The sad fact is that bicycle frames made of brass are hard to find anymore* – we mostly see just the same old same old steel or aluminum or titanium frames**, with your occasional carbonite composite. Some early 19th century bikes were made of iron, making them even more suitable than modern bicycles for delivering the healthful benefits of vigorous exercise.

But this ride has an all-too-rare color that at least nods toward brass, & is a perfect casual street bike. You shift with one hand – the gears are all in back – leaving your other hand free to gesture like a crazy person as you cruise. It’s also the perfect bike for someone who kind of likes fenders but doesn’t want to overdo it.

* By “are hard to find” we mean “might be found in a museum somewhere”. Though it must be said the original velocipede (the primordial ancestor of all bicycles invented by Baron Carl von Drais in 1817) had brass bushings within the wheel bearings.

** For whatever reason we don’t see a lot of titanium frames down here.

Do you ever feel like your handlebars don’t express your larger-than-life personality, that your bike’s profile too easily lets you blend into the crowd, unnoticed & forgotten? Are you cramped by your saddle, confined to that tiny region above the seat tube by the suffocating dictates of political correctness, while your butt soul yearns to roam free & slide all the way back at will?

This bike will set you free. This bike is the beginning of the heroic quest you were born to pursue. If you are awesome enough for this bike, then this bike is the only bike awesome enough for you.

Better hurry though – at that price, some poseur might snatch this up before you make your move.

Monday MAY 20th is a very important day for two reasons:

1) You know that Progressive Dinner by Bicycle event I keep talking about? Well you have until 8am on Monday, May 20th to buy a ticket. Biking + Food + Fundraising = Good Times.

2) You know that Mechanic-in-Training program that we just got funding for? Wait, I didn’t tell you? Girl, we just got a bunch of funding from City Connect Detroit’s Grow Detroit’s Young Talent program to pay our MIT’s this year. It is pretty sweet.
Anyway, the applications are due by the end of the day on Monday, May 20th!

Geez deadlines aren’t really fun to write about but sometimes you need to have deadlines to plan for fun times. So lets talk about those fun times:

1) The May 26th Progressive Dinner by Bicycle event is going to be a great one. And if you can’t make it, we’ll be doing two more rides this year: July 14th and September 15th!

2) Having four high school aged youth working in the shop all summer is a really cool stepping stone and if things work out like they did this past year, we’ll be taking those youth to New York City for the Youth Bike Summit!

This is going to be our biggest summer yet, I can’t wait for the exhaustion! It will be so worth it.
Well, time to get to work. See ya’ll soon!

The ride will be 15 miles total with those five stops along the way. If you can ride at least 4 miles at a time, you will be fine during this ride.

For the second question, I do not have the menu 100% done, but it is almost there. This is what I can tell you about the food.
Stop #1: Green Dot Stables – Mystery Meat or Black Bean Sliders
Stop #2: Goodwells Natural Food – Samosas
Stop #3: Anna Harris – To be determined
Stop #4: Brooklyn St Local – Poutine
Stop #5: Bobbie Sue and Scott Grenerth – Strawberry Rhubarb Cake

So you like Detroit, riding bikes and eating food? Well, this event combines all three with the proceeds going towards assisting Back Alley Bikes with our busiest summer ever.
This year we will have our Youth Earn-a-Bike and Youth Drop-In programs running five days a week, will be hiring four Mechanics-in-Training and offering our Adult Mechanic Class two days a week. The adult class has already expanded in May as well as our Youth Ride Club already beginning this past week.
To assist with all of this we have hired three really awesome folks to help lead our programs and with the addition of our four Mechanic in Training students our staff will be the biggest it has ever been at nine people. We can’t do this kind of stuff without having events such as this one.

So without further ado, get over to our registration website to sign up for the Progressive Dinner by Bicycle Ride. If you don’t have a credit card or don’t like paying for stuff online, give Jason a call at the Back Alley Bikes office (313.879.5072) to make other arrangements.

Thanks!

Schwinn Impact MOS, black with slightly greenish yellow, 57 cm, 21 speed, new 26″ Kenda Kwest High Pressure 100 PSI tires, Shimano V-brake, Shimano Tourney Tx SiS (rear), SunTour (front), WTB Pure 5 saddle, bottle mount. $300

A resourceful hybrid, graced with those magnificent aero bars & enough gears to get you across Asia, Northern Africa & Europe. The tires are directional (embossed arrows show you which way to mount them, unlike most tires which are agnostic about turn direction) &  take a lot of pressure, which is where many bikes slow their riders down. But at 100 PSI you won’t be expending a lot of waste energy on tire bounce. (Note to self – check pressure before leaving.) This bike is perfect for a long straightaway where you want to put your head down on the handlebars & take a little nap.

