ECHOWOOD

As I drove north through Mississippi away from New Orleans, I gazed longingly at the other side of the highway. All of the people driving on that side of the highway were going south, where I truly wished to go– back to Echowood. I shook off those feelings and pushed myself to go further. I was particularly excited about visiting Ida in Tennessee, a queer, circus-y commune that seemed right up my alley. I had been talking about it for months.

But, these things often come when you don’t expect them and prove elusive when you seek them out specifically. On a last-minute jam to find a Texas farm that would host me (I wanted to see at least one farm in each state I visited), I found Echowood Farm on IC.org. They said to come on down, and so I did– to Delhi, TX (that’s “Dell-high”), an hour south-east of Austin off the 304. Twenty-three acres tucked into the Texas hill country, two houses– the “big house” and the “little house,” two trailers, an acre garden, a greenhouse, a herd of free-range goats, a flock of free-range chickens, a craft room, an industrial kitchen, a pond, a workshop with all manner of tools, a detached TV room/office, three dogs, three cats, and varying amounts of people. A Gonzales, TX flag flies in the wind, with the provoking words “Come and Take It.”

I realized that Echowood had the materials and the space (physical and emotional) to allow each person to ‘do their own thing.’ While a rough start-time for the work day was set at nine, it was certainly not set in stone. No one would hint that you should get a move on, or enforce even what specific tasks you should do. The word “anarchist” has been thrown around here a few times, and I would say that’s a fairly accurate depiction. However, must we call everything that doesn’t require you to ‘punch in’ or answer to a boss (from the Dutch for “master”)?

When I arrived here initially on February 7th, there were ten people in all at the farm. Three were new guests, plus myself. One was a more seasoned guest. Two were considered core people, and had been at Echowood between 9 months and a year. And three were core, stable members who had financial stake in the land. I could see the difficulty that is faced by a community in finding appropriate members. Both parties must click, and both be in a position to oblige each other. Some visitors click, but have other plans for their lives. Some visitors would love to stay after the two-week trial period, but the current members don’t feel they click. A couple of the guests that were here when I arrived had to be informed that the Echowoodians didn’t think this was the place for them. In one case, this brought tears, and in another, threats. This is serious business, I suppose. Opening your home up to strangers can be a blessing, and can also lead to all kinds of interpersonal drama.

Apparently, I clicked. I had planned to stay at Echowood for one week, but stayed longer for various reasons. The van needed some work, and some of the folks here helped me out loads in getting it fixed: trying to fix the problem here, and then, finally, driving to the auto shop in Smithville, with my van driving behind, to get repairs done. I was accommodated, along with my cat Simon, in the living room of the little house. Truly above and beyond. I clicked in particular with one sweet Swiss man, on Valentine’s Day, no less. How cute is that?

My mom had hooked me up with a hotel room via the company she works for in New Orleans– my next stop. So, I had to leave Echowood and continue on my journey before I was ready, and check in to the room. However, my trip would bring me back eventually.

Portal, AZ: La Buena Vida Farm

La Buena Vida Farm in Portal, AZ is the home of husband and wife Jerry and Jennifer Racicot, along with their three young children. A woman named Eva also lives on the property in her Airstream and helps out around the farm. Jerry and Jennifer’s friend, Nicole, was also visiting at the time I was there, staying for a month in order to decide if she will also live permanently on the farm, taking her three children with her from Ashville, NC.

A community is what Jerry and Jennifer are trying to form. The population in Portal is 200 and very spread out, and the couple are aware that to make their vision for the farm work, they need more people. Forming an intentional community would allow them to diversify their economy.

The property is a couple of miles down a dirt road, just off highway 80. When I arrived, Jerry showed me around. They have two acres in cultivation. At this time of year, most of what is growing is in a 100-foot cold-frame hoop-house (like a greenhouse, but without any electric climate control— no heaters or fans). The warm moist hoop-house had that chocolately compost smell, and was green with lettuces, carrots, cabbage and kale. The cost of the cold-frame construction was $2200. Jerry said that you can purchase a kit to the tune of ten grand, but by purchasing the tools to bend the steel poles into arches himself, Jerry was able to cut costs significantly. He and a friend built it– he estimates it took 30 man-hours.

