The iconic structure at 1914 SE Ankeny Street that has housed a bicycle shop for nearly half a century is up for sale. There is brown paper covering the windows of what used to be Citybikes and a soulless listing on a real estate website where it’s priced at $625,000. The only way prospective buyers would know the 50-year history of bicycle culture this building represents is the “Citybikes” name scrawled on the outside.
The sale marks the end of an era and one of the final steps in a messy, three-year legal battle between current owners of the Citybikes Cooperative who had sharp disagreements over the fate of the business. One of the four former owners, Noel Thompson, didn’t want the business to close at all, but he was overruled and out-maneuvered by other owners, led by Citybikes Board President (and Bantam Bicycle Works) owner Bob Kamzelski. Thompson, and many other former owners, believed that any remaining assets at the time of closure — which could be about $1.3 million based on the sale of two buildings and any remaining tools and fixtures — should be distributed equally among the co-op’s 50 or so owners (going back to its founding in 1990).
But Kamzelski, who was once Thompson’s close friend, saw things differently. He said the business had been losing money since 2008 and it was time to stop the bleeding, so he closed the business back in September. Unlike Thompson, Kamzelski has no intention of disbursing funds to former owners because the co-op’s own bylaws prohibit it. Kamzelski’s interpretation of the articles of incorporation are technically correct, but former owners say it was just a clerical mistake that the language was never changed (one source told me the board once voted to change the bylaws so that, upon closure, assets would be distributed to all former owners, but they never filed the changes with the Secretary of State). Most former owners believe the spirit and intention of the collective was always to share assets among all owners, even if the articles of incorporation state otherwise.
“I’m really disheartened about the whole thing. It seemed like we could have figured something out in a cooperative way without bringing in lawyers.”
– Noel Thompson
(Photo: Wizard Cycle Service)
Kamzelski doesn’t see it that way. “I’m honoring the intention of the founders, which was to not distribute [assets] to the former owners,” Kamzelski told me in an interview in February. “Because that’s what they wrote in the articles of incorporation.”
After the shop closed its doors late last year, Kamzelski, Thompson, and the two other current owners went through a mediation process with their lawyers to settle disagreements about the asset disbursement issue and a wrongful termination claim by Thompson that was outlined in the 2022 lawsuit. Thompson said he was fired on a technicality when he claimed sick pay but never took days off (because he says there was no one else to cover his shifts), and he feels the real reason was retaliation for not being on board with Kamzelski’s plans. Kamzelski told BikePortland back in February he and the board voted to fire Thompson because of timesheet fraud.
That mediation avoided the cost and stress of court proceedings. It also finalized an agreement for Kamzelski and two other current owners — Claire Nelson and Bryce Hutchinson — to split 75% of the proceeds among the three of them, while Citybikes would distribute the other 25% to Thompson and all former owners based on the hours they worked at the co-op.
“I’m really disheartened about the whole thing,” Thompson shared with me back in February. “It seemed like we could have figured something out in a cooperative way without bringing in lawyers.”
“I think that I have been treated very poorly by these former owners, and I have no interest in helping them.”
– Bob Kamzelski
(2013 photo by Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
For his part, Kamzelski says Thompson and former owners are spreading misinformation. “They’re just trying to bad-mouth me and make me seem like a bad person because they’re upset.” When asked why so many former owners stood by claims that Kamzelski was behind the “Musking of Citybikes” and trying to pull of a “heist in broad daylight,” Kamzelski said, “I think it’s because there’s a bunch of money on the table now, and it’s real obvious to them that they are not legally due to get any of it — and they just need a scapegoat. People need to be angry about something and I’m the most convenient target.”
Kamzelski then flipped claims of financial greed back to former owners. “Now that there’s money on the table, they’re like, ‘I want that!’ even though it was never their intention from the get-go. So if you’re waving a check in front of somebody’s face, somebody’s like, ‘Oh, I want that now!'”
