So we posted a while back that we were hiring for the retail shop.  We need mechanics to help fund raise for us!  It is that time again, we are looking for someone to work around 20 hours or so a week.  There is not currently a deadline for resumes but we are looking for someone quickly so I would encourage you to apply ASAP especially if you identify as a woman – we need more women mechanics around.  Here is a job description:

The Hub of Detroit retail shop is in need of, and taking resumes for, a mechanic position starting in May. The position will be part time (20 plus hrs per week) with potential for expanded hours depending on scheduling with other employees. Weekend availability a must.

The Hub of Detroit is a Cass Corridor-based non-profit organization that provides cycling education and services to the local community, including free bicycle programming for youth as well as coordination with area schools and other non-profits.

Responsibilities

• Customer Service, including repair diagnosis and point-of-sale operation

• Inventory management and stocking

• General shop cleaning

• Assisting shop manager with incidental operations, including bicycle repair

Position Requirements

Successful candidates will have previous professional experience in the following areas:

• Customer service

• Bicycle repair, including diagnosis

In addition, the following skills and experiences are desirable:

• Professional attitude and teamwork ethic

• Customer communication in a retail environment

• Demonstrated ability to meet deadlines

• Flexible availability

• Hustle

• Familiarity with programming of The Hub of Detroit

Please submit a resume’ to the shop during business hours or by email to darrin@thehubofdetroit.org for consideration. We at the Hub look forward to a great year and hope you can be a part of it.

The Hub of Detroit
3611 Cass Ave
Detroit MI 48201
313-833-0813
Tues-Sat 10am-6pm
Sun Noon-6pm
Closed Monday

The policy of The Hub is to provide equal opportunity and equal consideration to all peoples without regard to and not to discriminate because of race, religion, ancestry, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, sex, age or physical disability.

So we have extra room on our Progressive Dinner by bicycle ride coming up this Sunday (May 20th).  So you can follow this link to our WePay site to register or come into our retail shop this week to register for this event.  Registration extended through Friday (May 18th).  Don’t miss out.

Food to be served by:

• Green Dot Stables
• Native Kitchen
• Detroit Vegan Soul
• Organaman
• Scott Grenerth

See ya there!  Registration begins at 2:30pm and ride takes off a little bit after 3pm

The ride is even more fun than this image

a photoshopped panorama of our warehouse circa 2006

Since the summer of 2000, Back Alley Bikes and the Hub of Detroit have made thousands of rebuilt bicycles available at no cost to young riders through our Earn-A-Bike program and community partnerships. In 2011 alone, youth participants and volunteers built over 400 bicycles, many of which were distributed to other charitable organizations around the city of Detroit. Though it is entirely needless to say, these outreach efforts are simply not possible without a substantial amount of material support in the form of used bicycle donations from people like you.

In the nearly 13 years since we first put out a call for donated bicycles, we have been the fortunate recipients of a considerable amount of community support. Donors from police departments to universities to bicycle retailers to individuals from all over southeast Michigan have pitched in to help further our mission of youth access to cycling. While this generosity has allowed the scope and volume of our programming to expand over the years, this expansion has also resulted in increased bicycle turnover as we work to furnish useable bicycles for our endeavors.

Please consider joining our community for the 2012 cycling season as we prepare another significant expansion of our youth programming. Starting in the summer of 2012, the Youth Earn-A-Bike program will take place four days a week (instead of Saturdays only), and we will convene weekly rides for program participants from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend. Your donation of a used bicycle directly supports Detroit youth cycling by helping us grow a proven model of empowerment and education.

Your donated bike will support the following youth projects at the Hub:

• Youth Earn-a-Bike: Year-round program for youth (ages 8-16) to build and keep a bike for free
• Youth Rides: Weekly rides all summer long to teach youth safe cycling skills for life
• Mechanics-in-Training: A paid internship for high school-aged youth to work as part of our staff
• Youth Bike Give-a-Way: Free bikes for youth 7 and younger given out through partnerships with local social service agencies and schools

While we are happy to accept monetary support, we are proud of the fact that our programs are made possible almost entirely through the reuse of donated bicycles. We love making it possible for you to help the city’s cycling community by contributing your used bicycle, and we thank you for considering the Hub of Detroit as a recipient of your generosity.

