So I’m speaking to you from the past. The internet has amazing tools where I can write this post on Friday and it won’t appear on the website until Sunday, exactly when I tell it to. This is great.
With that said, I want to share some really fun pictures with you that I received in the past week. But since I’m writing this on Friday, it means that in my world, the Open House hasn’t happened yet. In your world, you are still reliving how awesome the Open House was. If I remember(ed) to take a bunch of pictures then there can possibly be an Open House photo post coming soon. But until then, lets get to sharing some memories.
Hopefully you read the post on Friday and you know the sad news that Angie left us to move to Minneapolis and work at Cycles for Change. Her final collective meeting turned into a little bit of a party and we ate this cake:
This is why you want to be on the collective, unless you are allergic to chocolate. In that case, this cake would have killed your whole family with the amount of chocolate in it.
Since we were all together I decided to take a “class photo” of the collective. This is the collective make up from December 2011-present:
We’ve been working pretty hard recently because ever since there was that two weeks of summer in March, folks have gone bike crazy around here! This is good for us.
One of the groups that has gone bike crazy is City Year Detroit. These folks are like Peace Corp, but they stay in the country. No, that is AmeriCorp. Well…then they are like AmeriCorp, but they stay in the city? They aren’t Corp? Anyway, they hang out at schools and help tutor kids so they can achieve all their academic dreams instead of being forced to walk out of school in protest of not getting an education. Obviously what City Year does is greatly needed around here (and wanted by the students).
Anyway, they have been planning after school “Health and Wellness Nights” and “Literacy Nights” at all the different schools they work at. They convinced us it would be a good idea to donate bicycles to them to raffle off so more students would attend.
The reports are coming in that each event has been super successful. You might have seen a post in March showing off the first winner LaShawn and her new bike (from Cody HS).
This week I got some photos from the City Year team over at Bow School showing Jack and James talking up some folks during their Math and Literacy Night:
Fun Fact for those of you still reading: James went to Bow elementary and grew up on the Northwest side. He had fun visiting his old school!
We’ve donated to many City Year events and we weren’t able to be present at all of them unfortunately. Some students simply won raffles without getting to meet us beautiful folks. There were other events where we don’t have pictures. Olivia and Carlisha recently went out to Cody HS again to have the kids ride on the tandemsprintz! roller racing bikes. I wish I had video of that! It was a great time.
We are very fortunate that City Year decided to give back to us! Our Back Alley entrance to all of our programming has been less than stellar for some time now. The old brick wall has been suffering from chipping and pealing paint for some time.
City Year stepped up and volunteered to paint it for us! This is totally amazing. They started phase one on the 21st of April and here are some of the results so far:
You can see the chipping paint above the mural. I didn’t take a “before” photo but here are some photos of this section of the wall from 2009:
I think it is an improvement. It is sounding like there is going to be a second work day to paint higher up on the wall. I certainly hope so! If not though, this is still such a great improvement and wonderful gift from City Year.
Also, did I mention the design is part of a series done by a local artist Cedric Tai as part of a project called “Brixels”? I didn’t mention that? Well now I have.
Another project that is finally showing fruit is the friendship we have made with Chuan-Xing Ho. Chuan-Xing works at the South Oakland Shelter and noticed a bunch of the folks that use the services of the shelter ride bikes. He needed a bike rack on a shoestring budget.
After some conversations about what we’ve done in the past Chuan-Xing came in and picked through our scrap pile to get some busted frames. He also found a welder to build a rack and now…the folks at the South Oakland Shelter can lock up their bikes out back! Chuan-Xing sent me some photos:
Finally, I wanna share another photo with you that isn’t of anything new, but the photo is!
You may have noticed that our retail shop is looking different. What? You haven’t? When was the last time you came around? That is silly! You are missing out on great stuff.
We have a few new things. One is this great large chalkboard showing common prices in the shop. Another new addition to the shop is that our poster boy of the Cass Corridor, Shayne O’Keefe is now a manager in the shop. Don’t worry, Hot Spokes is still rolling, we just get Shayne for the hours he isn’t delivering food to you.
Since this website has been lacking information on our Retail Shop, I added a “page” to this website where you can find out some basic info and tips about the shop. I wanted to add a photo, so Carlisha got me a photo of the chalkboard and Shayne’s floating head. Check this out:
Unfortunately this ends our photo journey for today. I know it was kind of random but I had some photos I wanted to share and this seemed like a good spot!
Some folks would say “Photos or it didn’t happen!” which is popular phrase on the internet here. However, in a world like the Hub where we are trying to reconnect with physical objects and do real work with our hands – photos and digital media are just another tool. We are here doing real work everyday that often doesn’t get photographed. So come be a part of it. Lets change the phrase to something like, “You do it yourself or it doesn’t happen!” Or “If you missed it, don’t ask for pictures, take part next time!”
ehhh….I guess those sayings don’t have rings to them. Oh well…I guess I’ll get back to hanging out with kids and building bikes. Don’t quit my day job right?
see ya’ll soon!
– jason x