The aurochs was a noble beast that lived throughout Asia, Northern Africa & Europe. 17,000 years ago it was painted on the wall of the cave at Lascaux. It is the wild ancestor of most cattle, through 2 lines of descent. One line was domesticated in India early in Indus Valley civilization, leading to the zebu & all its contemporary breeds. Aurochs were also domesticated in Turkey, leading to all the varieties of the western cow.

The last aurochs, a female, died in 1627 in the Jaktorów Forest, Poland.

The Medical Journal of Australia has released a report on the use of helmets by motorcyclists & bicyclists. Spoiler alert: they think helmets are a good idea.

The risks of severe head injury were more than five times higher in cyclists not wearing a helmet compared to helmeted ones, and more than three times higher in motorcyclists not wearing a helmet at the time of injury.

https://theconversation.com/bike-helmets-an-emergency-doctors-perspective-13935

Not that this settles the question forever: other studies have indicated a counterintuitive conclusion, that helmets (at least on bicyclists) make riders & the drivers hitting them more careless, & furthermore by discouraging riding helmets increase other health risks due to lack of exercise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet#Undesirable_effects_of_helmet_use

But still. Be careful out there!

Currently on our shop floor:

Schwinn World Sport, Gray/Green with Magenta, 8 speed, lugged 58 cm,  Shimano Acera derailleur, Tektro R539 side pull brakes, quick release 700C wheels with ThickSlick Urban Armor Casing, Origin 8 Aero saddle, water bottle mount. ProBuilt. $650

This ride is ProBuilt, so it’s been built up from the bare frame with all new components. Check out that clean new drivetrain. The 8 speeds are all in the rear, so a single indexed shifter (see the retro display with the current gear marked in red) controls your derailleurosity*.

* derailleurosity: the degree of effort required to pedal a bike, as determined by the derailleur.

The Adult Mechanic Class – where adults learn mechanic skills. I guess the name kind of gives that away huh?

So you might know about our widely popular Adult Mechanic Classes yeah? We offer them year round on Sundays rotating through different subjects going all around the basics of bike maintenance over 5 weeks. It really is pretty great, we ask for a $10 donation, but if you ain’t got $10, don’t worry about it – as long as you are there to learn, you are in the right spot.

Well, recently over at our facebook page, Heather has been posting that 12 folks have been showing up each week. And really, 12 is as many people as we can handle at once. So what can we do? Build more benches? Buy more tools? Expand to have a second shop?

No, we’ll just offer the class on another day! That works just fine huh? So those of you that don’t have Sunday afternoons available – perhaps you have Friday nights available?

That is right. Starting on May 3rd (in one week) we’ll be offering our Adult Mechanic Class on Fridays at 6pm!
Catch ‘em while you can because the Friday night classes will only run through the end of August. Sundays will continue like normal. Both Friday and Sunday will cover the same topics, this is simply an extra time to come to the class in case you can’t make it on Sunday or if you miss a class, make it up on Friday!

Sound good? Yeah, I think so too. So come on out and learn some skills from Heather and our new Adult Mechanic Class teacher Olivia!

MECHANIC-IN-TRAINING APPLICATIONS ARE NOW AVAILABLE!!!

What does that even mean? Well, the Mechanic-in-Training (MIT) program is for high school youth aged 14-17. We take applications in the month of May, interview those that make the cut at the end of the month and then in the beginning of June, we hire a select few to work for Back Alley Bikes for the summer. This is a paid apprenticeship.

You can download an application here or come to our Open House on Saturday, April 27th to pick one up in person and meet the Back Alley Bikes staff (get your foot in the door literally and figuratively).

What the summer ends up looking like for MIT students:
The MIT students start with classroom time learning all of their mechanical skills. In this fast paced environment, a teacher keeps the students on task because at the end of each week they will practice teaching other youth those skills during our Youth Drop-In/Youth Earn-a-Bike time.
After five weeks of mastering their mechanic skills and getting practice teaching other youth, the MIT students enter the second phase of the summer. At this point, the classroom time ends and that time is split between working at The Hub of Detroit and helping with other Back Alley Bikes programming. Their teaching shifts on the weekend continue the rest of the summer.

What comes next for the MIT students? Some have come back to work at Back Alley Bikes or The Hub of Detroit. Others have gone to work at other area shops like The Wheelhouse and American Cycle & Fitness. In 2013 we took our first set of MIT students to the Youth Bike Summit in New York City.

So see you at the Open House? Good. Applications are due May 20th!

Just come to the Open House already!

Click here for the flier!