Bikes Are Tools — People Are At The Center: Shift into gear with Rhode Island’s own worker-run community bicycle workshop

The sun is on your face and the wind blows through your hair (under your helmet, of course) as you coast down one of Providence’s rolling hills. You feel alive; a strong sense of freedom rising in your chest. Biking is amazing!

As you near the bottom of the hill, you start pumping the brakes. Squeeeeeeeeaaaaak. Wait — what’s that sound? Once you’re off the road and onto the sidewalk, you pull your phone out to query bicycle brake sound help! It could be a number of things: gunk on a wheel rim, brake pad misalignment, or maybe you need new brake pads entirely. The free and light feeling in your chest becomes heavier as you wonder what to do. You love biking, but are lost on how to care for your bike.

Luckily, there’s a place you can go to learn — the PVD Bike Collective. Whether you are a seasoned cyclist in need of a few tools and tips for machine maintenance or you are brand new to biking and need someone to swap your brake pads, you can do it all at PBC. Since spring 2021, PBC has been open to the public. The group describes themselves as “a community bike shop maintaining a space for teaching, learning, repair, redistribution, and joy — where everyone can belong.”

So you hop back on your squeaky-brakes bike and ride over to 50 Sims Ave, right next to Farm Fresh RI. Every Thursday from 6 – 8pm are PBC’s “Open Shop” hours, where you can receive assistance from experienced mechanics, as well as the tools and parts you need for regular maintenance and repairs. “Volunteer Night” takes place on Tuesdays from 6 – 8pm for anyone wanting to pitch in with shop tasks. No experience needed.

One of the friendly faces you’ll likely encounter at PBC is John “Rosy” Rosenwinkel. Rosy tells me how he got into working on bikes 15 years ago through Bikes Not Bombs Boston. “That was really a transformative thing for me — getting exposed to a bunch of bicycle things, but also how to teach and work with young people. How to be in a space like that; that’s trying to act out a certain set of values. It’s one thing to have those values, and another thing to put them into action in the world.”

After years of teaching and “pulling bikes out of the trash, fixing them up, and riding them everywhere,” another opportunity arose for putting those collective, justice-focused values into action. This time, the seed was planted at a meeting of like-minded people in Dexter Park. Rosy recalls, “There was a desire to make a community bike shop run by the people spending time there, that would be aligned with a shared political vision, democratic decision-making, and redistribution of materials, knowledge, and skills.”

He adds, “In March 2021, we ran a bike drive and started fixing up and redistributing bikes. So we [PBC] just had our third anniversary. From the beginning, our main commitments have been to provide a space for people to work on their bikes, fix their own stuff, and we are available to teach how to do it. Everything is free. People can make a donation, but everything’s free.”

Since then, PBC has run all kinds of sliding-scale workshops in addition to the Open Shop hours. Their six-week “Mechanic Fundamentals” class has run 10 times, producing about 85 alumni. In the winter, they offer classes that aren’t bike-related. Everything from starting seeds, computer-aided design, residential electrical wiring, web development, how to tie knots, car maintenance, how tires work, and even how to play Texas Hold’em.

When you enter PBC, among the myriad of bike parts, tools, and art, including a Collaborative Union of Providence Service-Workers (CUPS) print by local artist Dean Sudarsky, you will see a huge volunteer-painted diagram with labels of all the different parts of a bike. There is a “Hall of Fame” featuring uniquely messed-up bike parts and a poster of PBC’s “Community Agreements.” In my conversation with Rosy, he emphasizes the last of these: We recognize that bikes are great tools, but it’s people that are at the center of what we do. People are the most important part.

Visit PVD Bike Collective at 50 Sims Ave, PVD. Follow along for classes, events, and updates at @pvdbikecollective on IG and pvdbikecollective.org.

Check out our interview last year with PBC member and co-founder Shelby Mack.