The family keeps a large store of food on hand– at least 2 months worth, Jerry said. This allows them to go into town (an hour’s drive) less frequently, and to be prepared in a situation where they may not be able to procure food easily. When I asked him if he thought the you-know-what would hit the fan, he said, “Well, I think the writing’s on the wall.”

But enough with the housing metaphors— I asked Jerry why he and Jennifer chose Arizona of all places to live when moving from L.A. 2 years ago. He said there were many reasons, but the first of which was that they wanted to be “far away from anything.” They had a worrisome feeling that America would soon be changing, and he wanted to be somewhere where they would be left alone. He also wanted to be within a three hour drive of an airport so he could still work as a fashion photographer. Continuing his work in photography did not work as he had planned, however. Jobs stopped coming once he was outside the hub of Los Angeles. Farming was also not in his scope of planning— instead, he and Jennifer had decided to start a small garden for their own use, and, suddenly they had neighbors calling and requesting to buy some of their produce. The community was hungry for fresh, local produce, and the Racicot’s realized this was the niche they were destined to fill.

Now, farming is their main occupation, along with animal husbandry. They have pigs, chickens, a horse, goats, sheep, and geese, although they plan to concentrate their efforts on just a couple of animals in the future. The horse is on its way to working a plow and pulling their produce to the tiny Portal town center 25 miles away, where the family runs a farm stand in the warm months. Jennifer and Jerry feel that, instead of farming as a conscious choice, this path was formed and decided for them by God. All of the forces pushing them in this direction have convinced them that this is where they belong, and this is what they belong doing.

As a photographer, Jerry was away from home 2 to 3 weeks each month. He barely got to see his children. Now, even though he is making far less money, he feels this lifestyle is much better for his family. Speaking of his children, Jerry exclaimed, “They won’t remember the things I bought for them or all the money I gave them. They don’t care. They play in the manure!” What they do care about, Jerry concludes, is quality time with their parents– a valuable interaction that living at the farm allows.

The family works hard, and they seem to have everything they could ever want in their nook of the world. They truly are living ‘la buena vida’.

the BICAS story

Tucson has its own bike recyclery, BICAS (Bicycle Inter-Community Action & Salvage). Nestled in a warehouse shared with other creative spaces (like a darkroom beckoning the public with an “open” sign), the front door is accessible in the back of the building, which creates a relatively tranquil courtyard away from the busy oil-run vehicular street. I walked inside with another Sleeping Frog volunteer, where Led Zeppelin blasted from the stereo, several people fiddled with their bicycling contraptions, and a few mechanics sat behind the counter or instructed the fiddlers. I spoke with one of the mechanics, Ash, about BICAS and how he came to be there.

front forks hanging at bicas

Ash has been volunteering, and then working, as a bike mechanic at BICAS for five years. BICAS has a plethora of “community tools” for anyone to use at a rate of $4 an hour, Ash said, but they also have the option of doing work-trade– using the tools in exchange for helping out in the shop. They also hold 8-week long Build-a-Bike workshops, where participants build an entire bicycle out of used and new frames and parts with the aid of an instructor. The cost of the workshop is $80— quite a steal when you consider the learning involved and the fact that you end with a bicycle that has been essentially customized by you! A used bike runs around 80 bucks minimum anyways. Not only that, but when your bike is completed, you have $40 in BICAS credit to repair it or buy parts. The workshop is also eligible for work-trade.

