Yeah, there is this general impression that "it just needs a new chain and some tires," so we accept everything, even though we absolutely have no room for them. We've toyed with the idea of "stripper parties," to trick college kids into thinking working is "cool" and help deal with our heaps of bikes. The heaps of bikes out back:
- Make donors think they can dump awesome bikes off while we're closed,
so an unknown amount of our donations get stolen before we ever see them
- Make people think they can have anything out back for free, because
it's apparently leverage for haggling on irrelevant things like new cables
- Make people sneak around and strip things they want while we're
closed, and make an enormous mess for us to clean up in the process
And on and on. They're probably not worth the stress and disappointment and bitterness caused by them being around. I like to keep them so I can chop them up for bike racks, gates, furniture, etc. -- and yeah, we're not at a point where we can turn any donations away. Stripping bikes is currently the only worktrade we offer -- not that anyone takes it.
Also, rusty pink-and-purple roadmasters are excellent to have around when some sexist douche is, uh, being a sexist douche. "No, there's no mechanic around, it's only me the woman wearing a greasy apron and holding a headset press. Oh, you want to explain to me what a "fixie" is? Oh, it's a bike with no brakes, huh? Cool, buy that pink roadmaster over there for $800. It has no brakes." The possibilities are endless.
Andrea
Urban Bike Project Wilmington, DE wrote:
hey folks,
a moral or social dilemma: when your shop accepts donations of used bikes, but you're already filled to the gills with hundreds of bikes that may or may not ever get fixed up, how do you begin to turn away donations that are really not worth the space? or do you? just looking for some suggestions of how other shops have dealt with this issue. it gets to the point where we don't have the time, space, or man-power to strip down all those pieces-of-crap even to send to the scrap yard, but now that people know that we accept used bikes, it's hard to know how to say no.
thanks!
sarah
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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