Skip to content or view screen version

CALLING ALL BIKE PUNKS! The 56a Bike Room needs fresh blood!

56a Bike Room | 20.06.2009 15:25 | Free Spaces

Ask not what your Infoshop can do for you, but what you can do for your infoshop...

The Bike Room at the 56a Infoshop needs volunteers to come and hang out, drink tea, share their bike skillz and learn some new ones.

We're a collective of bike geeks trying to provide a real alternative to bike shops by helping people to fix their own bikes instead of charging them money to do it, and by recycling and scavenging old bicycles and bike parts. We also stock a small amount of essential bits and bobs like cables and inner tubes that we sell at cost price.

But we'd like to do so much more!

The more people there are to help out, the easier it is for everyone who comes here, the more people we can get cycling and the more fun we all have.

If you think you can commit to doing a couple of hours each week then pop down to say hi to one of the volunteers. We're open 3-7 Weds, 2-8 Thurs, 3-7 Fri and 2-6 Sat and we're at 56a Crampton Street, SE17 3AE. Come along and we'll show you around and let you get on with pimping out people's bikes!



56a Bike Room
- Homepage: http://www.56a.org.uk

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

Listen Anarchists!

21.06.2009 08:35

So the BNP get almost 1,000,000 votes, many hundreds of thousands of people are going to loose their jobs and our communities are getting fucked by all sides with crime, council cuts and police harrasment... and what do the anarchists do? Bike repair workshops!!

I despair with this fetishing of fucking bikes!! Bike repair workshops?!! Every fucking social centre or event has a fucking bike repair workshop....who gives a flying fuck!!

AA


bikes are not the problem

21.06.2009 08:58

"I despair with this fetishing of fucking bikes!! Bike repair workshops?!! Every fucking social centre or event has a fucking bike repair workshop....who gives a flying fuck!! "

How do you propose people get to actions? Clearly asking more people to join a bike workshop doesn't suggest that all anarchists do is bike repair workshops. But ultimately, it is up to the individual to decide how they wish to spend their own time.


pedals


bikes are really not the problem, your attitude sucks

21.06.2009 09:32

AA: how do you get around? or do you stay home all the time?

why do you have a problem with fellow-anarchists using a type of transport that's free/ cheap, autonomous, self-organised, self-maintained, anti-commercial etc etc?

or -maybe even more revolutionary- squatting and occupying spaces where all kinds of people can come and:

put a bike together without spending lots of money.

learn the skills to look after their own bikes, and other peoples.

discover that there's more to life than the mainstream, £-based economy and all those values that capitalism teaches us as children - that 'mutual aid' isn't just some abstract theoretical anarchist principle, and that not everyone needs bribed with £ to 'work'/ do something useful with their time.

if you spent any time around these bike-fixing spaces, you might be pleasantly surprised to discover that they often cater for 'normal people', not just radical-anarcho-bike-fetishising-freaks. in fact, they arguable attract more everyday (non-anarchist-identified) folk than all the other activities in the social centre....

if you are serious about tackling the bnp, or any other issue, then you need to be in communication with lots of different people. perhaps spending time fixing bikes together and talking is actually more productive than anything you do....

but who knows, it's not as if you've enlightened us all as to what would be a better use of our time than going along and getting involved in the 56a bike room (or any other bike project: there are many around the country)?

bikes rock


"When they say cutbacks, we say fightback!" ( Vote labour)

21.06.2009 11:02

So the only interest should be the elections huh?

Sounds like an SWP member to me.

Bloody Trots.

Krop


AA you really are boring

21.06.2009 12:16

Yes, AA you are either just another dumb troll or another dumb anarchist who generalises something from small meagre facts.

The bike workshop at 56a operates in a complex community full of contradictory political wranglings. As well as all the other things anarchists in that project do (like keeping a volunteer run anarchist infoshop running for nearly twenty years etc) working with local kids and adults in a free bike space feels like one of the most rewarding and inspiring things to be done with our time. Of course, it's not the only thing we do but then that wouldn't give you much to rant and rave about in your self-rightious know-nothing way.

Enjoy your keyboard!
A

AAAArgh


I guess trolls don't use bicycles...

21.06.2009 13:59

yes the BNP got votes
are you suggesting we all vote for the Anarchist Party?

two wheels good


all due respects

21.06.2009 19:15

All due respects with 56a Infoshop.

How do I get around? On the tube and busses or walk. I am not against bikes! I am against the continual obsession with them as some sort of political activity or a means of radicalisation. They are bikes! People ride on them.

Anyway, I give up....


BTW I am no internet troll, though I may have come across as one for today.

apologies

AA


Bikes

25.06.2009 09:26

in my humble opinion are a free unobtrusive healthy eco-sustainable way of transportation and much less obtrusive form of travel than using an oyster or the transport system whuich logs and surveys individual usage. Eay just by donning a cycle mask and helmet/cap is just as effective as masking up.

cycling cyril