Mechanics Minutes Jun 2005

Kitchen meeting, June 15

Intro discussion

Secretary-assigned to spider, but he can designate alternate to take minutes

CAT:

Party after carnival, person from owner of village market citizen housing, develops housing. They lease space to cell space in meantime while they get permits to develop. Cat daniels, jesse wants to go on date.

When they develop the land, they will set aside land for community space. Their vision incorporates lots of things already going on, like bike kitchen. BUT we’d be renting space, not free. Figures she gave us were in between 10 and 25 sq ft per years.we have 6000. we could easily make it so that we could do it.

How much is 600 ft?

$10 sq ft is ideal. They’re looking for subsidized funding and not thinking it’ll happen. Trying to get eople to buy in to their vision. Intense because we’d have a mortgage.

Spider: Can we do that before official nonprofit?

C: The same as it is for 1.5 yr.

A: When do we have to decide: no answer

J: they owould like to incorporate us into. We do have a decision, eventually, do we want to be part of the developent:

W: space for us?

J yes.

X: after location has been established, keeping place is important.

C: will have a year of building time. When we have time to find a new place or figure this out.

J: when we were talking to her, we were not c=talking about construction. Just intro stuff.

C: there isn’t going to be a space for us. That’s not likely. No decisions right now. Just on people’s minds. My impression. One of the problems they’ve seen is anti-gentrification of the mission against this project.

J: once concern about bk housed like that. At least with alemany, limited access. Would other people have full acces? I think we should bring that up

S: will there be any more space?

J: possibility of storage space. Few spaces when we’reopen.

Next agenda item GRANTs

J: bryan and jesse met with agatha. Works at cell space. At last meeting, hired her to be grant writer.gave her background on bike shop. Past present future. She’ll send out letters of interest. Grat research for potential funders. Letter of interest lays out general workings of the shop, what we’ve done in the past, futrure. Grant funders will receive and tell us if they waqnt us to apply. We’re gonna start paying her. Seems competent and a good job.

C: what are we looking for funding for?

J: general operating costs. I thiought you have to apply for specific cost. We told her what we want to be doing. Welding, kids, Spanish language programs, General operating. will be more and important as space becomes less free.

Sp?: programs or rent?

J: rent.

Announcements

1. victor complained about garbage. Limited dumpster space. Can’t accept garbage.

J: need to take less crap

X: I can take more frames than I have been

W: do we need a standrd for acceptable bikes

X: certain brands exclued (huffy, magna, etc) except v-brakes.

E: people don’t know the quality when they bring it.

A: people should be educated to know what junk is.

C: just tell them to leave it on the street

W: if it’s fixable, we can do it.

C: related to bike flow

J: when you’re rejecting a bike, do what Adrian says, but I often deceive them and say we have limited storage space. An easier way to let them down. Can we have a standard? I don’t know. It’s just on people’s judgment.

C: someone dumped a pile of shit. That’s unacceptable.

A: no dumping aloud

J: sign: tell Helen and victor

C: what if you or I came in.

J: only keyholders?

C: we’re lacking in labor hours. Using a corporate dumpster takes time.

E: voluinteers!

C: earnabikers

1. J: swim-a-thon at jese’s work wants to donate mney to welding program. She’ll send email out. John is picking out equipment. She’ll use us as a launch to get more contributions. Put welding programming on next week’s agenda
2. come by the bike farm

a

Bike mechanics raffle

Grocery pannier JB

Velo basket W

BikeCoalition membership EB

Tattoo: SC

Velo basket :Sp

Dahon bag: A

Velo basket: X

C: take your stuff out of the shop

PIZZA!!!!

Classes

C: people like the class

E: people are asking me about it

C: next class is full. If people ask about it, tell them to email bike kitchen. I will be out of time for a lot of summer. Don’t know what I’ll be doing. Kinda prefer open shop hours over class.

W: I’ll do next round of classes

C: Stephan will do it again. But he doesn’t want to start until august.

W: hard for me becaseu I have to go to work then

C: can do something in the mean time.

W: teach a class for youth, and maybe adults too. I have very open schedule

C: need to decide what to happen Thursday for now until middle of august.

J: Wind?

W: 8 week class. That would be cool.

Sp: need more structure to 8 week class. Standardization. Nothing’s wrong, but we need continuity.

J: keep an overlapping teacher.

W and Sp: standardized curriculum.

C: whenever we try to follow, it fails. We wing it. The key is to have different bikes. People really want to learn how to fix their own bikes. And they’re not the type of people to work on their own bikes. I’m worried because then people won’t have bikes to ride home. Cables and housing, brakes and derailuers, tires and tubes, very basic class.

Sp: I think that’s a good idea. Basics. No headsets…

W: build a bike class?

C: that’s what we did.

W: useful?

C: we wil have 5 more than decent bikes than we know what to do with. Yeah. It’s going fine. When you’re learning bike repair, at the same time, putting on a deraliure is different from diagnosing a problem.

W: diversity of bikes and problems is the problem

C: it’s working out okay.

W: teaching middle school, I standardized everything.

CandW: talking about it alone outside

C: two nights, class and helping?

J: sometimes. No commitment

E: I can be there when J isn’t there.

C: autonomy for bike classes?

J: wheelbuilding clas

Sp: person from Crucible can teach it.

C: Wind will take care of classes until Stefan is back.

E: do we need more truing stands?

Bryan borrowed one and bought another.