When I pressed Kamzelski about abiding by the spirit of the co-op (versus a literal reading of the bylaws) and asked if he’d consider distributing his assets among former owners like Thompson has chosen to do, he said the public acrimony influenced his decision. “I think that I have been treated very poorly by these former owners, and I have no interest in helping them… they make it sound like I’m doing something illegal, which I’m not. I don’t really like that I’m being turned into the community punching bag by people who are just irate because they fucked something up and it’s not my fault.”
For the founder of Citybikes, Roger Noehren, the idea that the shop would close is something he never allowed himself to consider. “I assumed that it would carry on in perpetuity, with young, enthusiastic cooperators seguing into the co-op to take the reins from others who were moving on to other endeavors,” he wrote in an essay typed out on the eve of the mediation and shared with BikePortland. “Ideally, I would like to see Citybikes revived with Noel and a new group of idealistic stewards. The remaining proceeds from the sale of the Annex [the other Citybikes building 12 blocks west on Ankeny that sold for $1 million after it closed in 2016] could be an endowment or rainy day fund, to underwrite another apprentice program, keep workers employed through the leaner winter months and cover any losses they might incur as they reestablish the business to become profitable again.”
That plan is all but impossible now. Not just because of how the settlement agreement turned out, but because Thompson recently opened a new shop of his own. After 26 years at Citybikes, Thompson is now sole owner of Wizard Cycle Service on NE 12th Avenue, just 14 blocks from the old Citybikes repair shop.
“I’m sad to see Citybikes go,” Thompson told me in a recent interview. “I did everything I could to try to keep that place open and stick to the values that I understood Citybikes had.”
CORRECTION, 3:27 pm: This story originally stated that Kamzelski alone chose to close the shop and fire Thompson. It has been clarified to state that those decisions were made by the entire Citybikes board. The story has also been edited to clarify that Citybikes will distribute all funds, with Thompson getting his legal fees paid for as well as a disbursement based on his hours worked at the co-op. I regret any confusion.
Thanks for reading.
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As a former member of Citybikes for 24 years I can say that I do not want a “check,” like Bob Kamzelski says. I and all the former owners wanted the co-op to continue and pleaded with Bob to let us help. We all know it could have easily been done with reorganization and the money from the sale of the annex. Incidentally, I once sat with Bob at a meeting where the concerns were raised around the wording of the bi-laws. When I raised concerns, Bob quickly assured me that I would never need to worry about a couple people absconding with the wealth of the business. By the way, Bob only worked part-time the entire time he worked at Citybikes, splitting his time between the shop and Bantam Bikes.
As a decades-long Citybikes customer who appreciated what your cooperative did for Portland’s community, I’m terribly sorry that you and the former owners are not receiving your fair share of the assets that you co-created and deserved. Although there were ups and downs over the years, Citybikes was an institution for Portland’s counter culture prioritizing people over profit. Thank you
The problem with “prioritizing people over profit” is that if you don’t generate enough income to cover your costs, then somebody needs to subsidize the enterprise, either with cash or with uncompensated labor.
Organizations that don’t prioritize making at least a little profit tend not to be able to sustain themselves, or their people, and disappear.
It is exactly this problem that doomed Citybikes. (And, I agree, it is a huge loss.)
Nearly all bike co-ops that I’m aware of make use of volunteers performing uncompensated labor. There are tons of them about, and they make it work. Citibikes had an enormous advantage in owning their space and so avoiding inflated and increasing rent.
It is unfortunate that even despite that advantage, they were not able to bring in enough income to sustain the enterprise. Even a small collective needs a certain amount of profit to survive.
I like cooperatives and collectives, and I particularly liked Citybikes, so I am sad to see them go.
Will this affect the custom builder preference?
Ah yes, nothing so co-operative like, “they fucked something up and it’s not my fault.”
Greed and capitalism, the usual suspects.
Because communism has produced so many great bikes? Everyone is clamoring for those classic Cuban, Russian and East German bicycles right?
