Posts Tagged ‘The Hub’

Help the Hub: Safe Streets Youth Ride Fundraiser

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Safe Streets Youth RideThe Hub of Detroit is a great resource for Detroiters looking to get a great deal on a used, functional, and often hip bicycle.

Located in the Cass Corridor, they also help Detroit youth get into bicycling and bicycling repair.

Here’s a great opportunity for a nice afternoon ride in Detroit that will help fund their youth education program:

Saturday August 1st, 2:30 PM to 6:30 PM @ The Hub of Detroit, 3611 Cass Ave.

Join the youth graduates of The Hub’s Earn-A-Bike program on a city of Detroit bike tour. ?This is an opportunity for the youth, ages 6-18, to take the bikes they have built during the program on the road and ride with adult role-model cyclists.

  • Route includes the Eastern Market, Heidelberg Project, Riverwalk, Downtown, Cass Corridor, and more places of interest along the way.
  • Ride ends at the U-M Detroit Center for refreshments and snacks.

Register Online: http://safestreetsyouthride.eventbrite.com/

All proceeds will support The Hub’s youth education programs.

$25 Adult Tickets
$10 with Student ID

That’s a wrap: Detroit Bicycle Film Festival

Monday, July 20th, 2009

IMG_2926By all accounts, the first-ever Detroit Bicycle Film Festival was a big success.

It seemed Friday attacted the biggest crowd to the Boll YMCA downtown. The first movie even sold out.

Prior to the movie, audience was offered complimentary cocktails complements of 42 Below vodka. They also sponsored the Goldsprints: two singlespeed bikes on rollers where cyclists can sprint head-to-head with a real time full screen display.

The Goldsprints were operated by the Hub. And the great news is the bikes, rollers and other hardware were donated to them. So if you missed the Goldsprints this weekend, don’t worry. There will be more.

Photos from Detroit’s film festival are on-line.

Detroit Trails on Facebook

Monday, June 15th, 2009

bandThe Detroit Riverfront Conservancy has an active page on Facebook.

Their Dequindre Cut trail opening photo gallery is full of great shots, including this one to the right. It certainly shows Detroit knows how to open a trail will style and enthusiasm.

But there are other Detroit trail- or bike-related groups on Facebook, including these:

Spring means Bicycle Love in Detroit

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Biking on the Dequindre CutThe Metro Times just released their 2009 Best of Detroit lists.

Among the staff picks was Best Place to Break a Sweat with the winner being “bicycling”.

Detroiters have been getting more and more serious about bicycle love in recent years. First came the flirtation. It wasn’t love at first ride. No, it’s hard to fully commit to a self-powered two-wheel approach when you’re dubbed the Motor City, when coney dogs, cheap beer and Flaming Hot Chee-tos are local fare and, well, let’s face it, there aren’t too many bike-friendly paths. But flirt we did. After a couple dates, we started to grope the spokes and pump the brakes. One thing led to another and here we are … With the HUB of Detroit – that funky full-service (not-for-profit) bike shop set in the pit of Cass Corridor – the seed was planted. Then came “bike gangs” such as Ferndale’s Defying The Law B/C, and city-wide races like Alley Cat. Last year (almost to the day this goes to print) we witnessed the birth of Wheelhouse Detroit, a bike retail, rental and repair shop that lives right on the river and offers a wide array of bike tours that take riders through the architectural anomaly that is Detroit, through Corktown, Hamtramck, along the river and a number of others. A missing piece was put into place a couple years ago when the Dequindre Cut project was announced. The Cut runs along the Grand Trunk rail line, through Eastern Market, and ends at Detroit’s riverfront parks. The paved, lit, emergency phone-equipped bike-walk-jog stretch from Gratiot to south of Jefferson will get its grand opening May 14.

In last year’s polling, the Dequindre Cut won for the best project that’s not yet completed. Phase I will be completed this year, and as noted, the grand opening is May 14th at 10AM.

And in the Reader Polls, Best Place to Buy a Bicycle went to The Hub of Detroit.

The Hub of Detroit grew out of Back Alley Bikes, a youth program designed to get low-income youths their very own bicycles. The volunteer organization needed a way to fund their philanthropic endeavors and saw a need in Detroit for a bike shop. So the Hub was born, killing two birds with one ultra-cool stone. Not only do Detroiters now have a place to purchase a used bike, fix up an old set of wheels and to buy biking accessories, but all proceeds from the shop go directly to Back Alley Bikes. The staff which consists primarily of volunteers runs a variety of classes and programs for area youth, including having kids 13-18 clock volunteer hours in the shop to earn their own bike.

To see all the other 2009 “Best Of” winners, check out the Metro Times web site.

Share the Road: Biking in Detroit

Friday, January 9th, 2009
John R with four one-way vehicle lanes and negligible traffic -- an urban cyclist dream street.

John R with four one-way vehicle lanes and negligible traffic -- an urban cyclist dream street.

Metromode has a great article covering biking in Detroit, but more specifically those whose bike in the winter.

The Cass Corridor is cold, snowy and largely deserted outside of The Hub in Midtown Detroit this time of year. That’s not the case inside the new bike shop just north of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Bicycling enthusiasts of all ages, colors and creeds rub tires inside a space littered with custom wheels and vintage bikes.

There is a constant stream of people coming and going from the shop in the dead of January, and they all got there on two wheels. Cold or no cold, these year-round commuters brave the freezing temperature, ice and snow to keep on pedaling. The destinations for these die-hards are their jobs, local businesses, friends and families.

“The winter time weeds out all of the wussies,” says Jordan Bentley, the mechanic manager at The Hub.

In the article, Alex Aranda makes a point that we make often: the City of Detroit has some of the best urban biking in the U.S.

We don’t have a many bike lanes (yet) but that’s not always a necessity for many of us.

We have roads like Second Avenue, Third Avenue, and John R with four lanes traveling in one direction and very few cars.  How few? In 2005, John R saw 1,405 vehicles per day at Owen.  That’s an average of less than 1 car per minute on a four lane one-way road.  And we’re driving less now.

Austin, Texas is a designated bike friendly community.  Last year I was there trying to follow some prescribed bike routes using their excellent bike map.  There was no shortage of motorized traffic.  It was not the most pleasant ride.  The repeating thought in my head was I’d rather be riding through Detroit.

And, Detroit’s streets are so lightly traveled that an alleycat was purposely held last year when three major events were happening downtown.  The hope was we’d have enough traffic on the roads to make the alleycat a little more New York-ish.  Even then, it just wasn’t that crowded on the roads.

Certainly the lack of motor traffic is indicative of Detroit’s depressed economic landscape and overbuilt road infrastruture.  The silver lining is it’s great for Detroit cyclists.