Movement of bikes, in and out

C: suggestions? Ideas? Volunteers? How to move bikes though shop faster? If we continue to pursue policy to not sell actual bikes.

E: people’s bikes are in there longer than 3 months.

A: Labeling bikes protocol or taking them home at the end of 3 months

C: don’t like the idea of going home. Discourages people from finishing .

E: people have been saying we’ll come back, but they don’t

C: the date the write on the bike.

J: if you haven’t worked on your bike for more than a month, then, it goes into circulation. But what about people’s issues? Events in their lives?

E: it’s our space. They need to be responsible

W: writing new date on tag. Storage: the frames not moving.

J: checking frames, after 6 months.

C: labeling when they come into the shop? But hard. This is agenda item because we have 6 loaner bikes.

A: consignemtn

J: box dog is interested in consignment 60-40.

X: that’s stiff

J: I’ll bet she’d go 70-30.

C: we have cash right now. If we’re really being a community bike shop, we should think about getting more people on bikes. There’re donation programs. Day labor? If that’s something we think people will work, friend in Houston. Says they take a pick up truck full of bikes and drops them off to YMCA international.

J: blind donation is bad.

X: stronger loaner bike program.

E: insurance?

C: loaning bike liability?

J: sign-in sheet needs a waiver. Can anyone look into places to give bikes

C: setting up system for donation sounds great. Do you guys feel okay with me finding a space

J: or consignment?

X: judge each bike indivudally?

C: nicer bikes sell? Others get loaned or donated.

E: down on box dog

A: pedal rev? other stores? Danger of doing it ourselves.

Collective: bitterness about the merchandise.

A: what if we allocate consignment fee to savings

J: Sp talking to bad mechanics. C donation programs everything else

Shop manager

C: summary: I look at bike kitchen. Resources vs. need. I see we have money and people who’re willing to give us money. Frequently lack man power and organization. If we could convert money into man power, ithink that could be beneficial in genral

Sp: orders resources. Washes aprons, labels, sorts parts what a shop manager is and does needs to be done

C: that was in the email. Setting up organizational systems.

Sp: can come up with work and organize responsabilites

C: responsibility of coordinating volunteers. Staffing hours. System for storage. Coordinating work nights. Dump runs. One of the things we’re lacking is incorporating new people into the shop (this person could do it).

J: Wilson orders and hardware runs.

E: hours?

C:5 hours per week. And one hour while we’re open. 12 an hour?

Sp: what if we need more hours in the end.

E: 5 hours not enough?

J: experimental

C: limited trial time

Sp: tax?

W: under the table.

Group feels positive about it with experimental time frame. 5 hrs. a week, for three motnhs at $12/hr.

X: if bike kitchen pays someone that much, there better be a big difference.

W: in terms of hiring, it should be open to core. If none of us want to take it on, they should get interview.

Sp: let’s have them spell it out.

J: we’ll iron responsabilties out.

C: I have the description. I’ll send the email out again.

J: changing volunteer notion of the shop keeper.

Approved

W: at bike church, collectively divied up responsabiltiies and billed for that time

Group likes the idea

J: agatha said things get funded easier with one person doing it all.

C: will nail down responsibilities

C: look at list of tasks and itemize them into more specific things

W: will get a list from bike church

Register working?

J: we want to keep track of money. How much money we have for parts and donations. We’ll all learn when we’re there. Enter amount of purchase, press 5 dollars, press donation. Parts, 7 dollars, hit parts, hit amount tendered, hit total. We’ll learn it while we’re there

Brain farm collaboration

X: first point, every mondy fixathon 12-4p

C: what do you need?

X: some tools from Bfarm. Cool if end of Saturday, we could get parts/tools and stand, use it on Monday and then bring it back on Tuesday. Not a full range of tools.

C: be conscious of the right parts.

J: anal? Submit an official proposal.

X: it’s a new thing. My idea has been how to survive but make it useful for other people. Bk has restricted hours based on landlord or cell space. At least tell volunteers tha people can come by and do other work on their bikes. I have arc welder and vices and sandblaster and paintbooth.

J: who owns it?

X: flowershop, collectively owned. Welder is my friend’s booth and blaster belong to surfboard company and offered to show me how to use it. Good people. Would like mechanics to use the space. A lot of parts and free stuff. 968 Peralta, the other side of the hill. (415)374.6267 Open up to core group for now.

J: direction?

X: slavaging and not too much repair. Underground workshop that sustains itself. Total rent is $500.

Bike loaning (form)

J: does bike form have trailer option?

E: yes.

J: receipt?

E: don’t know how to do that.

C: great. Policy on loaning bike $30 deposit, 2 weeks

J: changes to form. 50 copies, putting them in a binder.

Tabling a lot of agenda items. Keeping…

Youth hours

W: hard on Saturdays to deal with kids and adults. Proposal and discussion for regular hours? Personally, youth hours. 10-18? More instruction. Kids need more structure.

C: you wanna do it?

W: yes, but not by myself.

C: hours? How ‘bout 9-11 on Saturday.

W: thinking weekday during the day. One weekday. Before three. Or before 2:30. 11:30-2:30 on one week day. NonMonday. Tuesdays.

J: lots of interest. Competent mechanics. (415)206.9703

C: one thing is that he needs help. And iron out details. The easiest way is to email me.

W: I’m passing around phone list

E: a phone list in general would be good. Would kids be limited to our time.

J: no

C: yes

June 29th

7pm