Campaign seeks funds for an indoor park for skating, BMX & other bikes

Allison Waters, a Portland-based skateboarding lover, has unveiled a concept for a “family-friendly indoor skate park” within Portland city limits.

The current plan is for two days a week to be open to BMX and other bikes.

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.

If all goes according to plan there will be at least one oasis for bicycle riders on what is now a pretty miserable stretch of Highway 30 known among many who ride it as “Dirty 30.”

The bike lanes on Highway 30 north of downtown Portland are infamous. They are strewn with shards of every type of material imaginable, they are often taken over by large trucks accessing the many large driveways, and they are adjacent to fast-moving traffic. Flats are a common occurence and there aren’t many destinations where you’d feel like stopping to take a break.

That’s why we’re happy to report that the owner of the Union Market and Deli at 5515 NW St. Helens Road (between Kittridge and Saltzman – map) wants to install a public bike repair station. Martha Cole has lauched a campaign on GoFundMe.com to raise $1,550.[Read more…]

Donuts, Gofundme, and a humorous way to humanize bike theft