In this newsletter...

1. Open House Chicago - 10/17, 10-5
2. ​Guided Open Shop Returns!​
3. ​Volunteer Opportunities ​
4. ​Holiday Donation Season coming up​
5. ​Join our Board or a WB Committee! ​
6. ​Thank you for 27 years!

Happy HALLOWEEN volunteers! If you were with us at our volunteer Halloween party this week, you got a tour of the haunted Working Bikes Basement courtesy of our resident Witch, KP. If you missed the show, fear not! Open House Chicago is this weekend, Saturday, October 17th, and you can get a tour of the whole building led by a WB Board Member or Power Wrencher. Sadly, we cannot guarantee any ghosts that day. If you are interested in helping out with tours, please let us know by replying to this email.

We were happy to join the Garfield Park Community Council for their Community Run for Breast Cancer Awareness on October 10th! As luck would have it we had not one, but two Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer awareness bikes to raffle off, so those found new homes as well as two dozen bells courtesy of Marque Cycling. Thanks to volunteers Phil, RJ and Bob for helping out at the event!

We have a few exciting events coming up as well! LVEJO will be having their Dia de los Muertos Ride on November 1st! We would love some volunteer help for the ride, so please let us know if you are interested. Our friends the Gage Park Cyclists will also be having a Dia de los Muertos ride the day before on October 31st starting at Denka Park. They will be honoring the cyclists who have lost their lives and visit ghost bikes all over the Southwest Side.

We are starting up a new round of our Guided Open Shops! Thank you to everyone who has come through on Tuesday evenings, we are so excited to have volunteers in learning about their bikes. You can sign up for each session on POINT, and the skill demos for each night are below.

​10/20 Frankie teaching stems: threadless vs. threaded​

​10/27 KP will demonstrate how to set up your cockpit ​

​11/3 Brandon will be skill demoing Cantilever Brake adjustments ​

11/10 No class, Volunteer Engagement Party!

​11/17 Allison will be skill demoing saddle position + clamps + post​

​11/24 Alice will be skill demoing how to choose cranks and installing chain rings​

​12/1 Sopa will be skill demoing Wheel Truing ​
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If you have already attended one of our guided open shops, we would love to hear from you! Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, you can reply to this email to send your thoughts.

Kiddie bikes are coming!

As the leaves begin to change color it is time to think about our HOLIDAY DONATIONS! Last year we gave away over 150 bikes for the local youth thanks to our wonderful volunteers and we would love to donate even more this year. As the busy season for Cycle of Power bikes winds down, it is a great time to get kiddie bikes up in the stands and ready to be gifted to some great kids working with our partner organizations.

Our friends at Latinos Progresando are once again spreading joy to the Marshall Square community, right in our backyard. We'll get at least 50 kiddie bikes refurbished for their holiday giveaway from the LP HQ at Cermak and Fairfield. Santa Bob has been a hit there; we're sending off our letters to the North Pole now requesting a repeat visit. We'll spread the bike love around other community based organizations and faith communities, typically with 15-20 bike donations, per organization. We can use all the help wrenching we can get, and if anyone is interested in helping out with distributions, whether at LP or another recipient org, please respond to this email to let us know.

Oh how the time flies! The end of 2026 is in sight, the Working Bikes Annual Meeting is coming up in February, 2027, and our Nominating Committee is reconvening to solicit and review statements of interest from folks who are interested in getting more involved with the non-wrenching work needed to keep Working Bikes rolling. Are you interested in taking on a Board or Committee role at Working Bikes? This is your chance! Fourteen incredible people take on the responsibility of serving as Board Members to keep WB sustainable and fulfilling its mission now and into the future. Board members serve two year terms, with about half elected at the annual meeting each year.

We also have standing governance committees helping in areas like finance, communications, and upkeep of our building, and ad hoc committees to help with our anniversary party and other needs that come up. We are always happy to hear of more folks with interest in serving on those committees. Committee service is a good starting point for getting involved on the governance side of Working Bikes.

You can find more information on submitting a statement of interest here.

Thank you all who came and celebrated our 27th Anniversary!

We were able to raise $112,370 dollars to support our mission, breaking our previous fundraising record!

We want to thank our caterers Flor Azteca for the delicious food, Chaos Brew Club and Revolution Brewing for their tasty brews, Think Outside Da Block for their custom Working Bikes snacks, Designs4Dignity for lending their tables and Pastor Reshorna and Stone Temple Baptist Church for bringing the great sound system! We also want to shout out the planning committee, led by Claire, and the volunteers who came through and helped run the party; it could not have happened without you! If you have any photos to share we would love to see them, you can email them to finn@workingbikes.org​

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And we'd be remiss if we didn't send out a very special thank you to Ed Hanlon who put in countless hours making sure the shop and our new northern facade looked beautiful, (he literally collected wildflowers to spruce the place up) and even when not in the building, Ed was a positive force to be reckoned with, sending perfect to-do lists and suggestions which kept the team in the shop on track for the big event. Three cheers for Ed! And three more for 27 years of Working Bikes!!!