Posted inBusiness Spotlight

Milwaukee Bicycle Collective: Connecting Youth and Bicycles

by Peter Schmidke / photos by Peter di Antoni

On a humid Sunday afternoon at the Milwaukee Bicycle Collective on Clyburn Avenue, Ian Fritz hands out bicycle rims to a bubbly Ricky Ramirez and two other neighborhood kids. Seated knee-to-knee on overturned milk crates, they stare curiously around at the gaggle of tools and bicycles as Fritz explains their mission–to remove the worn spokes from the rims so they can replace them with new ones. Ramirez fixes his pliers around a spoke and gives a couple of hard squeezes, each with no result. Fritz repositions the pliers in the middle of the spoke and this time it crinkles cleanly.