NBW

After my trip through new york I came right back to philly. The pressing question was, what now? How can I continue this work? How can I build more machines?

The vision in my head was to find a collective metal shop, somewhere that already had all the tools and resources that I could somehow join. With that in the back of my mind, I started looking into bike resources in the city.

I identified Philadelphia’s Neighborhood Bike Works as a potentially interested party for doing a workshop. I met briefly with some of the staff there and we agreed to set something up. (NBW does excellent programs for youth, specifically bicycle assembly and repair, as well as safety demos and organized rides).

Ultimately, we decided to try to have each kid build their own rear rack blender. It proved to be too difficult, working with what was available we just couldn’t make it, not with every kid, not in the time frame we had. So I set about to make a stationary blender that the kids would put the final touches on (as doing all of the welding and cutting wouldn’t be covered in their insurance). Again, unfortunately, I only got so far before other things got in the way. I also mismanaged my time, using their shop resources to build something else, and not leaving enough time for the blender. It was a poor choice I feel badly about. I think they were fairly displeased. I later went on to make an instructional video for NBW so that they could finish up the blender in my absence. Not sure what came of it.

The rest of my efforts in philly didn’t amount to much, I wasn’t as reliable as I would have needed to be. I didn’t have easy access to facilities, nor did I really have the time to dedicate to doing the work. But it was still burning inside me, I had to figure out some way to make this work.