In this newsletter...

1. ​P​ower Wrenchers​
2. ​Construction has begun!​
3. Saturday, May 16th - Southwest Collective Archer Ride
4. Sunday, May 16th - Tamal Ride
5. Saturday, May 30th - North Lawndale Ride with Equiticity
6. Sunday, June 7th - Blues Fest get together for Taj Mahal
7. Friday, June 12th - Roll N' Peace
8. ​Rides Around Town​
9. ​International Shipment to Kampala - Loading May 27th - 29th
10. ​Working Bikes Mail Club and Print Shop visit ​

Happy May, Volunteers! We have a lot of fun rides coming up this month: the Tamale Ride on May 17th, our ride with Southwest Collective on Saturday May 16th, Roll n Peace on June 12th and a Working Bikes ride to see blues legend Taj Mahal on June 7th! Working Bikes is also participating in the Bike Commuter Challenge, which is a month-long biking competition where Chicagoland organizations compete to see who can earn the most points by riding their bike for work related trips. It's free to participate, and you can sign up here. Thank you to everyone who helped out with the El Salvador shipment to our partners CESTA last week, we sent out 552 bikes, 504 adult and 408 kids.

The Bike Box is open for the season! We would love to have some of our volunteers spend time with Marcell and the crew at at the southwest corner of 13th Street and Pulaski Road, fixing up bikes! You can email us at volunteer@workingbikes.org for more information. They are open Wednesday and Thursday from 12pm - 5pm, and Saturday 11am - 2pm

​Working Bikes was featured on WGN's About Town segment! Check it out here and see Luna, Eric and Finn talk about our work.

Things are going to look a bit different around the shop for the next few months as we have finally broken ground on constructing a new ramp entrance to WB! We currently expect the project to be complete in mid August. We have already moved Brandon’s Bike shop to the front of the building, and last week we had a rededication ceremony. Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate, we are so grateful to the family and friends of Joe and Carol Bernier for their continued support.

We had a lot of interest in our Cycle of Power Bike Refurbishing classes with our board member Allison that we have decided to keep them going! They are switching to Wednesday from 5pm - 7pm starting May 20th. This is a great opportunity for volunteers who want to learn how to build up bikes for our Cycle of Power Program. As we get to warmer weather, applications for the local donation program increase and we would love all the help we can get to build up bikes and get them to those who need them as quickly as possible! Volunteers will work on a bicycle over the course of a few weeks, so be sure that you can make it to multiple consecutive classes. You can sign up on our volunteer program POINT.

Go Go POWER WRENCHERS!

We are so proud to introduce you to our new super team,
​POWER WRENCHERS! These are a group of trained volunteers who will be working with our service department Tuesdays 12-2 and 5-8 Wednesday 11-2 Saturday 10-5pm to help fix up the Cycle of Power Bicycles that come in need of work. We do all these fixes for free for one year for CofP recipients, and it gives volunteers a chance to meet the people who receive the bikes they built!

You can find them in the Service Dept. working on Cycle of Power bikes, flat fixes and other minor repairs. HUGE thanks to Jerry, Eric, Jon, Bob, Marty and Joe for being our inaugural members, we are so grateful for the work they do! Volunteers keep our shop running, thank you!
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Interested in joining the Mighty Mechanic Crew? Ask Luna for more details next time you are at the shop or email volunteer@workingbikes.org​

After a lot of planning, construction for our new entrance has begun! We are working with Breaking Ground construction, a North Lawndale based company. The new entrance will have an accessible ramp, no more carrying your bike up the stairs! We will also be adding a vestibule to help with climate control in the building. If you haven't noticed, we had to take some trees down to make room for the construction. The good news is we found them a new home! Our friend Kevin Hunt, who we last worked alongside on the Chicago Sukkah Design Project, has been working to beautify 16th street, in particular 16th and Trumbull, where our Paw Paw and American Plum are in the ground and putting down roots. Say hi to Kevin the next time you're on 16th!

The construction will take about 3 months to complete, but the ramp and entry will be available in mid June. For more information about the construction schedule there is a pdf below.

​Construction Schedule for Working Bikes Ramp and Entry.pdf​

There are a ton of great group rides happening this month
and here are a few we will be at!

Bike Archer

📍 McKinley Park

📍 Archer & Western

📅 Saturday, May 16, 2026

Meet at 9:30am Ride out at 10am

If you haven’t tried the new bike lanes on Archer, this is a great opportunity to ride in a group! Their 4.5 mile route will include the parts of Archer that are complete, hope to see you there!

12th Annual Tamale Bike Ride

📍 Dvorak Park 21st and Carpenter

📅 Sunday, May 17, 2026

Meet at 10am, Ride out at 11am

The ride was created and is led by friend of the shop Pookie and this year they we will be partnering with The Street Vendors Association of Chicago to show our support as a bicycle community.

The North Lawndale Ride: Exploring Equiticity’s Neighborhood Mobility Models

📍 Green Tomato Cafe

📍 3750 West Ogden Avenue

📅 Saturday, May 30, 2026

9:00 AM 12:00 PM

Think Outside Da Block Ride, June 12th

Roll N Peace 13

📍 Ogden Park

📍 6500 S. Racine Ave

📅 Friday, June 12, 2026

Join us for our annual community bike ride promoting peace, unity, wellness, and fun for all ages. More details coming soon—stay tuned!

Our next container is heading to our partners Cycles for Farmers in Kampala, Uganda! Irene, Johnan, and the team have requested a container split between children's bikes and our usual "shippers" (MTBs and hybrids with fat tires and a wide range of gears) to fuel their programs. Like Working Bikes, CFF is a social enterprise that relies on refurbishment and sales of bikes to fuel all their work getting transportation to the folks who need it. After years of trial and error, ED Irene Mukisa has hit upon a model that makes use of US market kids bikes to support revenue in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Some kids bikes are sold to local shops as-is to help cover the cost of customs and transport and spread the inventory around, while Andrew, Samson, and Michel refurbish some kiddie bikes to sell from the CFF retail shop. US market children's bikes are far higher quality than any newly built (all made in China) bike available at wholesale in Eastern Africa, and can be sold at a similar price and last longer, presenting a better value for CFF customers.
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The MTBs will head out of the capital to support farmers in more rural regions, like Lira up north or Mbale out east, and distributed on a financing model that allows the farmers who receive the bikes to pay them off over time. The harvests farmers are able to make by accessing planting fields on their new transportation, yields an income that supports the farmer, pays school fees for their children, and pays off the bike in under 2 years. We are planning to load the week after next, Wednesday the 27th to Friday the 29th. Keep an eye out on POINT and sign up for a shift if you're up for helping pack in the bikes for the CFF crew!

Working Bikes is starting a brand new MAIL CLUB! Subscribers will receive 1 letter sized print and newsletter each month. Our Manager of Engagement Finn will be printing them on a Risograph at local community press Spudnik. Risograph printing is a technique best described as a ‘digital screen printing’. The process is similar to screen printing, but with the convenience and speed of an office copier. It’s known for its limited set of vivid colours and its specific textures. You can sign up for the first

Interested in a Working Bikes group visit to Spudnik?

Let us know by replying to this email!