May 2026

Summer is fast approaching and we have felt the heat! We have already shipped out almost 3,000 bikes abroad, brought in over 3,000 bikes with help from our collection crew and have built up and donated over 350 bikes for Cycle of Power, our local donation program. Our friends at CIDH came through and we were able to load up their truck with 74 kids bikes and 19 adult bikes including 7 adaptive bikes! Just the day before we had sent off 552 bikes heading to CESTA, our partners in El Salvador, and today we'll have 636 bikes hit the road on their way to Kampala, Uganda. We have been keeping busy! And June promises to be no different, with Roll N Peace in Englewood set for June 12th; the Bike Box at 13th and Pulaski open Wednesday and Thursday 12-5, Saturday 11-2 through the summer to bring cycling resources to North Lawndale; and more containers, water bottles, and repair stands to fill.
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​Did you catch us on WGN9 Around Town? We had the great pleasure of having Marcus and the Around Town camera crew join us for a tour of the shop, checking out the basement, dock, production department, and the volunteer shop! Big thanks to Luna and our star volunteer Eric for coming in early and getting on camera.

Earlier in the month, we rededicated the volunteer space, Brandon’s Bike Shop (BBS), originally founded to honor the legacy of volunteer Brandon Bernier and make the volunteer program at Working Bikes -- the heart of our organization -- even stronger. We are so grateful to everyone who came out to celebrate 13 years of BBS with friends and family, old and new. The rededication came about because of all the changes we have been making to our first floor in preparation for a new accessible ramp entrance to our building. It has been a lot of were planning, but we took a huge step and poured our first concrete footing last week! External construction should wrap up in the next couple weeks, with the whole project and clean up completed by mid August. We are excited to be able to roll bikes into the building.

Brandon's Bike Shop Rededication

Working Bikes has been prepping for our new accessible ramp, and one of our tasks was to rearrange our retail floor and Brandon’s Bike Shop. The shop was founded 13 years ago, in honor of volunteer Brandon Bernier who passed away in 2013. His family and friends came together to fund our volunteer mechanic space in his honor. For the move, the iconic sign that has welcomed so many to the space had to come down and 10 workbenches were moved to the front of the building, getting some much needed light.

We wanted to honor the new space with a rededication event on May 8th with Brandon Bernier’s parents Carol and Joe and the Working Bikes community. We are so grateful to everyone who came to celebrate 13 years of Brandon’s, some who have been around since the beginning of Working Bikes and others who have just been volunteering for a few weeks. “Bring good people together and they will know what to do”, a favorite saying of Brandon’s felt especially pertinent that evening. Old volunteers and staff met the new, swapping stories from the shop and the bikes they have built for our local community and screen printing their own souvenir Brandon’s Bike Shop t-shirt. It is hard to sum up how valuable this shop has been to our work and the community. It hasn’t just increased our output of local donations, it has become a space for people to come together and learn, meet new friends and be a part of something bigger.

Special thanks to Revolution Brewing for supplying the beverages, and to Luna our new volunteer coordinator who made the shop sparkling for our community.

After much anticipation, the first pour of concrete for our new accessible ramp and entrance has been completed! This is the first step in making our building more accessible and comfortable for everyone.

With the footing laid, we'll pour our foundation early next week (city inspector just left, we'll have another mixer out on Monday), and after that cures, we should be able to go ahead with the ramp! Breaking Ground Builders have been on site regularly to keep the project rolling, and our incredible architect, Branyo Dvorak, of Perimeter Architects, has been stopping by to check in on the work he's helped us plan for over two years!

We are all excited to roll in and out of our building, and can't wait to rearrange our sales floor and better connect our Service Department and Brandon's Bike Shop volunteer space when we have a new opening on the north wall.

Working Bikes is making its way to your home, in more ways than one! We have launched our first ever MAIL CLUB, a monthly subscription that gets you a new flyer and printed newsletter every month with exclusive content. The Mail Club will be printed with a Risograph, a Japanese printer invented in the 1980s. It is often called “digital screen printing”, with the master being burned on rice paper and printed with soy based ink making it more environmentally friendly than standard printing. The colors are bright and vibrant and each print has its own individual quirks. You can sign up for just 10$ a month, the link is right here!​
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Mail not your thing? Customers in Cook, Dupage and Lake County can get their online bike order delivered to their home! Charlie completed our first trial webstore bicycle delivery to Warrenville a couple weeks ago, and we are rolling out the pilot service to everybody this week. For a $200 donation after the purchase of a webstore bike, a Working Bikes volunteer will bring the bike to you in the following counties: Cook County, DuPage County and Lake County. One of our volunteers will reach out to schedule a time within 2 weeks of ordering for a delivery date. If you think you are in an area we frequent outside of those counties, please feel free to reach out to us at donations@workingbikes.org and if you have questions about a specific bike please email sales@workingbikes.org.