- TheThinkTank - lists.bikecollectives.org

Tax implications of paying people
by Urban Bike Project Wilmington, DE 06 May '09

06 May '09

Hello! Thanks to everyone who replied to the fork storage question, it was really helpful to see photographs. Now for another issue. We may get funding/reimbursement for rehabbing bikes, then distributing them in a free bike program. There is currently not enough time or space in the shop to do this during regular shop hours. What we thought to do was pay mechanics an hourly or per bike stipend to come in when we're closed and work on the free bikes. What sort of things do we have to keep track of/worry about in regards to the money. There could be any number of people working on the bikes and I would hate to, tax-wise, consider each of them an employee, especially when the per year total would probably be a few hundred dollars at most. Is it enough to keep track of who we paid and where the money went and put the onus on our mechanics to report it on their personal tax return? Thanks! Brian Urban Bike Project of Wilmington -a 501(c)3 non-profit bike shop- 1908 N. Market Street (entrance is in the parking lot behind the building) Wilmington, DE 19802 Hours: Thursday 6:30-9:00 Saturday 1:00-4:00 Visit us online at http://urbanbikeproject.org

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Today's Bike Talk!
by bike talk 02 May '09

02 May '09

With Todd "wildman" Lyons, Bobby Carter, "flatland" rider, and Michelle Mowery, Senior Project Coordinator in the Project Grants, Bikeways and Enhancement Division of the *Los Angeles* Department of Transportation. PLUS news on the LA City Council Meeting yesterday on bikes, specifically the hummer incident and bike funding in LA. Chickenleather intends to provide audio from the meeting. Stephen Box' blog is here: http://soapboxla.blogspot.com/ Also: upcoming rides and events, like the AIDS/Lifecycle benefit at Bike oven next Saturday. -- please let me know if you want to be taken off this list. Hear Bike Talk! live on www.killradio.org, 10am-noon Saturdays. Hear the podcast at kpfk.org: http://www.kpfk.org/programs/170-bike-talk.html See what's new with us at www.biketalk.us

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the time: 10am
by bike talk 01 May '09

01 May '09

forgot the time of the meeting: 10am. also, http://tinyurl.com/dm2jtz for description -- please let me know if you want to be taken off this list. Hear Bike Talk! live on www.killradio.org, 10am-noon Saturdays. Hear the podcast at kpfk.org: http://www.kpfk.org/programs/170-bike-talk.html See what's new with us at www.biketalk.us

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Cycling tent
by Amber Barnes 01 May '09

01 May '09

Saw this while perusing for a solo tent and thought some of ya'll might find it interesting too. It's a bike touring tent that actually uses your frame and wheels in lieu of tent poles. http://www.rei.com/product/732405

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Support Cyclists at Van Nuys Meeting today
by bike talk 01 May '09

01 May '09

Today, Cyclists needed at the City Council meeting to protest the way the LAPD treats cyclists on the streets and the LAPDs failure to support cyclists safety on our streets. 6262 VAN NUYS BOULEVARD (3 blocks north of the Orange Line) LA, CA 91401 Contact info for this ride: Stephen Box - 323.962.6540 Bike Talk Tomorrow: "wildman" Todd Lyons, Flatlander Bobby Carter, Michelle Mowery, Senior Project Coordinator in the Project Grants, Bikeways and Enhancement Division of the *Los Angeles* Department of Transportation, and you. -- please let me know if you want to be taken off this list. Hear Bike Talk! live on www.killradio.org, 10am-noon Saturdays. Hear the podcast at kpfk.org: http://www.kpfk.org/programs/170-bike-talk.html See what's new with us at www.biketalk.us

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Insurance
by 1304bikes 01 May '09

