Inside Bikes del Pueblo: But What is a Co-Op?

Ace is hanging over the swaying batteries of a junked-out and burned-down e-bike. The battery is gone, the tires are bald, the saddle is duct-taped, and the grips are melted apart. He and the guy passing through are prying off the old mounting plate to get the wheels to turn again, hammering the flathead, yanking the pliers. It’s a bike I would simply throw away. Trash, waste, worthless. But here, I must check my privilege. I don’t know where this person is coming from, where they’re going, what their challenges with transportation are, or what their resources are.

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I would normally never spend time on a wrecked electric fat bike. But I also know that any bike can be the key to getting someone out of poverty, off the streets and on their feet, pedaling forward and onto a better life. So why not this one? Movement is a god-given right made more extractive and dangerous by car infrastructure and freeways, and together, we must all fight the cancer of mega-freeways and parking lots.

It is a Sunday at 2 p.m. Sweat is pouring from Ace’s nose as he kicks at the monkey wrench and clangs with the mallet. We’re in a dirt lot next to the freeway, and the noise on the overpass is deafening. We are helping strangers. And everywhere in me, I feel right.

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We finish the bike, and the guy gets rolling, and he rides away with a wave. Ace and I chat in the lingering shade. He tells his story. Ace was walking out of a bowling alley a few years ago in El Cajon. He was crossing the street when a man chased him. And as he turned around, the man smashed him with a brick, breaking several bones in his face and chest, collapsing a lung, and knocking him unconscious. All, only, to steal his few things. Ace says the last moment he remembers is feeling his spirit leave his body somewhere in the hospital. Somehow, he made it.

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It is a hundred degrees out, and we’re standing in the sun as Ace recounts his tale, and the chills poke through my pores. I’m eager and stretching for his truth. Because for me, after almost dying, everything changed. My values, my purpose, my Sundays. For Ace, a retired chef at the University of Michigan, it had to as well. I prod. Is that why you’re here?

He smiles, his accent sliding out from under his hardware glasses and sunshade hat. “Oh yeah. Look. Now, I want to be a contributor. And so that’s what all this is: a way to contribute something back. I know about bikes, so I might as well help these people out. What else is there to do? Watch football?”

In the Lot

This all started with my budget build-off bike. I needed parts, and I needed them cheap. Somehow, I’ve spent my whole life floating through different niches within the bike world, and it wasn’t until a few years ago I first heard the words bike co-op. I’d had this lingering notion that this was the place to get old bike parts for cheap. So I rode down the street to my local co-op, Bikes del Pueblo in City Heights, and I put my bike in the wobbly old stand, and knew instantly that this was a place for me.

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I came back every weekend I could. The die-hards keep their own volunteer vest, and I eagerly wear someone else’s sweat-stained one. Because once the gates open, and the revolving door of life, stories, unique perspectives, and little problems all wheel in, anything can happen. In comes a teenager in a rush. His parents are from Afghanistan. His mom doesn’t leave the house. Dad has a back injury and can’t work. He got a bike from the co-op a few weeks prior, but someone stole the seat. He rides to school and to work to support the family. He’s late for work, and he’s checking his watch, but he’s tired of standing up. We throw someone’s discarded seatpost and saddle on it, pump up the tires, and send him off. No charge. No stress.

A Haitian man who speaks no English and just came to the US needs a bike. We sell him one cheap and show him how to work it. Then comes George, unemployed at the moment and trying to get around. He has six kids and no money. And I can cast my judgment and say, “Why’s that?” or I can grab an old rusty and forgotten bike from the rack, and together we can work on the stuck shifter and leaky tubes, and we can have a conversation, and he can get to where he needs to go. Then Johnathan, unhoused and trying to piece together an abandoned frame, eager to ride back to his camp and down to the beach the next day. A hipster comes in with a 90s frame that won’t shift. An Eritrean man with a flat tire on his way to work at the 7-Eleven. A college professor showing his children how to work on their bikes. A middle school teacher grabbing bikes so his students can get to class on time. A Latino family trying to get their daughter on a bike so she can get to school. And at the end, they scratch through their wallet and try to pay, and a volunteer says no, it’s okay, and they persist, and he says seriously. Don’t worry about it.