Orbea are great bikes
(Made in Spain for those who are wondering whether Orbea is a Cuban, Russian, or East German brand.)
Orbea is a worker cooperative, part of Mondragon in Spain
And Mondragon was the inspiration for Citybikes.
Also, wasn’t FES an East German company?They had some pretty cool and cutting edge carbon track and TT bikes back in the day.
FES first put their track bikes up for sale in the run up to the 2020 Olympics. So while the organization has existed since 1965, they were never exactly a powerhouse of East German consumer prowess.
I’ve been to the Orbea factory store in Barcelona – it’s amazing.
TBF, I saw a bunch of Flying Pigeons when touring in China in the 90s and they were cool. Would definitely have taken one home if I could. Are they great bikes? No, but are they as good as a Schwinn Varsity? Yes, and way more interesting.
It’s sort of amazing how any criticism of the system in which a few profit at the expense of countless species across the planet — climate crisis, big oil, big pharma, gun culture, etc all part of end-stage capitalism — is always met by “but Stalin was bad and Cuba can’t survive.” Paucity of imagination, to say the least. Brainwashing by capitalism, probably also accurate. I dream a world in which motor vehicle traffic is slowed by random strangers dressed as cats or all wearing teal! I dream a world in which greed and capitalism aren’t the best choice! DREAM WITH ME, Angus!!!
Stalin wasn’t just bad, he was very very very bad. Ask any Ukrainian who was alive when Stalin was in power if that assessment was just capitalist brainwashing.
Our local small bike retailers are examples of capitalism Lois. Let’s dial back the “brainwashing by capitalism” schtick. It’s not what you say it is.
People don’t seem to have a grasp of history anymore and the statement that “Stalin was bad” is just too egregious.
20 million dead by Stalin and atrocities beyond imagining here in the west. But that’s okay, let’s all buy and wear some Soviet iconography and say we’re down with the cause.
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2010/09/naimark-stalin-genocide-092310
People continually talk about late stage capitalism as if the system is at fault rather than we never really left our feudal roots behind us and extreme wealth accumulation has been and always is going to be a continuing flaw in all economic systems.
Where are the examples of late stage communism? Oh, that’s right, there are no examples as the communist system inevitably collapses under its own starvation.
Let’s not forget the people who wear Che Guevara shirts…ignoring that he was a mass-murdering son of a rich man.
Very few models in nature work on selfless behaviors. Especially at the mammaliam level.
Ah, yes, because an economy’s structure is the only factor in a product’s quality, not to mention every communist endeavor happened in a Petri dish, isolated from foreign manipulations, right? Meanwhile we celebrate capitalism for creating all sorts of product that wouldn’t exist without socialized funding of research and development.
It’s almost like economies work best when they have a mix of approaches, with governments supporting the inherently collective aspects (like basic research), and private industry handling the more entrepreneurial aspects (like developing products).
Dunno, China seems to be doing pretty well right now.
“China seems to be doing pretty well”
I agree — economically, China has done astoundingly well since they allowed much of their economy to be run in a capitalistic manner.
Yes, their “mix of approaches” seems to be proving extremely successful at the moment.
Considering that the West (along with the rest of the world) is healthier, richer, better educated, freer, and better fed than at any point since the advent of agriculture, I’d have to agree with you there.
Do you have any real basis to judge that by? I mean I don’t fully disagree, just that historical comparisons of this kind are often fraught with faulty assumptions and poorly articulated claims.
Like sure, you can make a graph of World GDP over time that looks like a hockey stick but that doesn’t really prove anything about the lives people actually have lived. You could use meat consumption as a heuristic for “better fed”, but you’d be hard-pressed to convince me that Americans are eating healthier foods in the aggregate now than they were in the past.