more of the awesome, colorful array of forks

I asked Ash about the economic viability of BICAS— do they make enough money to survive easily as an organization? The Bike Church in Santa Cruz was doing quite well. How did the Tucson version fare? They’re always trying to figure out more ways of funding the operation, Ash said, and it is tough to keep it going and pay the bills every month. But, they have been going since 1989! Luckily, this bicycle recyclery seems to be sustainable enough to keep truckin’— er, I mean, bikin’. Unlike the Bike Church, they do rely on some grants, and also hold an art auction every November/December. Local artists donate bicycle-inspired art, and, auctioned off, the art raises significant funds.

hanging frames

You’ll notice from the first image that BICAS holds Women’s and Trans workshop hours. “What’s that all about?,” I asked. “This tends to be a male space,” Ash explained, even though the staff is mostly gender-balanced. The purpose of the feminine-focused hours is to encourage women and womanly folk to come in, and to create a safe and unintimidating space for them to work. The goal of BICAS according to Ash— and the hope for the future of our species it brings— is to simply get people on bicycles. “It’s healthy, and cars are terrible,” said Ash.

bike anatomy and a free box!

But BICAS is more than just that, as awesome as that goal is. Initially, BICAS was called Bootstraps to Share, and was an organization geared to general homeless outreach and aid. Although they came to focus upon the bicycle transportation aspect of the mission, it retains a sort of community-center purpose and feel. They tend to have free snacks and drinks available, a bathroom accessible to anyone who wants to come in, a free box, and reusable cups and bowls for anyone to use. Ash said that parents will sometimes drop their kids off after school, and the kids haven’t had anything to eat since lunch. BICAS provides a place for them to have a snack and to just hang out. Travelers also will come through and use BICAS as a place to network and meet up.

This space is obviously a valuable one in the Tucson landscape, and I hope that it keeps going!

www.bicas.org

Slab City, CA

I rang in the new year in Slab City, an unincorporated territory just outside of Niland, CA. Slab city lies between the Salton Sea and the Chocolate mountains. Desert brush speckles the sandy soil. Abandoned military-base sewage-treatment facilities are painted with colorful graffiti.

Annual around the new year, people gather near the Slabs to be together, play, make music, and generally cavort. The folks are Spaz (spaz.org) people mostly, and SF Bay Area people, mostly. Strange on my trip to re-encounter Oakland-ness one last time before finally leaving California.

The official Spaz bus was parked next to one large empty concrete sewage container, which was used as a projection wall. Synthesized music played throughout new year’s eve and well into the morning. I woke at 7 a.m. to some particularly hyper beats, and could not fall back alseep. I got up in a tired but wired haze, walked into the desert, and sunbathed and stretched.

The landscape mixed with the music and projected moving geometric shapes was enough to make one trip out even without any mind-altering substances.

A trampoline was set up near the Spaz bus and the dance floor. Golf clubs and balls were available to set off into the distance, and a couple of recurve bows and a pile of arrows was set up with a target. People spray painted on the various concrete structures, hung out, partied, cooked in the outdoor Spaz kitchen.

Asa and Dickie from Berkeley cooked up a rooster they had slaughtered (and Asa had raised), and made a lovely rooster soup and stir-fry. For some reason, the desert lessened my appetite. The rooster meal was about the only full meal I ate there. The rooster head and entrails were buried under the dance floor with various plant material and herbs.

The moon shone intensely both nights I was there. The night of the 1st, a bright halo encircled it. A flashlight was not even needed to traverse the nighttime terrain.

So, here’s to Semi-Permanent Autonomous Zones.

Monsanto Writ Large

Below you will find a pasted Mother Earth News article on Monsanto, followed by comments (including my own rant at the bottom):

How Bad Is Monsanto?
12/17/2009 10:53:23 AM
By Barbara Pleasant
Tags: Monsanto, Barbara Pleasant
Recently I spent several evenings reading The Year of the Flood, the newest novel by award-winning Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. In this visionary fiction story of societal and environmental breakdown caused by gene splicing free-for-alls run by the Corporations, the world is populated by strange animals including wild pigs with superior intelligence, and sheep with human hair. Don’t ask where the meat in the burgers comes from, and watch your back when you’re outside a Corporate compound. An extremist cult, God’s Gardeners, welcomes outcasts as long as they are willing to go along with the religion that goes with growing your own food. It’s a cool religion that honors folks like Saint Euell (Gibbons) for his wisdom of useful wild plants