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The lot is on a busy intersection, the traffic whirring past, the “walk sign is on” announcer a buzzard in the air. We’re between the interstate five miles from the U.S.-Mexico border and a main thoroughfare splitting the gentrified urbanites and the lower-income areas of San Diego. High immigrant populations. Bad roads, good food. You can see fixie kids talking to professors talking to their unhoused neighbors. Here is that coveted community space but without the heavy weight of capitalism floating over our heads. We are hanging out and teaching, fixing and chatting, going through old motions to the bike nerds but the hard stuff to someone just trying to get to work. Patching tubes and tuning derailleurs, tri-flow and zip ties. The fundamentals. I eat a donut with my grease-stained fingers and look around, and it hits me how I’ve never spent this much time with people in the U.S. who don’t speak English. And once again, I can cast my judgments, or I can pick up a wrench and we can solve problems together.

How Does it Work?

Bikes del Pueblo began in 2007 in a garage in central San Diego. It quickly progressed to a farmers market, where a few people came every week to fix the bikes passing through. It lingered, it grew, it helped people. It’s grown, transformed, moved around. The original members have all left and now run other community based groups. Bikes del Pueblo is its own ship now, sailing under the guidance of a few loyal volunteers. Today, they help thousands of people a year. They have a lot and containers of parts, income and funding and a loyal staff. They put on events, rides, concerts, and even recently made a zine. They are known but they are still growing. Bikes del Pueblo is a pillar in the community, advertised solely by word of mouth. Early on, I wonder about co-ops. What are these things? Why have I missed out on this for so long? And why aren’t they everywhere?

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Ironically, “co-op” is actually the wrong term. A co-op is a business model where the ownership is distributed between all the employees and profit is a central goal of the business. Really these, Bikes del Pueblo included, are non-profits, with no profit incentives or pay packages. No members are paid, and all revenue goes toward providing more community services. Some co-ops are funded through a mix of donations, memberships, and sales of old bikes and parts. But Bikes del Pueblo, now 17 years old and proven, has a steady stream of grants keeping it afloat. From the city, the state, and REI. They’re now way past the days of bargaining an extra $50 out of an old Nishiki.

Lately, they’re working on a two-year grant from the city helping commuters out by analyzing the current road conditions in one specific, low-income area of San Diego, holding pop-up bike fixing sessions and recommending infrastructure changes. And it’s because of this money, the government grants, that mean when someone comes by, and they say they’re hurting for cash, and it’s clearly some sort of truth, that the group is fine giving the bikes away. Or like when today, Mahmoud, the kid from Delhi who had just emigrated to the US six months ago, one earbud in and talking to his wife back home the entire time, Mahmoud who barely spoke English and just got his first job, after we patched his tube and got him back rolling, when he tried to give me $20 to pay for the single patch, I just said, “Don’t worry about it,” and his eyes got really big. He held out the green piece of paper with a 20 written on it for another few seconds. He double, even triple-checked. “Bro. Are you sure?” He asks me with his thick accent.

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“Walk sign is on.” A truck peels out. Honks. Exhaust. I hunt for the 4mm. I scratch grease into my nose. Ian asks if I know where the brake lever box went. I ask him where the truing stand is. Gotta patch that tube and find out about that KHS and find the 4mm and true that wheel. My head is hurting. My heart is overflowing. In the chaos, we are free. And in this chaos, we are spiders in their webs, blowing in the breeze.

