Situated near Harrison, Harnwell and Rodin College Houses, the neo-Gothic fa‡ade of St. Mary's Episcopal Church at 3916 Locust Walk looks conspicuously out of place. Though the Church is located on Penn's campus, it has, since opening in 1873, remained fully independent of the niversity. And yet, just as it does not quite belong to Penn, the archaic structure - echoing the privilege of a lapsed era - does not quite fit in with the working-class milieu that defines the West Philadelphia of today.
But inside St. Mary's rigid walls, wheels of change - at once embracing the University and the neighboring community - are turning.
Bike wheels, that is.
The grimy, labyrinthine basement of St. Mary's is home to one of Penn and West Philly's hidden gems: the Divine Bicycle Church. It's here that flocks of bikes fated for the scrap heap congregate; all but the most bent and rusted of them are offered a shot at new life. In addition to rehabilitating and selling donated bikes, the Bike Church acts as the home base of an afterschool program geared towards area children - a safe place where kids can stay off the streets while learning about bike safety and repair.
Though it is housed in St. Mary's, the Bike Church is not affiliated with St. Mary's itself or with a religious organization in any way. It is simply one revenue-generating arm of Neighborhood Bike Works, a non-profit organization whose mission, according to its Web site, is to "promote youth development by offering educational, recreational, and career-building opportunities through bicycling. It also promotes cycling as a healthy, environment-friendly form of transportation." Started as Youth Cycle & Recycle by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, NBW grew into an independent nonprofit in 1999 and moved to its current location at St. Mary's in 2000.
NBW's headquarters do not draw attention to itself. To find it you must first make your way to the southeast corner of the church (roughly facing Harrison College House), squeeze a re-jigged bicycle handbrake of a bell, and - once someone has come to open the door - clamber down a stairwell and pass through a colorfully muraled hallway into the organization's main workroom. It is warm, almost unbearably so. And the space is painstakingly maximized. Bike paraphernalia occupies every nook. Bicycles-in-repair are tied to a double-decker frame against the far wall. Metal rims balance on exposed piping that runs overhead. Tires perch on slabs of wood bolted to support beams.
The scent of rubber and grease gives an air of well-oiled permanence about the operation - as if it has been, and will continue to be, there forever. But with no endowment and funding that fluctuates from year to year, keeping the non-profit afloat requires a certain savvy for stretching funds and the acceptance of a pittance for pay.
Enter Andy Dyson. In his seven-year tenure as executive director of Neighborhood Bike Works, Dyson has worked vigorously to expand existing programs and to add new ones.
It has not always been easy.
"We're broke. We're constantly broke," he said one night in the small office he shares with the rest of his staff. He pointed out that it was simply a fact of life in his line of work: "If we were rolling in money people wouldn't give it to us." But on the flipside he said donors also "don't want to support you if you're in debt."
Even though his hours are long and the margin between the success and collapse of NBW is small, Dyson's face on a Monday past 8:30 p.m. betrayed neither worry nor frustration. His love for cycling and Philadelphia's youth were palpable as he spoke.
Originally from Northern England, Dyson has been a West Philadelphian for over two decades. After working in the bike business for many years, he assumed the position of executive director of Neighborhood Bike Works in 2001. The job has helped him connect with a diverse array of other Philadelphians, especially the city's underprivileged youth.
"What I want people to know about this place is that kids can come here and learn something they want to know," Dyson said. "We constantly want to connect this to learning at school."
Dyson distinguished NBW's youth initiatives, composed of beginning and advanced bike building workshops, as a development program as opposed to a preventative one. Instead of telling youth what not to do (such as saying no to drugs and alcohol), he explained that NBW's goal is to foster good habits through tangible, hands-on projects. "That's how you get healthy people," Dyson said. In a sense, the program presents a fun - and more importantly, socially acceptable - way for area kids to fill their time productively.
NBW's longest-running and most important program is its afterschool Earn a Bike class. Youth between the ages of eight and 17 are eligible for the free, 14-week course, which takes place at four West Philly locations: the Church, a satellite workshop at 60th and Vine, Sayre High School on the 5800 block of Walnut and the Lamberton School at 75th and Woodbine.
On most afternoons, students enrolled in an Earn a Bike class spend their time indoors. There, they accrue hours for fixing bikes and assisting in a number of different tasks. These hours, given based on behavior and participation, can then be spent to purchase everything from bikes to spare parts to multi-tools to used tires.