Considering my recent immersion in Atwood’s nightmarish post-gene-stacking world, I had to read the recent investigative report on Monsanto’s growing list of misdeeds (by award-winning Associated Press writer Christopher Leonard) three times before it sunk in. It’s really happening. In 2006 Monsanto bought Delta and Pineland, a leading producer of cotton seed, so that it now controls a huge share of the cotton seed market. Monsanto’s genes are in about 95 percent of commercial soybeans and 80 percent of commercial corn, and people like the attorney generals of Iowa and Texas are concerned that Monsanto’s business practices violate federal antitrust laws that protect free competition. When it comes to licensing agreements, Monsanto is reportedly a big time bully.

Either or both accusations may prove to be true, and while I do care about these things, I also feel like I’m watching dangerous games being played by the mean kids at the other end of the playground. I can mind my own business, grow most of my own food using traditionally-bred organic seeds, and what Monsanto or Dow or Sygenta do shouldn’t be my problem.

But it is my problem. Monsanto is constantly adding new food plants to its ensemble of “Roundup Ready” varieties that resist herbicide damage, and Dow has soybeans that survive being sprayed with 2-4D. That’s my planet, my water we’re talking about. There is so much Bt corn pollen out there that no garden is safe from it, and rotting residue from Bt plants is messing with the life cycles of stream-dwelling insects. With Monsanto and other companies polluting the world with genetically modified pollen and plants, Bayer killing off honeybees with imidicloprid, and Dow turning horse manure into killer compost, maybe we should worry about big Corporations. A lot.

But what really makes me mad is the way Monsanto is trying to hijack the concept of sustainability. According to the M Company video (which depicts happy, remarkably clean third world farmers), sustainability is about three things: Increased production to meet everyone’s needs, thus improving the lives of everyone; more effective use of natural resources, and improving the quality of life for farmers and their families. It does not mention all the hidden costs of reliance on pesticides, nor does it acknowledge the steady increases in seed prices, with a very small number of companies setting those prices, cartel style. This is where federal antitrust laws come into play, at least theoretically.

And here I was thinking that sustainable agriculture was about using Nature’s patterns and human intelligence and resourcefulness to create systems that run themselves with minimal outside inputs, while creating strong local food economies and a cleaner, more honest food supply. At least that’s how we play at my end of the playground.

As for Atwood’s book, I won’t tell you how it ends, but it will make you feel good about knowing how to grow and store your own food. Maybe it will help you think more clearly about where genetic engineering is headed, and help you make better guesses as to how long we are likely to survive. At this point, I’m betting on the pigs.

Comments:

Diana 12/20/2009 7:32:07 AM

I don’t know if anyone here has mentioned it or seen it, but “The Future of Food” focuses on all the things Monsanto is doing. I watched it for free on Hulu.com.

taggat 12/20/2009 7:04:21 AM

If everyone would share this movie called “Food, Inc.”, I think non-believers would quickly start to think about getting there lazy bum off the couch and start to do something about this big brother big business co-op that is spoon feeding us. Plant a garden, hobby farm, do something to rely less on this corrupt partnership.

Allison Day Bees Action Network 12/19/2009 7:04:22 AM

As the founder of Bees Action Network I read Barbara’s comments about Monsanto with a growing sense of hope. Hope because it is very heartening to know that people the world over are incredibly concerned about the insidious penetration of GM companies into the very fabric of our existence.

At Bees Action Network we believe that bees are suffering chemical overload – (in addition to many people)- and we need to connect with concerned members of the public to fight this global threat on a global scale. CODEX Alimentarius is a series of guidelines which the EU is proposing to adopt EU wide. Despite being ‘reassured’ by our Prime Minister that there is absolutely nothing to worry about – CODEX, amongst other things will give the green light to the planting of GM Crops. This is a nightmarish scenario. We know that GM is in Britain already in animal feed, food supplements and plant seeds – we also understand like Barbara that it poses an enormous threat to human, animal and insect health.