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“Walk sign is on.” That busy thoroughfare, called El Cajon Boulevard, has a business improvements association, where all the small businesses on it pay to be members, and the group makes the area a nicer place to be. Events, signs, cleaning, zoning lobbying and all that boring but important stuff. But this group knew about Bikes del Pueblo back when they were still working in the farmers market, and some of the members owned an empty dirt lot. And they said, “We want this lot to be used for the community,” and so the group, who at the time was outgrowing the farmers market but didn’t have the money to rent a space, was given this hand-up to help them give even more out. People came and donated bikes. The surplus of stuff and junk in America is mind-blowing. But all this stuff, these old flat-tired bikes taking up space and not being ridden, the old rental fleets going to waste, they just need to be fixed up and redirected. The association gave Bikes del Pueblo two shipping containers to store their stuff. The group sourced more stands and tools. Word spread quickly, and Sunday by Sunday, the community grew stronger, healthier, more independent, more sustainable, even more interconnected. Bikes del Pueblo is challenging the status quo. It is community work in my favorite form. Two wheels.

Outside the Fence

Bikes del Pueblo is a lifestyle. A group of 10 or so diehards return every weekend. For them, for me, it clicks. And I’d like to think it’s a grovel we endure for the common good. My bloody knuckles and early alarm for the betterment of strangers close to home. But the truth is, it’s also just fun. Other than ride, I don’t know what else I’d like to do on a Sunday. Watch football? Go shopping? Do drugs? Here, I see my friends, and we talk over donuts, and we fix old bikes, and we ride home together, and we do wheelies, and I get my hands in the grease and spit in the dirt and make stupid jokes and learn about Eritrea and India and El Cajon. Everyone appreciates the organization, and together, I know we’re making the world a better place. But I also know we’re just dorking around on a Sunday morning.

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But look here, and go to your local co-op and witness. Because these are real-life superheroes. They’re not billionaires with electric cars, and flying suits, slick hands, and shady deals. They are you and me. They make mistakes. They swear, they laugh, they cry, they learn. They bring their kids, and their kids do kid stuff. Some are shy, some are goofy, some are serious. But there is no faking it for Instagram. No virtue signaling, no taking a picture and walking away. It’s only six hours a week, but it is a legitimate venture into a world that’s all too often overlooked. Vonnegut says the superheroes are those who build their communities up. And this dirt lot is full of them: real people doing the work for the real people they haven’t yet met.

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Ian says when he came down to San Diego for grad school, he entered a spiral of depression. Isolated and in a new place, stuck in the monotony of material sciences and the gloomy, coastal fall weather, it all sucked. “I never would have imagined waking up at 8 a.m. on a Sunday,” he says. But he heard about Bikes del Pueblo from a friend. He came over. He started helping. And now, a year later, he’s eager to ride down and tinker and see Duncan and Matt and Curtis and Ace and Izzie and Cynthia and Zach and El and whoever rolls through that day. Ian says he feels better being here to just hang out and wrench. The good is tangible. It is held in your hands and under your fingernails. It is dirty and greasy, and it is freedom, and it is our collective liberty. It’s an old bike stand in a dirt lot. A rounded-off multi-tool and a patch kit in a box of old diapers. A sail for a shade and stale pizza if someone bothered to bring it. But in combination, it is so profound.

We ride home from another Sunday in the dirt lot. Ian and Duncan and Izzie and me. I wear the warm glow of fulfillment on my face as we ride away. We stop at a red light, and on the pole to our right is a sticker. It just says, “Unfuck the world,” and we laugh. To me, we have done one small step in that, setting these bikes loose to intertwine with destiny as destiny sees fit. George will ride away, so will the Afghan kid on the way to class, Mahmoud still waiting for his wife, Jonathan back to his camp. The thousands of others that came for help and got it.

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I wonder if this sticker was placed on this light pole in a fit of existential rage. When the darkness kept flooding in and all there was to do was wallow and go online and make a sticker. That darkness is a beast, fast, strong, and persistent. If you let it, it will always win. But today, we’ve done something. And despite how immense that all sounds, somewhere in the rolling of metal bearings in oozing grease, in the wind and the waves, the ride back home, the “see ya next week,” and the new kid on the old bike, in all these small moments, there is great truth. We have woken up at 8 a.m. and done something to push it all away a bit. We have made our own small world a better version of itself. We’ve won the day. We’ve played with bikes. We’ve helped unfuck the world.

If you’d like to learn more about Bikes del Pueblo or make a donation to support their directly impactful work, head over to BikesDelPueblo.org.

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