Revolutions – Memphis Flyer

Revolutions

Cyclists participating in the spring Tour de Brewer

Revolutions Bicycle Co-op is hosting its fourth Memphis brewery bike tour Saturday, September 22nd beginning at noon.

The 15-mile Tour de Brewer is a leisurely 15-mile round trip ride with stops at four different local breweries.

The ride will begin at Memphis Made Brewing Co., then head over to Ghost River, High Cotton, Crosstown Brewing Co., and then back to Memphis Made.

Participants are required to bring their own bikes. However, Explore Bike Share will have a set number of bikes available on a first come, first served basis.

The cost of the tour is $15 per person. Participants can sign up ahead of time or on Saturday. All drinks have to be purchased separately. Twenty percent of all event sales made at Memphis Made will go toward Revolutions’ 4th Grade Bicycle Safety Program at Shelby County Schools. All other proceeds from the tour will be used to purchase two classroom sets of bicycles for the program.

The nine-week program will aim to teach students how to safely ride a bike on on the street, giving them a reliable transportation option to get to school. It’s set to launch soon at 15 elementary schools, costing approximately $8,000 per school, according to Shannon Little, public relations manager for Revolutions. The cost covers programming for nine sessions for each participating fourth grade class, as well as a classroom set of bicycles that students get to keep throughout the program.

Little says the program’s launch date is contingent on Revolutions having enough funds to begin with one school.

Sylvia Crum, executive director of Revolutions said the program is important because cycling is a “lifelong healthy practice.”

“The life cycle of a bicyclist starts with a 2 year-old who can get on a balance bike, a bike that doesn’t have pedals, to learn how to balance and glide down the sidewalk,” Crum said. “An older child has the freedom to move around the neighborhood. As children get older, they can use a bike as a transportation option to go to school.

“As a child ages up to high school and college, a bicycle is a way to get to class or an after-school job. Then you’re a grownup and commuting to work is no big deal. As someone gets older and has a family, putting children on a bike for transportation is no big deal. Then that cycle starts again when the children are 2 years old and can start on a balance bike.”

There’s no such thing as a free ride, but at Revolutions Community Bike Shop, you can find an inexpensive one.

Since its inception in 2002, Revolutions has become a nexus for the local cycling community. Located inside First Congregational Church in Cooper-Young, it offers bike repairs, parts, and even the occasional bike tour of downtown Memphis. But it isn’t your ordinary bike shop — Revolutions also lets members have replacement bike parts for free.

“I was working at a local bicycle shop,” says co-op founder and executive director Anthony Siracusa. “Most of the kids that came in had no money for bicycle repair and ended up leaving before we could make their bikes safe and more user-friendly. Many would stop their bike by shoving their foot into the spokes. It inspired me to think that there must be some type of model designed to address this very problem: the fact that poor folks often rely on their bikes but often can’t afford retail bike shop rates.”

Siracusa developed an idea to provide people with affordable bicycles as well as the materials and training they would need to maintain them. He would keep costs down by building bikes exclusively out of parts donated by the community. People receiving the “recycled” machines could pay for them by working at the shop. From that vision, Revolutions was born.

For Siracusa, though, the shop is not only about bicycles. “We want to transform the relationship that individuals have with the bike shop and its community,” he says.

Memberships, which are open to the public, cost $40 and cover a basic bike frame as well as a year’s worth of replacement parts.

“What this means,” Siracusa says, “is that a member has access to the shop’s collective resources.” Members who don’t already own bikes can build a machine out of the shop’s parts library or can opt to have Revolutions mechanics put a bike together for them. After their cycle gets built, members learn maintenance skills from shop technicians and have access to spare parts should they need something.

“Memberships ensure that our shop is available to any and everyone who needs bicycle maintenance or bike parts,” Siracusa says. “In this way, we are creating an intentionally woven community of cyclists.”

Once a person’s membership expires, he or she has the option of renewing it for another year. Even if they don’t renew their membership, they can still keep their bike.

It might seem that Revolutions’ generosity would spell economic catastrophe — especially if people take advantage of the system. But throughout the shop’s operation, only two individuals have ever defaulted on payments.

“A central tenant of our program has been to provide bikes to both the working and non-working poor,” Siracusa explains. “We feel this service is central to what the bike shop is called to do.”