Please see our website www.beesactionnetwork.org for information. Good news is the Alliance for Natural Health in Britain has just linked up with the American Association for Health Freedom to become the Alliance for Natural Health International – on their website www.anhcampaign you can support their fight to ban GM.

Merry Christmas to you all and a hopeful New Year!

Allen 12/19/2009 12:48:57 AM

It seems to me that genetically engineering plants is not so bad, but when it comes to making them resistant to chemicals, well that i$ wrong for these corporation$ and we know what their reasoning i$$$$$.

Amanda 12/18/2009 10:41:37 PM

t.brandt,

There is a HUGE difference between hybrids and gene splicing.
Not only are genetically modified foods unstable (having been shown to change over time, which makes them unpredictable, and useless in many occasions), proven to cause severe damage to animals when consumed (organs, stomach lining, etc) but they are even REFUSED by animals when they are given a choice between natural, and GMO foods.

ccm989 12/18/2009 1:24:11 PM

Monsanto is a really scary business. Sure, I like hybirds too — I have a Golden Comet chicken that’s great — she is non-flighty, she lays her eggs like clockwork and she is as sweet as can be. But she is not resistant to chemicals, herbicides, pesticides, etc. I really wouldn’t want to eat her eggs if she was! Fight back — Grow organic food, eat organic food, etc. And if Monsanto is scaring you too, you can sign the petition from Organic Consumer Association — http://www.organicconsumers.org/
Monsanto gives me the creeps. We need a list of every commercial product that Monsanto has contributed too so we can avoid buying them as well.

Michael 12/18/2009 10:30:31 AM

“just an extension of the practice of selective mating to obtain the best possible offspring”?

You have to be kidding!

Perhaps if they mated in a test tube and were stripped down to their individual biological components?

How does splicing a gene from an insect get “selectively bread” into a plant?

The reality of what they are doing is a far cry from what they say they are doing!

So, what PR division of Monsanto do YOU work for?

t. brandt 12/17/2009 3:00:56 PM

While I won’t make any excuses for the ethics of “big business,” I will defend the use of genetically engineered food production. That’s really just an extension of the practice of selective mating to obtain the best possible offspring, started when the first cavemen mated only the most docile wolf pups to eventually wind up with domesticated dogs. We can now select genes across species lines, but it’s still the same principle.
Any change to the gene frequency of a population will be met with reciprocal adaptations in the other species affected in the web.We can’t predict those results, but an equilibrium will be achieved.
But we have the dilemma of feeding a growing population: we have painted ourselves into the corner by supporting population increases with increased farm yield thru technology. To stop now would force a sudden lowering of the carrying capacity and a subsequent die-off of population. Any volunteers?

Darci’s Rant 12/20/2009

To the suspected Monsanto PR rep, t brandt, do you not see that there is a tremendous die-off of species at this very moment, and will surely include us soon if we do not stop destroying what sustains us? 

And it’s not just Monsanto. As Allen implied, there is an ethics of capitalism going on here that is clouding any other system of ethics. ‘Everyone for themselves’ is not working.

We must unify against all rapings of nature and human labor, and not segregate causes. There must be a million organizations in the world fighting for the same cause in one little way, like the Bees Action Network mentioned above.

The people in power rely on our isolation from each other. If we compartmentalize the problem and constantly compete for media attention and funding, there will never be unity.

Now is the time to prepare for needed unified action. It starts with economy. Contrary to popular belief, ‘economy’ is not a massive force hovering above us, full of indecipherable formulas, theories, and figures. Economy is any creation or exchange. Economy is me writing this message (creating/exchanging information). Economy is baking a cake and sharing with a friend. Economy is changing your oil.