Freer is much harder to determine, and much more subjective. I would generally argue that people in the US are less free than they have been at other points in US history, particularly those who are not citizens. A simple heuristic of outwardly democratic government is not enough to determine the actual social dynamics that determine genuinely free society. Staying in the US, there is basically no one who believes that our current system of government doesn’t favor the wealthy in some way. Is our quasi-oligarchy with many remaining democratic elements (free speech, etc.) more or less free than somewhere like France? I’m not confident I could make that judgement accurately without it just being a reflection of what I prefer.
In terms of disease and education – that’s pretty unambiguous, and I agree things are better now than they have been for most of history (though there of course are worrying trends at play these days in the US especially)
I believe it because I hear economists and historians I trust telling me that, repeatedly.
Want to do your own research? Just ask questions? Pick a metric and do a quick Google search.
Childhood mortality is an easy one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_mortality
Regarding freedom:
Ask a black person from 1840 (or even 1960) if they would agree.
But, more broadly, when has as much of the world been ruled by democracies as it is today? Some backsliding in the US doesn’t change the overall trend.
PS Broadly speaking, life has favored the wealthy; i.e. those with more resources, in all places at all times. I don’t know how that has changed with time, but I do know that the difference in lifestyle that wealth brings is smaller today than at other times in history.
Yeah definitely generally agree on the merits there as it relates to health (though there are clear challenges for public health in an increasingly unequal world).
Fair point on Black Americans pre Civil Rights Movement, but most indicators of societal success for Black Americans have remained steady or declined since the 1970s and still lag far behind that of their White counterparts. My original point was more about the erosion of civil liberties and the expansion of the police state (especially vis a vis homeland security) since 2001, alongside the continual issues of effective rule by oligarchy
Each democracy has different characteristics that make it better or worse, and I would not paint so broad a picture. I think most oversimplified maps showing some kind of freedom ranking are often de facto rigged by a clear western cultural bias. And I think it’s clear that there has been little progress of note since the decolonization movements of the mid twentieth century. The collapse of the Soviet Union didn’t exactly lead to a series of free, pluralistic places (with the notable exception for the Baltic States). Most places in the Middle East had more freedom in the Cold War era than they do now. Latin America remains haunted by US imperialism and the series of coups that created long-term issues. I just don’t really see the last 70 years of world history as some conclusive piece of evidence to corroborate this point. Tons of progress was made to proliferate more democratic institutions in the years before 1950, much less has been made since then.
I would challenge this. The lives of the super rich are extremely out of whack with the vast majority of people in the world. And even in that “vast majority” there are huge differences, especially at a global scale. The difference between Jeff Bezos and a peasant in the Andes is larger than the difference between Andrew Carnegie or JP Morgan and that same peasant’s ancestors. And there are clear instances where neoliberal market reforms induced by the Bretton Woods institutions have objectively hurt the bulk of working people in places.
Just so I’m clear, are you arguing that the world is not healthier, richer, better educated, freer, and better fed than at any point since the advent of agriculture?
You’ve made some points about “freer” which are difficult to quantify except to say that it wasn’t just the Baltic states that gained considerable freedom when the Soviet Union fell; pretty much all of Eastern Europe benefitted greatly. Even states like Ukraine where things were far from ideal were better off.
I’m not arguing that every place has been improving along a straight line over time, just that the overall trends are positive, with some places rapidly improving while others slide back.
If we set aside the issue of political and personal freedom, do we agree on the other points (health, wealth, education, food security)? Even if Jeff Bezos is more richer than an Andean peasant (is Bezos’ cell phone really that much better than the peasant’s?), do you at least agree that the Andean peasant is better off than his ancestors?
I’m arguing that the basis to judge if the world is freer, richer, and better fed is difficult to quantify. Or that it’s difficult to speak clearly about it. It’s unambiguous that the world is healthier from a disease standpoint and better educated.
