Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

Instructions oh, my god. You want to start a bike collective. You poor thing. You have these fiizzy visions of eager children gathering around you, awed by your masterful use of the truing stand and so happy about the awesome BMX bike that you're about to give them? give them?in perfect working order. You imagine streets clogged v/ith bikes generated by your energetic crew, radical bike posses going for midnight rides, more respect for bikes on the road, and hundreds of newly empowered bike riders who have learned how to completely overhaul their bikes from your noble organization, bypassing the bike shops entirely. I'm sure you're smart enough to realize that all of these hopes are impossibly exaggerated. I should also point out that some or aU of them are at least partly in reach, however, and being part of a functioning, effective bike collective can be very satisfying. So, to start. You already apparently have at least one dedicated and selfless volunteer?^yourself?^but you would be wise to recruit more if you haven't already. At least one of these should have some idea of what they're doing when it comes to bike repair, 92 and should begin teaching some skiUs to those members who lack them. Even basic

lessons in patching and changing inner tubes are a good start?you don't have to start out overhauling hubs. People will obviously learn things as they go along, but it will be demoralizing to you and perplexing for your first customer if you get most of the way through fixing the bike and then get stuck when confronted with a loose bottom bracket. When repairing for the public, there should always be at least one person around who can take care of a particular problem, so they can take over when necessary.

You should also figure out what the goals of your organization are: this should seem fairly obvious, but you'll want to know if your focus is repairing bikes, distributing them (and to whom?), teaching bike repair, starting and maintaining a yellow bike program (distinctive bikes scattered for public use around the city), activism, something else, or some combination of the above. Even crafting a mission statement, hokey as it sounds, can help clarify your ideas. Not everything you decide on has to be attempted immediately?there's nothing wrong with starting small?but having larger visions can also push you to branch out once you've started to get the hang of things, instead of continuing just to fix bikes for the six kids who live on your street.

Choose a name. It can be as expHcitly political or as excruciatingly unthreatening (The Fuck SUVs Collective, The Bike Garden) as you wish, but try not to pick something that's going to embarrass you in a year or two. Also, a reliable way to contact the group is important?if your phone numbers change a lot, open a free email account. Your contact information will be circulating far and wide once you get started. Finally, decide what kind of stinicture you want the organization to have. Do you want to be an official non-profit, Vidth bylaws and a board of directors, or do you want to be a loosely organized group of grimy mechanics, sharing nothing but a driving passion for bikes and bike repair.^ If you're fixing bikes for other people, or giving them bicycles, how much legal responsibility can you take on as an organization if anyone is injured? Do you want to draw up a waiver (a good idea, probably, just to discourage lawsuits, even if the waiver

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wouldn't hold up in court), or do you want to just cross your fingers and hope that no one is mean enough to pick on such a cuddly group? Do you want to charge money for your services? Recommend compensation? Establish a shding scale? Work out a casual or carefully calculated system for exchanging people's labor for your skills and tools and parts? Depend on donations? Do you want to schedule a particular day of the week (or two or three) to meet, especially if you're providing repairs or workshops or some public service, or do you want to leave it up to individual whim?