How to Donate:

Donations may be dropped off at our retail shop at 3611 Cass Ave. in Detroit anytime during normal business hours. To schedule an alternate drop-off time, please contact our program office at (313)879-5072 from Tuesday through Friday 12pm – 4pm. While we generally require our donors to provide their own transportation, we are willing to help make arrangements to accept larger donations (more than 25 bicycles).

Anyway, there is only a little more than a day left to sign up. Last year this was go time. We had about 40 to 50 people sign up in the last 24 hours. I’m hoping that happens again this year. But what this means for you is that if you were thinking about signing up but were waiting…it is time to make the decision.

To sign up online go to: https://www.wepay.com/events/147045 or come into our shop to pay in person if credit cards and the internet scare you. We’ll be happy to help you out in person.

Any questions? email jason (at) thehubofdetroit.org

The ride is even more fun than this image

Yesterday you may have read a post and watched a video of JT from LIVE hanging out at our shop talking about the project he is about to embark on.  He will be taking off on a bicycle to meet with high school youth to inspire them to reduce bullying and violence in our schools.  The Hub will continue to try to keep our streets safe for our youth while our friend JT will keep the schools safe.  Imagine a future where our youth can freely travel through their neighborhoods and concentrate in their well funded, safe schools.  We aren’t there yet in Detroit, but we aren’t giving up.  Our youth aren’t standing for it, so why should we?

Anyway, JT is leaving on his tour this Sunday and on Saturday he will having a rally to celebrate and promote what he is doing.

Enough about JT though – we love what he is doing but we also need to let you know what the shop is doing.  We are donating a bike to JT so he can take his trip but there was a catch.  We required him to come to a few of our Adult Mechanic Classes so he would have some basic mechanic skills. These skills will come in handy when he is out there on the road.  He is touring on a tight budget fueled by dreams, so this knowledge will come in useful.  This is the way to tour!

So below is a video going over how to patch a tube/fix a flat.  It stars JT patching his very first tube.  As far as he is riding I’m sure it won’t be his last.  Check it out and if you’d like to get some more skills working on bikes, come to our Adult Mechanic Classes on Sundays at 2pm and starting May 18th we’ll be offering this class on Friday nights at 6pm as well.

Here is the video:

However, JT decided to hit the road on a bike.  That is where we come in.

We are suiting JT up with a used bike to ride around on.  We found an old rack and a donated jersey for his journey.  We also had him come to a few of our Adult Mechanic Classes to learn some basic skills before he takes off into the unknown.
We are happy to work with someone that rejects the view that Detroit is a helpless place looking for a savior.  Instead JT and The Hub view Detroit as a place that can lead and provide solutions.  It is great to see someone coming out of the city to hit the road with that kind of attitude.

We got some footage of him at our May 6th Adult Mechanic Class where he spoke about his goals for the tour.  Below is some video footage of that.  Check back to the website to see another video in the coming days where JT will patch a tube all on his own.

Oh, and if you want to wish JT a good trip, come to his rally Saturday May 12th the day before he leaves.  Everything goes down from 11am-8pm at the corner of Plymouth and Coyle in the parking lot of Americana Foods.  You can check out JT’s facebook page for more info.

I provided a transcript of JT’s speech after the video:

John Tre’vor Explains His Bike Tour from Hub Detroit on Vimeo.

The Hub of Detroit is partnering with John Tre’vor (aka JT) who is biking around the country to speak with you to reduce bullying and violence. We want to see youth inspired and empowered to work together instead of against each other.

In this video, JT stops by our May 6th, 2012 Adult Mechanic Classes to learn how to patch a flat tube before he takes off on his tour May 13th, 2012. The Hub offers mechanic classes for adults every Sunday year round at 2pm. In the summer of 2012 we will also be offering a Friday night class at 6pm.

Whats going on everybody, my name’s JT.  Again, LIVE out loud – Love, Inspire, Visualize, Experience.  I’m at The Hub Bike Shop right now.  I’m getting ready for the bike tour around the East Coast.  They are showing me today, how to fill in holes on my bike that they are building for me, because I absolutely have no idea how to do this.  I’ve never ridden a bike this far before so I’m just going to make sure I do the best job I can possibly do.  And hopefully I can make them very proud, make sure their company gets a lot of attention because of what they are donating to this cause to stop violence around our country and our nation.  Because it is very important for our youth to feel inspired by something.

