We allow of-age volunteers to drink one night a week at the shop and at meetings. No illegal drugs/substances are allowed as UBP would take the fall from any negative publicity/police action that could arise.
Macho is right, you can't always please everyone but I don't think you're out of line in asking people to smoke on their own time, away from the shop.
Bikebike was so inspiring. After visiting Bike Kitchen SF, BiciCentro SB and Bike Church SC we have great examples for making our shop work better. Thanks to everyone who made our trip great,
Brian (Sarah and David)
On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 5:24 PM, Macho Philipovich macho@resist.ca wrote:
These are good points, but I just want to also mention that it's impossible to make yourself completely accessible to the entire community. Some decisions about bike shops that will make many women more comfortable in the space, for example, will make some dudely dudes less comfortable. Some decisions that will make middle class people feel more comfortable, will alienate working class people. And there are a hundred more ways this can be broken down...
I'm not trying to detract from what Sam is saying at all, I think people need to be thinking about whether their bike project appeals only to an in-crowd, and whether that's what they really want. There are also, of course, a lot of win-win choices bike projects can make in appealing to different groups of people, and we need to be wracking our brains to come up with more of these, but sometimes, peoples' interests are to some degree irreconcilable, and though we need to be aware, as socially conscious people, of who we might be alienating through some of our actions, it's not always the worst thing to be doing so.
macho
Sam Santos wrote:
You can't expect new members to be OK with illegal substances. What if a potential new member is a bike riding police officer? What if potential new members want to bring their whole family (A family that smokes together, rides together?). ;-)
While you, yourself, don't have any issues with it, you have to ask yourself if this potentially off-putting behavior will affect the chances of success for your collective. If you want your entire community (not just the counterculture) to embrace your efforts it might be wise to rethink open drinking/smoking at meetings.
After all, there is plenty of time for engaging in those activities outside of the collective. If you know what I mean... and I think you do.
--sam Volunteer, The Bike Project
On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 11:51 AM, maintenence collective < bikefarm@gmail.com mailto:bikefarm@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey from Bike Farm in PDX, We recently had our first meeting back from Bike!bike! and it was incredibly successful. At meetings we usually allow beer-drinking, and its not a huge deal, though has been in the past. This last meeting I noticed someone passing around a pipe. Though that doesn't bother me as an individual, it was slightly distracting and could be a little off-putting to new volunteers (we had 4 newbies at the meeting). What do other shops have as policies surrounding illegal substances..... what about legal substances? Also, we're doing some winter programming and came up with a "winter weatherization class". Does anyone have a ciriculum for this sort of thing.. (ie. best types of tires in the rain, fenders, lights, how to be safe in crappy weather etc). Any other one-to two day classes would be helpful.... and does anyone know of a particular company who might donate, like 30 fenders to us? thanks for all your help!, RaRa
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