01 May '09

Hi all, we here at 1304bikes in Raleigh are getting ready to possibly move out from the building of our fiscal sponsor. We have applied for our own 501(c)(3) status, and are going to start shopping around for insurance. The thing is, we have no idea what to look for in coverage, and what is an acceptable price range. If anyone would be willing to share how much they pay a year and what it covers, we would greatly appreciate it. We are incorporated as a non-profit, and all our bikes are either given away to children, earned through our Adult EAB program, or given out through other established non-profits. We do not sell anything, and don't have a business license, so we may not need any sort of business insurance if such a things exists. Thanks for the help! for 1304bikes, -Doug -- 1304bikes 2419 Mayview Rd. Raleigh, NC 1304bikes.org

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Insurance
by JGammell＠holmesmurphy.com 29 Apr '09

29 Apr '09

Greetings, Doug & Others - I sit on the board of the Des Moines Bicycle Collective, and by day I am an insurance broker focusing on bicycle retailers & related business. I'll share my thoughts to the group, and please feel free to comment. Anyone that hangs a shingle in business exposes themselves to liability in varying degrees, from simple slip & falls on premises, to more complex & costly products liability exposures. Even as a non-profit that doesn't necessarily accept payment for a manufacture a product , there is a payment of sorts in the form of volunteerism for product. Ultimately, an organization that puts a product in the hands of the public bears some product liability. Here in DSM, we sell/give away a number of older & vintage bikes, and the manufacturers of these bikes have long since ceased to exist. That makes your local co-op the last stop in who's responsible for that bike if someone is injured. As with any business endeavor, I would recommend purchasing insurance to cover this exposure. Insurance pricing from co-op to co-op can fluctuate based on any number of variables: square footage, type & age of building you're in, city, state, limits of coverage, etc. Directly comparing pricing can be a little misleading. Most co-ops would fall into a range of 800-1300 for Property & Liability coverage. More importantly, though, is that you're confident that the policy you choose has the coverage you need (coverage for other people's property, personal effects, property off premises, etc.) and is competitively priced for your location/city/state. The only way to do so is to get quotes from multiple carriers. You're not only protecting the co-op as a sustainable entity, but the board members and volunteers. I hope you find the information helpful. Don't hesitate to respond with questions. Regards - Jed Gammell jed gammell, cic account executive & bicycle program director - \o/ holmes murphy & associates p) 515.223.6853 f) 515.221.7155 "it is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. the future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task." - robert kennedy >From: "1304bikes" <1304bikes(a)gmail.com> >To: "The Think Tank" <thethinktank(a)bikecollectives.org> >Date: April 29, 2009 08:01:03 AM CDT >Subject: [TheThinkTank] Insurance > >Hi all, we here at 1304bikes in Raleigh are getting ready to possibly move >out from the building of our fiscal sponsor. We have applied for our own >501(c)(3) status, and are going to start shopping around for insurance. The >thing is, we have no idea what to look for in coverage, and what is an >acceptable price range. If anyone would be willing to share how much they >pay a year and what it covers, we would greatly appreciate it. > >We are incorporated as a non-profit, and all our bikes are either given away >to children, earned through our Adult EAB program, or given out through >other established non-profits. We do not sell anything, and don't have a >business license, so we may not need any sort of business insurance if such >a things exists. > >Thanks for the help! > >for 1304bikes, >-Doug > >-- >1304bikes >2419 Mayview Rd. >Raleigh, NC >1304bikes.org >

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Storing Bicycle Forks
by Urban Bike Project Wilmington, DE 29 Apr '09

29 Apr '09

Who's got a good way of keeping forks organized and accessible? We've been hanging them on water pipes, but most people cannot reach and its hard to tell what size they are looking up from the ground. Thanks, Brian Urban Bike Project of Wilmington -a 501(c)3 non-profit bike shop- 1908 N. Market Street (entrance is in the parking lot behind the building) Wilmington, DE 19802 Hours: Thursday 6:30-9:00 Saturday 1:00-4:00 Visit us online at http://urbanbikeproject.org