In former SSRs other than the Baltic State and Ukraine (and maybe Kazakhstan) the political environment is almost unchanged in terms of freedom. I think it’s fair to argue things have gotten worse overall for many working class folks – especially in Russia (this is more economics than politics, if you disentangle the two). For Warsaw Pact countries, I suppose things have gotten better from my perspective here but I’m entirely unfamiliar with the specifics of the experience of people there.
And in many parts of Latin America, there has been either little or no progress towards any meaningful amount of political power for campesinos and the like. While there’s obviously tons of pulls that drive emigration to the US, the pushes of worsening economic opportunity and loss of communal lands absolutely plays a role too.
I feel that you are essentially asserting that a rising economic tide lifts all ships, but I think it’s hard to say that translates to more freedom (since that is often defined relative to other people in the same society). I also think it’s not accurate economically
On economics the case is easy. There’s lots of data.
Incomes have risen considerably: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1413425/adjusted-national-income-capita-usd/#statisticContainer
Or, for a more in depth view, see
https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief
“Two centuries ago, the majority of the world population was extremely poor. Back then, it was widely believed that widespread poverty was inevitable. But this turned out to be wrong. Economic growth is possible, and poverty can decline. The world has made immense progress against extreme poverty.”
As for democracy, see https://ourworldindata.org/democracy or https://ourworldindata.org/democratic-rights
I am saying that by most reasonable measures, the world has been and continues to be a better place for people. My original statement that humanity is “healthier, richer, better educated, freer, and better fed than at any point since the advent of agriculture” stands.
Average income for spending in the US doesn’t prove much, given rising inequality. 3/4 of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. In the US, it’s difficult to argue that working people are better off in relative terms now than they were in the 1940s to 1980s.
I would call the methodology of Our World In Data to be dubious to the point of not being meaningful. The study that they source cite has no high quality data until 1920 – well after industrialization. Is life in industrialized nations better now than it was in industrialized nations the 1870s? 100%.
Is life better in industrialized nations now than it was in agrarian societies in the 1790s? I think there is essentially no basis to judge this quantitatively by. At some point, it will be a judgement of what you value. For studies done via the World Bank, IMF, etc. a strong focus on a cash economy as a means to measure poverty is telling. Human societies have had many ways of allocating resources, relying on modern concepts of lack of money as indicators of poverty is fraught at best for understanding how pre industrialized societies actually functioned.
Maybe the key thing here is that we have a fundamental disagreement on what a “reasonable measure” actually is. I don’t find Our World In Data visualizations to be very interesting or compelling, and I question the validity of basically all of the assumptions made when I look at the sources. Does this make me unreasonable? Potentially. But I find it more interesting to consider how human society has functioned in historical contexts in practice than reducing everything to an opaque 1 number summary to confirm that the world is doing fine, actually.
What is the specific metric you are using to conclude Americans are not better off than they used to be? That said, my claim was much more expansive than just Americans in a specificly selected time period.
If your conclusions are largely based on your (perhaps romanticized) feelings about what life was like on a pre-mechanization farm versus a fairly modern city, we may not be able to come to a resolution, though you might look at the very strong desire for people to escape that life and migrate to cities, even if it means taking a terrible job.
My conclusions are not based on one number, but data from a variety of fields that all points in the same direction, and a lot of people who study this agree with me. In fact, it is fair to say that I have never heard any professional historian or economist arguing that humanity is not better off now than it was in the past. I’m sure someone has made that argument, but I haven’t heard it.
And life would have to be pretty good to make it worth watching half your children die by their fifth birthday (50% is my recollection of the preindustrial child mortality rate).
“I think it’s fair to argue things have gotten worse overall for many working class folks – especially in Russia (this is more economics than politics, if you disentangle the two”
I didn’t see any attempt at an argument from you which is wise. If you even take a glance at history outside the DSA pamphlets you’d see the 10’s of millions killed by Soviet leadership, to say nothing of the Imperial Czars. Also, a good place to look at the glories (sarcasm) of Soviet freedom is the insane levels of ecological devastation wrought upon the earth and the people in the name of progress. Mind boggling horrors that clearly the modern western mind can’t comprehend.
