody is a pedestrian at some point during the day,” Lewis said. “Whatever we can do to make it easier to walk or bike to some of the places we need to go just jives with why we exist.”
Beyond advocate efforts in their areas and bike giveaways, many bike co-ops focus on making sure that those who have bikes know how to fix them up when necessary.
Mark Stevenson, head mechanic at the Cedar Valley Bike Collective, began his work after over 30 years of mechanic experience in retail. Through the collective, he was able to take what he learned and pass it on to new bikers.
“In many ways, I feel like the collective is more successful in creating avid cyclists than the retail bicycle sector is,” Stevenson said. “There’s many reasons for that, but I think being able to reach the underprivileged people of the community has a lot to do with that. So I find it very rewarding.”
Cedar Valley Bike Collective, like the Des Moines Street Collective, accepts donations. If the bikes can’t be repaired for sale or donation, the parts might go to the Earn a Bike program, where volunteers either donate 20 hours of their time to the shop or 10 hours and build their bikes out of available parts. Through this, they learn how bicycles need to be maintained.
“Understanding even how your wheels come off your bike is something a lot of people don’t know, and the little tricks to doing that are things that people just wouldn’t know if they weren’t in the bicycle trade,” Stevenson said.
Refurbishing donated bikes and parts not only keeps more working bikes in the community, it keeps broken ones out of alleyways and landfills. NewBo Bikes in Cedar Rapids places particular focus on “reusing, recycling and repurposing bicycles,” according to their website. If they can’t repair an old bike, it is dismantled to recycle the steel and aluminum. Sometimes old parts are recycled creatively in artwork and home goods, such as bike seats turned into bar stools, or plant stands made out of crank arms.
Many collectives, such as Cedar Valley Bike Collective, also host bike rodeos that teach participants, usually children, about bike safety. Once someone has a bike and some basic know-how, they can use it to get to school, work and events around the area.
Even the bicycles themselves facilitate social interaction. The Iowa City Bike Library hosts events ranging from group rides to historic local sites, to care and repair classes. Some are weekly, like their Women Trans Femme nights, where, as their website says, “non-binary, gender non-conforming, female-identifying, trans, and femme folks” can come together for bike maintenance and repair, while others, like their Halloween-season Witches Take Flight ride, are yearly.
Within the Iowa City community, members of the Bike Library work on outreach to teens, such as through the Outspoken Teens bicycle repairing and riding program that aligns with local high school schedules. For other programs, the Bike Library partners with local community organizations, such as Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County for WE Ride, a girl’s cycling program.
Founded in 2004, the Iowa City Bike Library’s collaborative model has directly inspired other collectives around the state, such as the Dubuque Bike Co-op and brand-new Cedar Rapids nonprofit Chain Reaction Bike Hub.
As one of their first-ever events last November, Chain Reaction acquired more than 100 trashed bikes from the Linn County Solid Waste Agency, then held a bike-washing event with youth from two of their partner orgs, the Children of Promise Mentoring Program and Foundation 2.
“A biking community is a healthy community and a happy community,” said Dubuque Bike Co-op President Rob Williams. “I hope that we’re helping bring that health and happiness to Dubuque via a bicycle.”
One of the main challenges to their now 12-year mission of making more local bike enthusiasts are the bluffs throughout the city, which can discourage new riders.
“There’s no shame in getting off your bike and walking up to the top of the hill, because each time you do it you’re going to make it a little bit further, and eventually you’re going to make it to the top of that hill without getting off and that’s going to make it pretty feel pretty damn good,” Williams said.
Right now, the collective is focused on growing its volunteer base and expanding the hours of its store on 2206 Central Ave, which is currently only open from 6 to 8 p.m., Tuesday and Thursday.
“There are people that come through our door from all aspects of life,” Williams said, “and everyone that comes through that door, no matter where they’re coming from, what their circumstances are — everyone is either a biker or a potential biker.”
This article was originally published in Little Village’s April 2024 issue.
