Originally Posted by cyccommute

I know Mac Liman and she isn’t not a “ shallow, stoopid, self empower[ed]” person. She has spent her life working at nonprofits serving marginalized communities. The co-op she works at is as bare bones as you can get. We…as I am a long term volunteer there…fix and give away hundreds of bikes per year to people in need. The bikes are refurbished by volunteers and given to adults and children free of charge. We do have a retail side where the higher end donations are refurbished and sold to keep the doors open but even those bikes are generally underpriced for what they are.

We do get hundreds of bikes in donations per year and we have to throw out (recycle, actually), hundreds because they just aren’t safe to fix. The only way to make a modern Big Box store bike safe is to replace everything including the frame. We won’t give away a bike that is a danger to the rider and there is simply no way to make these kinds of bikes safe.

Finally, we also run an open shop where we help people keep their bikes running. We do not exclude anyone, provide used parts at reasonable prices (or for free if people can’t afford them), and will work on anything that rolls through the door. I’ve spent lots of hours working on these horrible bikes because that’s all the person has. I try to make them better and more durable than they came into the shop.