This Spring the Recyclery moved from our basement in Evanston, Illinois
to a storefront in Chicago. One of the first things we did during our storefront prep (almost done after 2 months) was put a rather long sign up in the window explaining who we were, giving some history and stressing that we wanted to be a part of the neighborhood. Since then we've met with several neighborhood organizations, including summer youth programming as well as (hopefully) an adult ESL program and a women's shelter in the neighborhood. Our reasoning for this was twofold: first, we were moving into a new community, into an above-ground storefront where we would no longer be a secret open to few folks outside the cycling community. We also recognized our potential effect on the already gentrifying neighborhood if we were perceived as an organization that existed primarily to serve white cycling culture(s). second, our overhead with the move is increasing about 1000%, from basically nothing to a significant (though still a song) bundle of rent, utilities, insurance, etc. So far, we remain a primarily volunteer-run organization, even among the majority of the collective body itself. Our reasoning follows that there is no better pool of people to draw a volunteer base from than our surrounding community. The bike people know about us and will come on their own. By reaching out to (and responding to the reach-outs of) local organizations, my hope is that The Recyclery will be better able to integrate itself into our new community. We are trying to take a more proactive role in determining our own place in the neighborhood, but also recognizing that there was a neighborhood here before we arrived--we don't need to reinvent the wheel or pull a volunteer base out of thin air when nobody even knows who we are (although the sign has helped TONS). It has been a tremendous help to us to just recognize that so much of what we need is already around.