So again, why I’m riding this bike is because going around the country and filling these bike tubes and doing all this is because there are going to a lot of trials and tribulations in your own personal lives    that you are going to have to get through.  And guess what?  There are going to be a lot of trials and tribulations that I’m gonna have to go through on the road to come full circle.
But if I can come full circle and make from here to Chicago to Atlanta to DC, New York and then back to Detroit.  If I can come full circle, then guess what? You can come full circle.  There’s no excuses for why you can’t be the best person that you can possibly be in your life.
Alright, until next time, we are going to continue working on this tube.

So you may have heard about this neighborhood called “Midtown”.  Here at the Hub we call it the Cass Corridor.  It is our collective home.

Anyway, there is this website called Yelp! where people seem to like us very much.  They are doing a promotion right now to get folks exploring the Cass Corridor neighborhood.  They chose to feature us on their website since people like us I suppose.  Anyway, since we try to be good neighbors and some of us live here, we encourage you to check out other businesses in the area as well.

You can check out our neighbors that are listed and offering specials at this link right here.  We are offering our new Friday Adult Mechanic class.  This class isn’t really all that new since we’ve been doing the class for years.  What is new is that we are offering it on Friday night in addition to our traditional Sunday afternoons.  So if you could never come on Sundays, this may be your moment.  Come learn how to be a mechanic from our wonderful mechanic instructor, Heather.

It is good to be in this hood.

The Story of Carlisha

by Carlisha Johnson

I got my first bike when I was 8.  It was a blue Huffy.  I was so excited to be able to ride it. I sadly was only able to about four times before it was stolen one night off of the balcony of my mother’s apartment. After that I kinda gave up on riding bikes. I was a little hurt and decided that if there was nothing to steal then I wouldn’t feel that way ever again.

Some years past and we moved a couple of times. We ended up staying off of Mack and Gratiot.  I was downtown one day in the heat of summer bored. I called my friend David to see if he wanted to hang out. He told me he was at this place working on bikes. He invited me to join him.

One bus ride later I was walking up the steps to Back Alley Bikes! Here I ran into Jack who was kinda just running around back and forth haphazardly helping everyone. It was a little funny. I eventually got settled in and began building me a bike. I decided I wanted a blue road bike with 27″ rims and all black tires. Though I never rode a bike with drop bars I decided to keep them (couldn’t hurt right) (I fell off the bike like three times).

I finally found it. This was the place I WANTED TO BE!

I could come here and lose myself in all the shifters, take a mental bath in the cranks, all while making new friends. I was delighted when asked if I wanted to work there. I leaped at the opportunity. I knew that even though my personal like was falling to the dumps, I could come here and have some consistency. That bottom brackets, hubs, and Darrin’s attitude would always stay the same.

So that’s my story. The Hub of Detroit is my second home. Angie, Jack, Jason, Darrin, Shayne , Joey, and Na’eemah are all part of my family and they will hopefully be apart of my daughter’s.

_____________________________________________________

Carlisha Johnson was a Youth Earn-a-Bike participant and a Mechanic-in-Training.  Now she is a mechanic in The Hub’s retail shop, a collective member and a full time momma.

But that isn’t how the world works, or at least our world.  The Hub sees all sorts of folks.  We get anarchist bike punx, soccer moms, retired auto workers and children of all walks of life coming through our doors.  We are trying to find a new model that breaks away from capitalism and is community oriented.  But if we are pushing anything, it is bicycle education, not economics.

So when Carhartt, a Michigan based company for over 100 years, approached us about partnering with them, we were skeptical.  However, I must say that they were truly into what we are doing and worked with our schedule so both parties could have a positive outcome.  We don’t regret working with Carhartt one bit. They aren’t opportunistic ruin pornographers but people who actually care about the city they were founded in.

So with all that build-up, here is a video from Carhartt featuring our very own Joey and Carlisha. The video is to help promote a contest Carhartt is having to fund a building project generated in Detroit.  It looks really smooth and you might recognize a few other folks in the video as well: