Kasandra Griffin.
(Photo courtesy Kasandra Griffin)

The northeast Portland-based nonprofit that believes bicycles are a vehicle for changing our communities has hired a new leader. The Community Cycling Center announced yesterday that Kasandra Griffin is their next executive director.

Griffin is known quantity in local bike advocacy circles. She spent eight years (on and off) on the Board of Directors for The Street Trust and also served as their interim executive director for five months in 2002 and as their finance director from 2003 to 2005. She has also worked at the City of Portland’s parks bureau and most recently as policy manager at Upstream Public Health, a nonprofit.

“Coming back to an organization centered on bikes feels like returning to my first true love,” she said in an interview posted on the CCC’s website yesterday. “Doing it at an organization that is also focused on equity makes me feel honored, delighted, and eager to get to work.”
[Read more…]

Who do you love?
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)

Hoping to plant seeds of love throughout the city, the northeast Portland-based Community Cycling Center has launched Velotines.

The concept is simple: Stop by their retail shop at 1700 NE Alberta Street during regular business hours and tell them who you love, why you love them, and where to deliver the message.

Then the CCC’s team of professional love couriers will type up your message on a romantic vintage typewriter and hop on their bikes to deliver the note.

The CCC says the inaugural program is all about spreading “positive community spirit”.
[Read more…]

(Photos by Connor Ebbinghouse)

Portland’s cycling’s ecosystem got a big injection of new life on Sunday when 411 kids received their very first bicycle.

It was all part of the Community Cycling Center’s 21st annual Holiday Bike Drive.
[Read more…]

Tetteh in front of the CCC offices in northeast Portland on Monday.
(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

Community Cycling Center CEO Mychal Tetteh will leave the organization later this year for a new a position with the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation. Tetteh, 34, has been hired by PBOT to manage the Fix our Streets program.

Tetteh has been with the CCC since 2005 when he got his start in the organization’s retail bike shop on Alberta Street. He was hired as CEO in August 2013. In his new role with PBOT Tetteh will oversee the implementation of a four-year, $64 million transportation infrastructure funding program that resulted from the 10-cent per gallon gas tax increase voters approved back in May.

In an interview yesterday, Tetteh said he’s proud of what the CCC has accomplished during his tenure. On the top of his list were the organization’s refreshed brand, stronger partnerships, a “deep commitment” to equity and inclusion, and increased investments in underserved communities. Tetteh said their summer bike camp program for east Portland youth will grow from 20 to 125 scholarships next year.
[Read more…]

Left to right: Poster at Gladys Bikes; front door of the CCC, Biden Bidon from Ruckus. These are just some of the ways Portland bike organizations have responded to Donald Trump.

Portland’s bike-related businesses and organizations are reacting to the impending Trump administration in a variety of ways.

Gladys Bikes on northeast Alberta has taped up a large poster on their window that reads: “We welcome all”. And down the street, the front door of the Community Cycling Center (and their blog) make it clear they too are a safe haven from hate.

And then there’s Ruckus Composites. The quirky and successful company that specializes in repairing carbon fiber bicycles is selling water bottles that feature an illustration of Vice President Joe Biden on them. Here’s why they’re bringing back this popular item:

“Maybe it’s our way of dealing with the stresses of operating a small business and the general modern world. Maybe it’s because we find that humor is sometimes the best way to deal with the truth. We made these bottles years ago as a joke but the time to bring them back couldn’t be more perfect. All jokes aside, the best thing one can do now is to get off the internet sometimes and take legitimate physical and peaceful action. Let these bottles serve as a reminder that each individual does have the power to make change, and to never forget the power of humor.”

For the coming week, Ruckus is donating 20% of the sales from each of the $10 “Biden Bidons” (“bidon” is French for can and it’s what the French call water bottles) to the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) — which they say is a “potential target for a certain incoming administration.” And because it’s Ruckus — and Biden — they’ve put some funny captions in the photos of the bottles on their website. Read them and buy them here.

Know of other ways Portland’s bike-related businesses are responding to these unprecedented political times? Let us know and we’ll update this post.

— Jonathan Maus, (503) 706-8804 – jonathan@bikeportland.org

BikePortland is supported by the community (that means you!). Please become a subscriber or make a donation today.

Half the residents of north Portland’s Portsmouth neighborhood are kids, and 80 percent of households with kids live in poverty.

Bikes are simple, inexpensive machines that can be a big part of those kids’ lives — but bikes often need repairs and tuneups, not to mention friendly folks to talk about how and where to ride. Four years ago, the Community Cycling Center opened a Bike Repair Hub in the middle of the New Columbia mixed-income housing community to try and solve that problem.

It’s a shed with tools and a staffer, next to an awesome skills course. But staffers cost money, and the CCC wants to double the number of hours that the Hub can be staffed this summer — enough to fix 50 bikes per week, they say.

[Read more…]

(Photo: Anthony Georgis)

Every year the Community Cycling Center’s Holiday Bike Drive gives 300 kids a new bike. But what about the families that can’t make it to inner north Portland to pick one up?
[Read more…]

Coming soon. And cheaper for some.
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)

When Portland made its first attempt at bike share in 2011, concerns about equity gave local leaders pause. So when the City rebooted the idea they made sure it would be accessible to as many Portlanders as possible; rich and poor.

Now the nonprofit Community Cycling Center will add to those efforts thanks to a $75,000 grant they just earned from the Better Bike Share Partnership, a collaboration between the City of Philadelphia, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, People for Bikes, and the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). The program, “strives to increase the accessibility and use of bike share in underserved communities.” The CCC’s award is one of nine grants totaling $532,000 that were announced today.

The CCC’s grant funding will be put toward a grassroots outreach and education effort that will start when the BIKETOWN bikes hit the streets in mid-July. The marketing initiative will be aimed at Portlanders living on low incomes. “In addition to offering very low-cost memberships through workshops, they will also use community feedback to improve and guide the system through launch and its first year of implementation,” reads a press release about the grants.
[Read more…]

Happy kids on good bikes is a potent combination.
(Photo: Islabikes)

Islabikes might be based in the United Kingdom but they understand how to do business in Portland: The company has donated 14 bikes to the local nonprofit Community Cycling Center.
[Read more…]

The CCC’s Lale Santalices and a member of Andando en Bicicletas en Cully at Sunday Parkways in 2014.
(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

Bicycle advocacy that’s inclusive of people from different racial and cultural backgrounds — commonly referred to under the umbrella term of equity — is something every bike group seems to be talking about these days.

But the Portland-based nonprofit Community Cycling Center has been doing this work long before it was common. And now they’ve been recognized with a “Catalyst Award” from the Alliance of Biking and Walking. The award was presented to the CCC at the recent National Bike Summit in Washington D.C.
[Read more…]