To regain control of the economy, and therefore our time, labor, relationships, community, space, and materiality, everyone must learn how to make or fix something, anything. Once we regain craftsmanship and ownership of our own work, we can begin to exchange it amongst ourselves. Systems of taxation, wage labor, schooling, enforcement of laws and codes, and real estate serve to constantly nickel and dime us, and we see next to no benefit.

For example, the recent rise in tobacco taxes. Rolling tobacco, specifically, doubled in price here in California, from $6/pack to $12/pack for American Spirit (also see the ban on Kretek clove cigarettes). Generally, no one will argue with a tax on tobacco, since we have agreed as a culture that smoking the plant is ‘bad,’ and all assume that the tax is going to support public health programs to reduce the prevalence of habitual smoking and health care for those who smoke. Do you see any increase in any social services since the tax increase? There is none. With all that we pay into our government, what do we receive in return? Who knows where that money goes?

It may not seem so, but that money is a translation of our time and energy– essentially our life. Portions of our lives are being sucked away from us to support the money-making schemes of those in power.

Our only hope is to learn how to subsist within our own communities, and form our own connections to food, water, and energy. It will take resourcefullness, skill, and frugality. No more ‘going shopping’ for recreation. Instead ‘go shopping’ for some wild edible plants, or raw  materials for crafting goods. Same pleasure, more pride, and no money or plastic involved.

There is so much hype over Decemeber 2012 as a date. To me, it doesn’t particularly matter wether or not the hype is ’true.’ Rather, it will be whatever we make it. Why don’t we harness the hype and mark the date for ourselves? —when all who have little to no faith in the above corrupt systems stop investing in them and set their alternative system in motion.

L.A. FarmLab: Art Meets Ecology

FarmLab is a creative garden space and workshop for the sustainability-inclined. In front of the warehouse space is a corn field project entitled “Not A Corn Field.” The title, and perhaps the project itself, is derived from the traditional slang for the swath of land next to the train tracks– The Corn Field. You turn around to see large water-catchment barrels with images of birds and the molecular symbol for water. Old beaters sit outside the warehouse, collecting rust, but also blooming flowers.

The warehouse itself is a mish-mosh of offices, artist spaces and meeting places. In the back, you can find a garden complete with a hydroponic setup for strawberries, waterfalls, couches, and chicken trailers.

Each Friday, they hold a salon– the Metabolic Studio Public Salon, to be exact– and invite a guest speaker to lecture as the participants munch on a light lunch provided. At the last salon, the guest speaker was Nance Klehm, a composter-extraordinaire. The salon was entitled, “Everything Comes Into This World Hungry.” Klehm’s talk vacillated between poetic descriptions of our place in the world of soil, powerpoint videos of composting-in-action, and anecdotes describing her work in land remediation.

One video showed several interns helping to squash some delicata squash destined for the compost. There were too many to chop, so they all decided to run them over with a car (which I thought was ‘so L.A.’).

An image of the remediation project in Wendover, UT showed a couple participants dousing urine onto carbonaceous material. Nance said that in just 8 months, this pee plus carbon concoction became soil.

Klehm’s “Humble Pile” project was also quite interesting. She invited people to poop in buckets– adding sawdust along the way– in order to contribute to human manure composting. She received 1500 gallons of this mixture, collecting it in large, lidded bins. The raw material (what Klehm called “donations”) was dumped into a composting container made with tarps and cinder blocks.

An image of this “humble pile” revealed a wide array of colors, one of which Nance called ochre as she commented on this diverse excremental palette. “What are people eating?!,” she exclaimed.

Here’s one last Nance Klehm tidbit: when urine evaporates, it leaves saltpeter, a main ingredient in gunpowder. You can make gunpowder with pee!

At the end of her lecture, Nance unveiled a compost toilet (just for pee) that the interns had built, and asked all of the guests to make a ‘donation’ to the potty.

