Alex Pretti shooting ‘eye opening’ for bike industry in Minneapolis area

This story is corrected to show that the social media account that repeated Angry Catfish's post about Alex Pretti was not an official Surly account, as previously reported

MINNEAPOLIS (BRAIN) — The shooting death of local veteran's hospital nurse and cyclist Alex Pretti on Saturday welded the ongoing ICE activities in Minneapolis to the local bike industry and the cycling community nationally.

Pretti rode a Surly — a bike brand owned by Minneapolis-based distributor QBP — and participated in bike events; he was a customer of south Minneapolis’ Angry Catfish bike shop.

The shop was one of many local bike businesses that closed down for a city-wide general strike on Friday, the day before Pretti was shot. After the shooting, the shop put out a statement on Instagram (see image), and also told BRAIN it is organizing a memorial ride for Saturday. The statement was reposted by an unofficial Surly bikes fan account on Bluesky, according to Surly's brand marketing manager, RoseMary Sindt.

"The Surly brand, and QBP as a whole, have been working diligently to craft public responses to the atrocities of Operation Metro Surge," Sindt said in an email. "Please note that though those social posts did not come from Surly, it is true that members of the Surly team are helping organize the unity ride with Angry Catfish, and we do fully support them," she added.

A second general strike is being planned for this Friday in the city and others. Angry Catfish is planning a memorial ride for Pretti on Saturday, and a shop employee told BRAIN there will be memorial rides in other cities around the country.

Residents have adjusted to what some industry members described as a military-style occupation by as many as 3,000 ICE officers. Every errand is fraught with stress and fear, they said. But the death of Pretti, the second person shot and killed by ICE in Minneapolis this year, brought it to another level for cyclists and members of the industry.

“When you know he's a cyclist: He was one of us, that he participated in the same events that I went to … it certainly feels more real … it definitely hits home,” said Jeff Frane, the founder of Wilde Bikes, a custom frame brand partly owned by the co-owners of Angry Catfish. Wilde currently shares space with the store.

Even before the Pretti killing, life in the city has been somewhat surreal, said Frane, who is a former brand manager for QBP’s All-City bike brand.

“It's the absurdity of carrying on with our day-to-day tasks while this is going on, you know? … My kids have still got to eat, my sidewalk has still got to get shoveled. Our business still requires a daily amount of attention, so it just feels weird.”

Frane’s days have not been entirely normal. The business arranges to pick up and drop off employees who are Black or brown-skinned because they don’t feel safe on the streets.

For the same reason, Frane’s neighbors who send kids to a Spanish-immersion pre-school have arranged to transport teachers and staff to and from school, hiding in the back of their cars.

“These are American citizens, these are legal people. But nobody wants to have a life-threatening encounter with ICE. And the feeling is that any encounter with ICE is a life-threatening encounter,” Frane said.

"I think the eye-opening thing is that your whiteness isn't going to protect you. Up until pretty recently, our whiteness offered a significant amount of protection. And us white folks are experiencing a reality that Black and brown folks have been experiencing for as long as this country's been around."

Minneapolis-based Esker Bikes, a mountain- and touring-bike brand, posted a statement on Facebook last Thursday (below) calling for ICE to leave the city and announcing that Esker would participate in the strike last Friday.

Krueger and Esker have never been shy about social activism, and he said the post got some negative reactions. "We got some blowback, but I don't care. It was an interesting conversation," he said. 

Like Frane, Krueger said the ongoing ICE activities and protests in the city have made life difficult and stressful, but the Pretti killing brought it to another level.

“The hard thing in this situation is (Pretti’s interaction with ICE shown in videos) looked really benign until all of a sudden it wasn't, right? As well as this guy being a mountain biker and being a relatively normal guy, right? … this one's really hard because a lot of us here in Minneapolis could see that happening to us in a heartbeat.”

Lloyd Vogel, the CEO of St. Paul-based Garage Grown Gear, posted about Pretti on LinkedIn on Monday. He said he didn’t know Pretti but lived in the same neighborhood and frequented the same bike shop, Angry Catfish.

“It shouldn’t take the killing of someone who looks like you to make you pay attention,” Vogel wrote. “But... if you are just tuning in now, please use this moment to wake up. To recognize that we are all in this together, and that when laws and accountability are tossed aside, no one is truly safe.”

A local news site, bringmethenews.com, published a list of businesses that participated in the Jan. 23 general strike. The list includes at least The Cargo Bike Shop in St. Paul, Freewheel Bike, with eight locations in the Twin Cities, Perennial Cycles, Linden Hills Bike Shop, Tangletown Bike Shop and Recovery Bike Shop in Minneapolis, and Tonka Cycle and Ski in Hopkins.

"We will continue to support the Twin Cities community until ICE ends its occupation," Tim Staton of The Cargo Bike Shop told BRAIN in an email Monday. 

Angry Catfish and Esker also participated but were not on the published list. One on One Bicycle Studio said on social media that it participated.

BRAIN has reached out to other industry members in the Minneapolis area and will update this story as we learn more.

Angry Catfish announced details of its ride on its Instagram account on Monday (screenshot in gallery at the bottom of this page). The ride will meet at 1 pm Saturday and roll out at 1:30 from Washburn Fair Oaks Park.