I’m not here to defend the USSR, more to say that the modern Russian state is very autocratic and certainly does not compete with the US economically in the way the USSR did mid-century. The collapse of the USSR was an opportunity to build a more democratic and open society, but instead the US preferred to allow the maximum amount of crony capitalism.
“the modern Russian state is very autocratic and certainly does not compete with the US economically in the way the USSR did mid-century.”
Very autocratic compared to when in their history? They are freer now than they have been in centuries if ever.
As far as them competing with the US during the cold war, it turns out they were not competing and that their economy was allowed by the afore mentioned ecological devastation and pretending. What wealth they actually generated was mainly because of the colonization of the countries that weren’t Russia. All that wealth went in one direction and all they got back was bread lines and crappy and claustrophobic tanks. When the Berlin Wall fell it was all eastern germans running to the west and when the USSR collapsed, we saw how their economy was an illusory deck of cards which continues today in that Russia can’t even capture Ukraine.
You have a good, analytical mind and its concerning that people of your caliber harbor some mistruths of events that happened just a little bit ago.
China is doing well for whom? It’s citizens or the politburo standing committee?
I’m sure it’s doing well for both. How is the West doing?
Much better than Tibet, or the Uyghurs, or anyone that doesn’t speak the Mandarin dialect.
I’ve experienced extreme weight loss in China due to overall lack of food and seen college professors turned into janitors who were thankful to just be alive for the crime of maybe attending a protest (the ones they were sure of never came back) as well as entire college classes turned out, armed with AK47s and paraded around to enforce devotion to the state. I witnessed as much racism there as I have here (I’ve served in the Deep South) and seen an adult cry in fear (not metaphorical, tears down the cheek) at the idea of going into a police building as unlike here, people really do disappear there and it’s normal.
There is no comparison between China and the West.
What happens to the people who don’t want to be part of the communist experiment?
Pre-market reform Communist China was known for its rich biking culture and basically everyone biked. In the 1980s, China was nicknamed “the bicycle kingdom”, there were 188 bikes per 100 households in urban China, and 63% of workers in Beijing commuted by bike. (wiki link)
The market oriented reforms on the 1990s accelerated the Chinese rail and auto industries, generally at the expense of the bike. How you view that change probably says more about you than China, but I think it’s interesting to consider.
Anyways, Maoist China absolutely produced many great bikes in eye-watering numbers. The Flying Pigeon PA-02 is apparently renowned enough by collectors to make this silly list on a random website.
Maybe collectivism just isn’t a sustainable model.
Legal does not equal ethical. Just because it’s legal to do something, doesn’t mean it’s the ethical thing to do. (Similarly, and not pertinent to this story, just because something is illegal doesn’t mean it’s unethical)
Exactly. This is so disturbing. The bylaws (excerpted in Bike Portland’s 8/19/22 post) gave the current owners two choices if they dissolve the business: 1) take the money and run despite Citybikes real estate assets being acquired by the success of previous owners, OR 2) ethically and equitably distribute the profits to ALL the owners who cooperatively made Citybikes successful, ‘C.3. Any excess assets shall be distributed proportionally to present and former shareholders… The distribution shall be made in proportion to the total number of hours worked since the date of incorporation.’ Although the bylaws ‘entitle’ current owners to be greedy with the first option, they are NOT legally bound to do so (wouldn’t Oregon laws make option 1 illegal for ethical reasons anyhow?). A choice was made, and it stinks as bad as the capitalist greed that rules our country right now.
Original home of the Bicycle Repair Collective, before they moved to Belmont.
Very sad that it’s ended this way.
That’s the name I remember! Yeh. Dang, sad to see it go.
“So if you’re waving a check in front of somebody’s face, somebody’s like, ‘Oh, I want that now!'”
