MILWAUKEE, WI (BRAIN) Thursday May 24 2012 8:54 AM MT—Armed with just $5,000 and a couple dozen donated bikes, Evan Pack launched his new downtown Milwaukee bicycle collective/shop, Vulture Space, in conjunction with Bike to Work Week this month.
Vulture Space offers indoor bike parking for downtown commuters and access to tools and repair manuals for cyclists to work on their own bikes—with donations accepted—and refurbishes found and donated bikes for resale.
“We take any bike in any condition. I want this to be an all-inclusive project. I want to sell $10 bikes, I want to sell $300 bikes—just get people biking,” said Pack, who got inspiration for Vulture Space after working for two years at a bike collective in New Orleans.
In addition to offering bike parking, he hopes to further serve commuters by getting them access to showers at a nearby fitness club and placing a 24-hour flat-repair vending machine in front of Vulture Space, offering patch kits, tire levers, tubes in different sizes and an inflation hose. “We want to take the barriers away from people to get them biking to work,” Pack said.
Speaking to the collective’s namesake, Vulture Space was built out with scavenged wood and other discarded items. Local coffee Stone Creek Coffee donated old paint it had sitting around and also held a bike drive to help collect Vulture Space’s first batch of bikes. Bike racks smashed by cars will be bent back into shape, repainted and placed in front of the shop, saved from the junk heap.
The only new items Pack sells are locks, inexpensive lights, bells, horns and chains. “I don’t want to sell a lot of new stuff because so much stuff can be reused,” he said.