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Re: [TheThinkTank] How to welcome Hispanic women if LGBTQ issues are culturally taboo?
by Mario Bruzzone 28 Apr '09

28 Apr '09

I think Krista's on the right track. One of the tenets of community organizing and activism--and I believe strongly that everyone in the community bike shop movement is engendering social change--is that you can't address every injustice in a community at one time. You pick your first battle, learn from it, and apply the lessons from the struggle to the next battle. That said, shops ought to proscribe behaviors, not attitudes. Our proscribed behaviors are shaped by our politics, obviously, but our reach and ability to foment substantive change in our community cannot be limited to the narrow group of us who both share a common ethos and worldview *and* feel empowered enough to act. This applies even at the most basic level of most of our shops as a change in the economics of transportation; and moreso for shops whose mission, stated or otherwise, reaches broader. In a practical sense, it means that you do outreach to both the gender-disempowered community and the Latino community at once--but not as if they are the same community. LGBTQQI folks in our shops are not allowed to condescend to non-English speakers or persons of color, nor to make them feel unwelcome; Latinos in our shops are not allowed to make homophobic statements nor to practice other sexist or discursively violent behaviors. Hell, LGBTQQI folks are not allowed to make homophobic statements, and Latinos are not allowed to condescend to others based on English-speaking ability, color, or national origin. (Both happen.) Part of having a safe space is making it safe for people who do not share our politics to be *exposed* to our politics, so long as they do not through action or attitude create atmospheres that reinforce the systems of privilege that our shops are, at current, actively working to oppose. Within the situation that Josh described briefly before, if you have a core group working on a specific space-safe night for the gender-disempowered, *and* the shop or this group feels that the night is under-utilized by Latino women, that group needs to work hard to make their night accessible to the Latino community without changing the underlying value that drives the space on that night: You make flyers in Spanish that speak to Latino women in your community; you have Spanish-speaking mechanics *every* week; your website has information in Spanish; you have sensitivity to differential gender dynamics in the Latino communities that you want to link up with. You repeatedly encourage and invite your repeat patrons to become involved in operating the shop. You do *not* make any certain groups of women or trans folk feel unwelcome on the night that is there to combat gendered power-knowledge. People of any and every ethnicity will come to your shop and never come back because you don't match the conception they had of you in their heads, and that is ok. Finally, it is imperative that when incidents do occur--and they will--that the people in the shop be able to explain, in non-accusatory and non-violent methods of communication, why certain actions aren't acceptable at the shop. Not just that they aren't, but *why*--even people who practice discursive violence are adults, and it does little good to lecture or harangue or condescend. I feel strongly that as long as people are willing to abide by shop rules, they are welcome in the shop. Again, it's not attitudes or politics that we proscribe, not people, but behaviors. Mario Bruzzone San Francisco

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How to welcome Hispanic women if LGBTQ issues are culturally taboo?
by veganboyjosh＠gmail.com 27 Apr '09

27 Apr '09

Howdy folks, Community Cycles has a team of very motivated people working to get a women and trans bike night started here in Boulder. We're ironing out the last logistical issues, and have hit upon another potentially major one. We've heard from a volunteer who's hispanic herself, and deeply connected with a lot of our lower income hispanic residents that homosexuality and transgenderedness is pretty taboo in Latino culture/Catholocism. (Of course, this is a broad statement, and not intended by me or by her to implicate every Catholic person, or all those of Hispanic descent in some sort of homophobic conspiracy.) I'm wondering how those of you with a night or time set aside for women and/or trans people have overcome the taboo of queer folk and Latino "conservatism" in this regard? Any resources you can point us towards? Advertising for the night itself will definitely include both "women" and "trans" in the language, so how to provide or present a welcoming environment if someone is uncomfortable or even against something like homosexuality? I'm confident that we can handle the in-shop issues of innapropriate comments, awkwardness, etc. I'm more interested in hearing about the initial outreach steps. Any input is highly welcome. Thanks! josh.

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