by Clayton Roessle, edited by L Kravit
If you don’t visit the Evergreen campus very often, you might not have noticed that our former storefront has been wiped of any trace of our DIY bicycle cooperative. I am going to tell you how this happened, but first, a bit of history in memory of all the good times we’ve had in this space.
The Evergreen Bike Shop was founded in the early ’70s in the basement of the CAB building, a small workshop adjacent to the large garage. Amateur mechanics would work there night and day. Since there were no windows, the only way of telling time was the clock in the room! I believe that the Bike Shop’s Mission Statement dates from those days and goes as follows:
“The Evergreen Bike Shop is a student-led community-run do-it-yourself bike shop that is open to the entire Olympia area. Our goal is to provide various resources to the community to promote cycling as an active lifestyle and educate people regarding alternative transportation issues. The shop tries to provide an alternative to the often prohibitive nature of bike repair and culture both in financial cost and accessibility. By maintaining a free learning environment where anyone, student or not, can develop skills of bike self-reliance, the shop encourages a developing ethic of environmental and social consciousness.”
Sounds great, right? The Bike Shop slowly became more popular, and it was decided that they should have a better space for the community, so the Bike Shop was moved to its home near the entrance to the CAB building sometime in the ’90s, right near the heart of Evergreen’s student community.
Bike polo, races, community learning events, mini-concerts, and all sorts of other activities suddenly became more accessible to the Evergreen community. Of course, like any DIY community project, there were always hurdles to go over. Different personalities would often clash when determining how the Bike Shop should be managed and how to make the space more accessible for larger groups. From the 2000s to 2010s (from what I hear), these personal conflicts would often make it hard for people to stay in the position of coordinator or volunteer, but given the low wages paid out by the work and the stresses of being a college student in the United States, this is understandable.
There were usually three coordinators operating the shop, but by 2018, there were only two, and this went down to one. Anyone who remembers what happened in 2017 can attest to the fact that Evergreen was changed after the end of that year, with the student population sharply dropping in conjunction with downsizing Evergreen’s famous art programs. This was the time I began to volunteer at the shop, and even in these dismal depopulated conditions, it was still a rockin’ good time, but it was not to last.
At the end of 2018, we applied to have the Bike Shop open during the summer quarter, and it was unceremoniously denied with little reasoning behind it. We managed to solicit an administrator with Student Activities to promise that we would stay open, but they immediately turned around and said that we would be denied access into our shop! We grouped up and headed up to the director of Student Activities to speak our mind about what was happening and our concerns with it, but in the next week, they began to deny us access to our shop a month before the Spring quarter was slated to end.
This was very disheartening, and rather than try and do something, most of the current membership at that time (many of whom had been there for years) parted ways. Without that devoted core of volunteers who had been there for a long time continuously, things became more difficult. In 2019 our only coordinator graduated, and the bike shop remained closed for some time until I applied for the coordinator position in December of 2019.
I managed to keep the shop primarily open single-handedly, with few other volunteers coming in to fill shifts. Indeed, the amount of traffic in the space was also severely reduced due to the foolish decisions from the Evergreen administration to cut their most popular programs. And also by creating a discriminatory and unwelcome environment for most students of color.
But, there is always a need for a community bike repair space, especially for people with few resources, such as college students and houseless folks, but it wasn’t about just repairing bikes either. Our workshop could make just about any crazy bike project you could think of. From double-tall bikes to bike carts to unicycles to whatever you want! The fact that your imagination was the limit was the thing that kept me coming back and keeping the space open. And the fact that it helped so many other ordinary people in the process!
All good things come to an end eventually. In March of 2020, I was informed that the Bike Shop would no longer operate due to the outbreak of COVID-19. This was completely expected, and I obliged, graduating soon after. Though I was very disheartened that the Student Activities administration was contemplating moving the Bike Shop into a different space, I didn’t think it would happen soon.
I was wrong, however. Around July of 2020, they ordered the Bike Shop cleared out without any people allowed to reclaim their projects. Our workshop, which had seen decades of widespread use, was unceremoniously stripped of all tools, projects, and parts, with these being placed into deep storage somewhere on Evergreen’s campus. I know that many others could not reclaim the items they had stored there, and I am always asking to understand why the bike shop isn’t open.
Through any sadness and anger I might have, though, I must give remembrance to the decades of dedicated people who came through that space, making it welcoming for all people and providing immense material support to anyone who likes (or needs) to ride a bicycle. Our little DIY community shop will be severely missed, and I hope that one day the administrators at Evergreen and its Student Activities dept. can reverse their complete foolishness and make Evergreen home for a progressive and artistic community of incredible cultural force.
But until then, Evergreen’s cultural spaces like the Bike Shop, the COM Building and its theaters, audio workstations, music labs, and the like will remain empty, waiting for the next batch of students who have been robbed of the education they were promised.
IN LOVING MEMORY
The Evergreen Bike Shop 1972-2020
