A Way to Get to Work

werock.tv

Editorial illustration of Marcus Fetch beside a bicycle in a repair shop.

Marcus Fetch saw a bundle of used bicycles for sale on Craigslist and thought of some men he knew at Birmingham’s Brother Bryan Mission. They needed a way to get around. He got in touch with them and started a small weekend bike project. In 2013, Redemptive Cycles opened as a nonprofit bicycle shop in downtown Birmingham.

Walk in and you’ll find much of what you’d expect from a bike shop. You can buy a bike or bring yours in for a repair. There’s also a public workstation where you can work on your own bicycle, and the shop offers free monthly mechanics classes. Money from sales and repairs helps keep those services going.

Through its Earn-A-Bike program, adults who lack dependable transportation can volunteer to earn a bicycle. The shop includes a helmet, a lock, and lights. I like that somebody thought about the lock. Getting to work is one thing. Having a bike waiting for you when your shift ends is part of getting home.

It’s easy to talk about a job as if the whole thing begins when you clock in. There’s a trip before that. You have to make it on the mornings when a friend can’t give you a ride, and you have to get home on the nights when your shift runs late. A dependable bicycle can make those trips possible for someone who lives close enough to ride.

Fetch already knew people who could use those bikes when he saw the ad. That’s the part of the story I keep thinking about. Plenty of people could have scrolled past the listing. He saw something useful because he’d spent time with the people who needed it. A weekend project grew into a place where someone can put in a few hours of service, take home a bike, and have a way to get to work on Monday.