The food provided at the Salon was made by the interns. They made the bread by hand, topped it with two different spreads, and served it with a yummy coconut curry soup. Many elements of the meal came right from the garden outside. I spoke with an intern, Keondra, as she helped spread the bread. Keondra been working with FarmLab for 2 and a half months and was assigned the internship through a youth career program. “Everything here is new to me,” she said, “the goats, the chickens…[learning] different ways to grow stuff for the urban environment.” Keondra feels that FarmLab gives her hope, because they are “thinking of future survival– of stuff going wrong” and the experiments conducted there can help with that future.

Another FarmLab participant, Jaime Lopez Wolters, began his work with the organization in 2005, when Not A Corn Field was just getting started. Jaime worked with corn farmers in Guatemala prior to coming to L.A., and used this past experience to manage the hand-sown acre of Not Cornfield. He now aids FarmLab in their various current projects, including an aquaponic strawberry field at the Los Angeles V.A. in the shape of an American flag.

I asked Jaime, “Why art plus ecology? What do these two things have to do with each other?”
“Under the guise of art,” he said, “you can get a lot more done.”

People are much more willing to allow an art installation, which may be considered temporary (and will be pleasing to the eye), than, say, a permanent garden. Hence the name “Metabolic Studio,” Jaime said, “It’s always changing.”

 

Santa Cruz Bike Church

The borrowed bicycle I was using in Santa Cruz needed some work, so I took it on down to the Bike Church in Downtown, a non-profit bicycle DIY repair shop and recyclery.

Anyone can come to the Bike Church and learn how to repair their contraption, with a requested contribution of $5/hour for the use of the bike stands and tools. Replacement parts are super-dee-duper cheap, and they even have ready-to-ride recycled bikes for sale also on the cheap. Memberships are also available for $20/month, $50/year, or $100/life. They hold biweekly meetings, which are open to the public, and operate via consensus of the volunteers.

The Bike Church is located in a lovely little enclave right next to SubRosa, an anarchist cafe, and the Computer Kitchen, a non-profit web development organization (a non-profit to serve non-profits). Arriving there Saturday afternoon, it was a lively place, with folks working together to solve bike issues (I saw a group of four people gathered around one person’s bike, discussing what might be the best way to fix it). Free cupcakes, hard-boiled eggs, and other snacks were sitting on the counter for anyone to take, and the man behind the counter, Tom, offered me the goodies a couple times. He said that he he works for a place where they have leftover food sometimes and he brings it on down.

Tom has been working with the Bike Church for 5-6 months as a volunteer. He expressed satisfaction that the Church is not around to “make a buck, but to help people,” and described the organization as “loose, trusting, and old-school.” Tom directed me to A.J., a volunteer mechanic. A.J., a.k.a. Arthur Lee Jones the 4th, has worked with the Bike Church for 1.5 years. He said that the Church is all-volunteer run, but that the mechanics can participate in a “clerkship” above and beyond their 3 shifts a week, which is paid $15/hr. The c lerkships involve accounting and outreach duties, among other clerical and side work for the Church.

I was surprised to learn how well they were doing economically as an organization. They have no problem paying their rent in the primo downtown location, and are even saving up money to purchase the space. Even more surprising is that they survive on donations and sales only, not at all on grants. In the world of non-profits, that’s practically unheard-of.

When asked the golden ‘hope question:’ What about the Bike Church gives you hope for the future?, A.J. said that he though they were making it possible for people to take control of their own transportation– people who, without the Bike Church, bicycling would not be possible. He said that a large proportion of their customers are ‘down on their luck.’ Their low-cost help teaches and empowers people to be able to take the maintenance of their bike into their own hands. I would interject here that this hands-on work may also be therapeutic to the folks coming in, giving them a sense of pride in their capabilities and ownership of their work.

The BC encourage utilitarian usage of bikes through the sale of new and used baskets, lights, and saddle-bags.He likes to think that the BC is reducing car traffic in Santa Cruz, but fears that most of the traffic is tourist-driven, who do not tend to visit the BC or bike in Santa Cruz at all. (Hey, A.J., maybe y’all could start a bike rental service?).