recycling

A reader contacted me to get my advice on retrieving her bike that had been swept up by the City in its yearly round up of abandoned bikes parked at post and rings throughout the city. My reply is below:

Hi Caroline,
I'm sorry to hear you've lost your bike. Your best bet would be to call 311 and find the official answer. From what I know the City staff put the notices on all bikes parked on ring and posts in the spring. The notices state that they will return a week later (or so) and remove the bikes that remain. Presumably they only take the ones with the notice still attached. From what I've been told by the City these bikes are either given to the police to be sold at a police auction or put into metal recycling.

I'm sure the City discussed this with their legal department before going through with this. There are always lots of abandoned bikes so the City is keen on keeping the streetscape clean. If you want to prevent this from happening in the future you will first need to remove the notice and perhaps ensure that your bike doesn't look abandoned by ensuring that it's in reasonable working order.

-- Herb

Hi there,

I was wondering if you know anything about the city's right to claim
someone's bike; specifically my bike that was parked at a ring and post on
my street.

I parked my bike outside all winter. I recently received a paper stapled to
my bike telling me to remove my bike. I didn't. And now my bike and other
bikes I noticed that had this notice attached are gone.

Tino captured the opening celebration of Charlie's Bike Shop (as part of the organization Charlie's Freewheels, which opened recently just a few doors east of Sherbourne on Queen. Charlie's works with youth from Regent Park to provide training in bicycle mechanics and now running a business.

Charlie's Freewheels was named in honour of Charlie Prinsep, a Torontonian who was hit and killed by a car on the Trans-Canada near Brooks, Alberta while on a cross-country bike tour. Charlie loved everything about cycling: riding, fixing, going on long tours. (The site is not far from my parents home. I visited the site in 2007 where Charlie was hit; the wide, flat, straight, isolated Trans-Canada has plenty of room to avoid hitting anyone, but the driver was most likely falling asleep at the wheel.)

Click on the photo to see Tino's whole gallery.

Some of the organizers help launch the shop, including Emma McIlveen Brown, Derek Chadbourne, Joshua Farr, unknown and Aaron Marques.

See also the first award ceremony at Critical Mass;

I was looking at the Etsy.com site of my Recyclist friend who dabbles in a wee bit of upcycling. She's made a neat bike seat bag made out of upcycled inner tubes (seen in the photo above). I decided to see what other type of bike-related crafty crafters I could find on Etsy.com. Turns out it wasn't that hard (just type in "bike" in the search bar). But I've winnowed the results to some of the ones I like:

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Things have been hopping at CBN these days. I'm sure it's busy at every bike shop, including the other community recycling/workshop places like the Bike Pirates, Bikechain and West End Bike Club. This has been CBN's first year of running a recycled bike shop with an expanded range of mechanic courses (Wednesday nights and Wenches with Wrenches). We've been mentioned in the Toronto Star and CityTV with the hullabaloo around the strike, saying that we've got lots of yellow Bikeshare bikes for rent ($10 per day if you're interested). We're also distributing the Momentum Magazine, so if you're interested in being a drop-off location, talk to us.

We've got two staff who are busy coordinating volunteers; others are leading workshops; sourcing donated bikes; selling recycled bikes; giving advice to do-it-yourselfers on fixing their own bikes; and just fixing up bikes.