Hmm, kind of sounds like he’s describing himself. It would be hard for me to sleep at night after cynically stripping a local institution built by dozens over years and keeping the money for myself. And hard to imagine he’ll have many customers for custom frames going forward.
Amazing that a few years ago there used to be three bike shops on SE Ankeny between 20th and 28th and now there are none.
Universal Cycles left for SW Walker Road in Cedar Hills.
And I bet they haven’t even been broken into once.
The rise of disposable, un-serviceable e-bikes continues to destroy everything in its path.
But hey, you don’t have to pedal as hard anymore.
The Bantam guy ruins City Bikes for the rest of us and gets less than half the money he expected. $625k is a huge chunk less than their estimated 1.3 million
There is more than one building, the $625k is for the single location
Noel is such a good human being and an absolute master bike mechanic. His bike knowledge is so vast he makes it look effortless. Also he builds the best wheels. I hope he gets all the business he can handle at the new shop.
TBH, after my experience there, good riddance.
Yeah, I stopped in a few times. Got condescending attitude. Haven’t been back since 2008.
Look in the mirror?
Hard to have sympathy for the former owners who couldn’t file their updated bylaws with the state. When disputes arise on matters of the law and money, it is better to argue from the side that is technically and objectively factual than the side that is more subjectively true “in spirit.”
This is also the lesson from Aesop: the hare should beat the tortoise, but the tortoise technically wins because the hare can’t stay focused on just getting over the finish line. Don’t hate the tortoise for following the rules as written.
Citybikes was a cooperative. The race in Aesop’s fable was a competition. So it doesn’t really apply to this scenario.
Doesn’t sound very cooperative when it came down to it so the analogy of a race to the finish certainly seems relevant. Especially as it appears there is only going to be a single winner.
It was co-op where some owners could outmanoeuvre other owners and whose official bylaws favored Kamzelski’s interpretation about the distribution of the proceeds from the liquidated assets. If you are a former owner left out and find yourself griping about the supposed spirit of the co-op rather than accepting its true nature, you are a hare, not a tortoise.
The current owners could technically choose to distribute the funds to all the owners based on sweat equity per C.3. of the bylaws. But three of them are choosing their entitlement to disburse funds to themselves for assets that were built on the backs and hearts of previous owners. It’s a matter of ethics as Karstan pointed out earlier. I hope that the Trumps of the world have not normalized screwing people out of their finances, because they think they have legal authority to do so.
I know I’m going to fail to brief in my comments, so I’m sorry in advance…
I have informally interviewed about 30 staff and volunteers of various bike coops outside of the community bike shop I have helped manage now for the past 3 years here in Greensboro NC. Ours and many others are a 501c3 operated ‘like a coop”, others are actual coops, one is an S-corp, and some are community groups with a 501c3 sponsor. They are in Birmingham Alabama, 2 in Charlotte NC, Charlottesville VA, Durham NC, Asheville NC, Salisbury NC, two others in Greensboro, one in High Point NC, and 3 in Winston-Salem NC. When I lived in Portland (1997-2015) I visited the shop concerned many times (got my first Marathon tires there) as well as several other bike coops there.
I have no doubt whatsoever that all statements made by everyone in this article, that the people making the statements sincerely believe that what they said was true and that no one intentionally lied or even intentionally stretched the truth. I also believe that everyone involved intends to be honest and is doing the best they can under the circumstances.
The circumstances are less than ideal:
_ Bike mechanics are universally among the lowest paid and least protected industrial workers in the USA.
_ The bike industry as a whole is not very profitable – no one gets into the industry to get rich.
_ Nearly all parts, accessories, tools, clothing and bicycles, and the raw materials used for manufacturing, are imported to the USA from very low-wage countries.
_ Most bike shops that go out of business is because they can’t afford the rent, they get priced out, along with too much debt and overpriced overhead. This is particularly true of bike coops and nonprofits.
