Sign-1-welcome

Welcome to Free Ride!

Sign 1: Welcome to Free Ride

Welcome to Free Ride! We are a non-profit recycle-a-bike collective run by the community of people that use it.

We want to:

  • help you learn how to repair and maintain your bicycle
  • offer you the resources — space, tools, knowledge – so you can work on your own bike
  • get you on a bike if you don’t have one yet!
  • reuse or recycle your old, unwanted bike
  • provide a space for developing community around bikes

We achieve the above through offering:
Adult Mechanics Classes — six basic class topics on rotation, drop-in classes weekly
Earn-a-Bike program — a way for people to gain mechanical knowledge while earning one of our donated bicycles through volunteering
Open Shop — a time to come and work on your bike using our shared space, tools and know-how
Volunteer Night – a time for members to earn work-trade hours which can be spent on used parts, classes, and membership
Women’s, Trans, Queer and Femme Night – every Wednesday night we offer Open Shop or Adult Classes for women, trans, queer, and femme -identifying folks only.
Membership – Free Ride is run entirely by the people who use it. We need your involvement! Become a standard or collective council member today, and enjoy all the benefits while helping to make Free Ride possible.

For youth under 18:
Youth Earn-a-Bike Programs — usually offered during summer in partnership with outside community organizations.
Mobile Bike Repair Project — a summer internship and job-training program with older teens. Teens receive in-depth hands-on training in bicycle mechanics, then they apply that knowledge through building bikes for sale for Free Ride and offering mobile bike repair services at various special events, trails and neighborhoods throughout the summer.

We are RUN BY VOLUNTEERS—that includes the staffers! So please treat us nicely because we are all doing our best.

We are supported entirely by our community of users—so please consider supporting Free Ride by volunteering, donating money or donating bikes, parts or supplies!

   
marc
2011-03-17 2011-03-17

General discussion on signage in the shop: At a shop committee meeting in early March to prep for shop opening, the discussion was that we should get these signs up asap, but there were issues raised that should be worked through first. I need to type those notes up and apologize that I haven’t.

1) some feel that they need to be condensed to work in the shop. All felt these convey the right messages but shorter is better when trying to get attention. Maybe some info can be in our trifold? Similarly I think, I recently posted a donations flyer as a trial. My guess is it is not that useful as a sign but maybe people can see it and take a copy. We’ll see. I forget who agreed to try to condense the signs but I know someone did.
2) we should get something up as a trial soon and there were two ways of moving forward quickly: Printing on paper or writing on a whiteboard. I heard there are concerns with the whiteboards because they could be erased. I got some wet-erase markers and brought them to the shop – they apparently don’t erase with a swipe of the hand, you need at least a wet cloth or something.
3) layout is important for legibility and these probably are not ready to put up as just text, they may need boxes or text size changes (headlines) or whatever – layout.

Maybe we can get someone addressing each of these points. I will offer again to get them printed on paper (can then mount them on cardboard – we just got some) and will also figure out who agreed to condense them. Anyone want to offer to try simple layouts?