Bike Advocacy — II
Sarah FioRito of Kickstand
I check the clock several times during Sarah FioRito’s interview, not out of impatience, but because the more Sarah talks, the more questions I have. As we begin to run low on time, the conversation hops lightly across a range of topics encompassing de-colonization, queer thought, collective decision making, and housing security, all of which I want to know more about. In an attempt to glimpse the roadmap Sarah uses to find, navigate, and examine these topics, I inquire which ports of call are best for keeping oneself informed. My question doesn’t connect the way I intended so I clarify.
“Facebook? Twitter?” I ask. “Is there anyone you follow? Groups?” The question has yielded interesting answers before, so I ask it often.
“Oh, I don’t really use those platforms.” The smile I get in response is slightly shy, almost apologetic, but only because my own expression is betraying the sudden shyness I feel for revealing just how dependent I am on those channels. Elaborating, Sarah attempts an answer, but the response becomes vague, with Sarah’s eyes wandering upwards and sideways through memories collected the old-fashioned way: face-to-face. There are no specific points to direct me to because they’ve been collected from an ocean of interaction.
This is something I’m growing to understand about Vancouver’s community bike shop culture. It values the human being. Not just the abstract one attached to an avatar, the representation of a person you used to know, but the one standing there in the room with you.
We’re seated in Kickstand, Commercial Drive’s volunteer-run community bike shop, where FioRito facilitates the free Youth Bike Club program. “It’s basically like our regular shop time, where anyone can come in and use the tools, get instruction, or get help diagnosing what needs to be fixed, but the Bike Club is exclusively for teenagers. It’s a place for them to come and just be here, learn, participate, socialize. Somewhere free. There’s also a volunteer program where they can earn a bike if they don’t have one.”
“How often do you come up against that? Not just with youths, but with people in the greater community who can’t afford a bike?”
“All the time.” Sarah’s whole upper body nods in emphasis. “All the time.” I get a quick overview of the free bike program at PEDAL, the Vancouver non-profit society that operates a number of community cycling initiatives in the city, of which the Youth Bike Club is one. “Through PEDAL we have a formal waiting list for the free bike program, and I believe it’s about 100 deep. That’s about a year long.”
“What then,” I ask, “can the average person do to increase access to bike ownership for those people who need it?”
“Well, one thing, for sure, is volunteering. Especially in the summer, the shops are pretty much at capacity, so having more volunteers just allows us to offer support to more people.”
“And I imagine you have to have a pretty solid understanding of bike mechanics to volunteer?”
“Oh no, not at all. Skill development is basically what we offer in exchange for your time. We get a whole range of volunteers, some who have never worked on a bike before all the way up to professional mechanics. You learn by doing. That’s part of empowering and connecting the community.”
“Empowerment. That word comes up a lot in these spaces.”
“Yeah, absolutely. I really think that the way these shops operate, the way certain shops like Kickstand are moving away from the kind of conventional non-profit model of leadership into a more collective method of decision-making and the way they enable the community to empower itself, I can see the potential for other types of community service provisions to be accessible in a similar way. Healthcare, food, any type of service, really. We’re very accustomed to having services provided by the government or some other centralized form of service provision so it’s hard for a lot of people to conceive of other models, but community bike shops are a great example of how some of those other models can work.”
“Has Vancouver made it easy for you, creating this model?”
“It depends what you mean. Britannia Community Services Centre has been really supportive in giving Kickstand access to this space for a reasonable rent, but we’re just one case. Our Community Bikes is paying market-rates on Main even though they’re trying to provide these same services and would ideally be paying their staff a living wage. There are other cities in which spaces like Kickstand and OCB might be free. We’re having such a huge impact supporting the city in meeting its transportation and sustainability goals by getting people out of cars and keeping material out of landfills… I think there are definitely ways spaces like ours could be better supported.”
For now, Kickstand rides atop a network of committed volunteers and loyal patrons. “It’s such a great space and such a committed community, we’re always looking for new ways to get people engaging with us,” Sarah says, this new turn in the conversation revealing an enthusiasm and passion for the arts. “There’s so much room here for the other stuff. Movie nights, open mics, poetry slams, visual art… we’re really trying to use the space in unique ways. It’s so much more than a bike shop. It’s a community space.”
________________________________________________________________
To find out more about volunteering at Kickstand, go here. Orientations are held once a month.
Check out the trailer for the short documentary on Kickstand I made with the support and participation of Sarah and the rest of the Kickstand community back in May.