ALL nonprofit bike shops and coops require that their “staff” and/or volunteers learn to work with one another, even if they don’t actually like each other or get along, otherwise they tend to go under pretty fast (I’ve heard 2 years is the average but don’t quote me on this). Infighting is a “normal” state of affairs at most community bike shops, but how they deal with it varies a lot. One shop I know has Soviet “purges” every few weeks of their more troublesome volunteers, another only admits born-again Christians. The fact that Citybikes survived 50 years of ups and downs is quite frankly incredible.
About paying people:
_ We have volunteers (both on our board and in our shop) who refuse to pay anyone anything ever, as it only leads to strife and conflict.
_ We have other volunteers who are only willing to pay people if they themselves are also being paid.
_ We have volunteers who insist that anyone being paid must be paid a living wage with benefits (which no community bike shop can afford to do for very long).
_ We have volunteers who insist on paying very-low wage stipends for certain services for specified periods of time (1099 MISC).
_ We have volunteers who don’t think anyone should be paid, but they somehow want their favorite program funded and certain people hired (unclear on the concept.)
I’d write more, but I’ve said more than enough already.
The problem in the USA is that there is no federal or state (correct me if I’m wrong) mechanism to create a coop as a legal entity in and of itself. Example #1176 of the USA being a Randian capitalist hell hole where all business entities are laser focused on short-term profit or revenue-seeking (including the so-called “non-profits”).
“there is no federal or state (correct me if I’m wrong) mechanism to create a coop as a legal entity”
You are wrong. Oregon legal code has an entire chapter specifically dealing with the co-ops. It’s called “Chapter 62: Coopetatives”.
I believe most states have similar provisions.
Co-ops are first rate economic players in American system.
American Crystal Sugar and Land-O-Lakes are both giant multi-state co-ops. Nearly every small town in the Midwest has a “Farmers Union” co-op that sells gasoline, food, and basic supplies. Many grain elevators are also co-ops. Riunite and Benetton in Italy are marketing co-ops. Co-ops are common where there is a low barrier to entry to markets and lots of players who are getting a raw deal from major suppliers from elsewhere.
Co-ops and collectives are the ultimate expression of rugged individualism. As you say, they are most prevalent in the rural communities where if you don’t do it yourself, it doesn’t get done.
Here’s a brief blurb on legal frameworks for co-ops. I would say you are generally wrong, but that it’s a state specific thing (so there is no national thing, but businesses generally register at the state level anyways). In Oregon, it’s covered by ORS 62, first ratified in the 1950s.
IRS form 1120-C is for cooperatives to report taxes, so there is in fact an official federal designation for coops.
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1120c.pdf
I suppose we’d call them 1120-type “C” corporations…
On a lighter note… this Citybikes location was the first place I experienced a bike-through mister arch! (The PVC pipe bent into a big arch with mister nozzles on it.) It brought me a lot of joy biking through SE Ankeny. It lives on, as I reversed engineered the design and keep it outside my place for peds and bikes on NE 26th on those hot days. Whomever originally built that. TY
If Bob wanted to honor the founders he could have asked them! They are still around and living in Portland. I also wonder if Bob and Bryce know that former there are some former citybikes owners living on as little as $600 a month social security checks!
Maus, this is a terrible article, even after your corrections. You appear to have a dog in this fight, and your personal biases have been on full display throughout your ‘reporting’ on Citybikes.
I watched the slow dissolution of Citybikes as it unfolded and here’s something you need to understand: the business was failing! It wasn’t ever going to make it back. The current owners faced up to that fact and did what needed to be done.
In this article you blew right on by the matter of your primary source’s wage theft. You then noted although the remaining partners’ actions were legal and consistent with the co-ops by laws, they failed to live up to everyone else’s expectations about what they thought the owners should do.
I sincerely hope that after you posted your corrections you went and looked at yourself in the mirror. This was a hit piece, based on one very biased source. You should recuse yourself from writing more aboutit yourself, because you have demonstrated your extensive bias.
In conclusion, you suck!