On one Tuesday in February, Ricky Perez, one of NBW's Earn a Bike instructors, had a different activity in mind: bike safety drills. On the weekend, another staff member would be leading a group bike ride to a local park, and he wanted to make sure that everyone knew how to ride on the streets properly. Perez shouted atop the voices of the middle-school-aged kids who had shown up to class that day and led them, helmets and bikes in tow, outside. After arranging three milkcrates down the middle of the alley behind the church, he ordered his students to line their bikes in a single-file facing the alleyway.
For the first exercise, the kids were tasked with riding in a straight line. The path bounded by the curb and the milkcrates roughly approximated the width of a bike lane.
An outspoken girl named Tanisha went first. Her bike wiggled slightly as she went forth, and a judging panel composed of Perez and three others rated her ride as a four out of five.
A boy, Zaire, went next. He rode smoothly with the poise of an experienced cyclist. A five. Then, on his way back, past the instructors to the end of the line, Perez called out to him. "Zaire," he asked, "did you skid?"
"No," retorted Zaire, "that's none of your business."
"You know you get negative one thousand points for lying. I'll take off one point."
"Shut up, Ricky," said Tanisha, jumping into the verbal scuffle on Zaire's behalf. "You're always lying. Give him five points."
On the next drill, which modified the first drill by tasking participants with looking back when they were halfway down the alley, Zaire wobbled slightly to the right. Nine-and-a-half out of 10 points.
Tanisha stalked up to the front and waved her finger in front of the judges to protest the verdict. "You're cruel, you're cruel, you're cruel," she said. "I'm not from New York, but you're going to make me go Brooklyn on you."
On the Saturday of the scheduled bike ride, residual snow and wet streets led NBW staff to postpone the event for the following weekend. Instead they held "drop-ins" - open repair time for kids and adults from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Because the change of plans was decided last minute, few people showed up.
The next day, however, a handful of volunteers were
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hard at work at "Bike Church Buildup," a monthly gathering devoted to restoring NBW's collection of bikes. Their bikes are largely gathered through donations; they take everything from kid's to BMX mountain bikes, so long as they have at least a slight chance of being ridden at some point in the future. In addition to outfitting the kids who participate in the Earn a Bike program with free gear, NBW also sells bikes and parts in various states of (dis)repair as a means of raising funds.
Sometime that afternoon, Perez leashed Honey, his ten-week old puppy, and took her out of the shop for a walk. As she traipsed eagerly about the snow, Perez said that he tries not to act so much like a taskmaster in his classes. "They receive enough of that at school," he explained, and "they don't feel like doing that again" when they come in to the shop.
On his way back to the Church, Perez noted that one of the greatest things about NBW is that it brings people together who would not otherwise ever interact; ranging from white-collar, advanced degree-carrying professionals to "your typical West Philly, trash-picking punk kid."
On Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 6:30 to 9 p.m., NBW holds what they call "adult repair co-ops" - open sessions during which bikers of all backgrounds can drop in to work on repairs, buy used parts or even pick up a new bicycle from NBW's reserves. The sessions are informal and laid back, with a typical night seeing everything from NBW staff helping novice riders to change their tires or tighten their breaks to more advanced riders who come in to make use of the free tools and space to build their own bikes. All NBW asks in return is that participants volunteer either their money, or more importantly their time, to the organization. The Bike Church also opens its doors on Wednesday evenings for the same purpose, albeit only for women and what they term as "transgender-identified adults."
***
Back in the basement on that rained-out Saturday, two men with hands black with oil rubbed down a soiled, pre-WWII bicycle that had prominent, curving handles. At a table to the side another man wearing a yellow tee and camouflage pants stood in front of a grinder and burnished to a dull shine one of the bike's rusted chain wheels. Next to him, a fellow volunteer sat before a bicycle wheel; he inserted a silver peg into its spokes in order to see how he might fix it from wobbling as it spun.
It was impossible to pick apart professional from bike messenger from research scientist. For at least a few hours, all of the volunteers' differences collapsed and became irrelevant. Even Honey, who Perez had unleashed and was now moving inquisitively about the room, seemed peculiarly at home; her enthusiasm in the workshop was indistinguishable from the men that towered around her.
