Reject Retail and The Screen Printing Bike

Xela, a long time organizer with the O.V.A.S. (formerly the Ovarian Psycos) a community bicycle project started to serve femme, trans and non-binary folks, especially black and brown members of the bike community specifically in their neighborhood of formerly Highland Park and now East LA. In Oct 2022, we commissioned Xela as their business Reject Retail to make our Re:Ciclos shirts and invited them to do live screen printing the night of, also selling their original prints on shirts and patches.

At the time we realized there were more opportunities for us to work together and we quickly came to the realization that we NEED to make a live screen printing ready cargo bicycle for Reject Retail. At the same time Lulu, our newest volunteer and long time collaborator with OVAS, approached us looking for opportunities to be involved where she can apply her skills as a certified MIG and TIG welder in a direct way to positively affect communities.

With both opportunities coming together around the same time, we came to discover a very special and opportune project on our hands. Xela now works in a gang prevention program where she hopes to make use of the yet to be made screen-printing-station-cargo-bike.

We are very excited about this project so stay tuned for more developments!!!

Collaboration with Bike LA (Formerly LACBC) E Bike Pilot Program

One of the first programs Re:Ciclos was contracted to do was in collaboration with the Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition (BikeLA) to build 40 bespoke racks to fit a small fleet of electric bicycles that the LACBC purchased in an effort to pair them small business dispersed through the greater LA area. This program hopes to encourage more businesses to opt for bicycle technology in conducting a variety of needs, mostly around customer delivery services.

With our collective fabrication experience and years of bike nerdiness, we set out to design our first rack prototypes to fit the needs of their clients. Although we had little to no experience building bike racks specifically, we entered into the experiment with zeal. In the process, our design changed radically and we finally came to an approach we were incredibly happy with. Depicted below is one of our most special racks built for a pizza company that has a large flat services for fastening pizza delivery bags and two oversized bottle cages designed to fit two, two-liter soda bottles.

While Re:Ciclos is mostly aimed at creating full fledged cargo capable bicycles like the models listed elsewhere on our site, we know that a burly bicycle fitted with an equally heavy duty rack is a very capable cargo carrying machine #put a rack on it. The LACBC has had a very long relationship with Re:Ciclos Founder Jimmy Lizama as he was one of collective of its founding members. We genuinely loved collaborating with them and if their pilot program takes off (and how could it not?) then we genuinely look forward to the possibility of continuing this collaborative effort with them in the future.

No More Ghost Bikes: Partnership and Collaboration and Solidarity

In October 2022 we held our end of the year fundraiser as Re:Ciclos celebrating almost one full year in our metalshop that we call “Songs” named after the muffler shop that formerly inhabited the shop in which we now make bicycles. We did this in collaboration with No More Ghost Bikes, an affinity group of bicycle leaders of Los Angeles (think Bicycle Kitchen, Chief Lunes, Trash Pandas, Bike Oven, Bikerowave, O.V.A.S. etc) whose goal is to collectively create a preventative and responsive strategy to bicycle deaths across Los Angeles. No More Ghost bikes was started up in the middle of 2022 with a Town Hall meeting at Detroid Vesey’s (a cafe by and for bike people) aimed at bridging the gap between the bike spaces and community bicycle projects in LA. And we have been a part of those conversations since the beginning.

In May 2022, we helped host the LA Ride of Silence (a national day of remembrance for cyclists murdered by cars) alongside No More Ghost Bikes. We opened our Song’s space to the community as the start of the ride, where attendants made signs out of cardboard, spray paint and stencil that read out phrases such as No More Ghost Bikes, Don’t Run Me Over, Just Trying to Get Home etc to be adorned on their bicycles during the ride. The microphone was also opened to folks to speak to the community while we waited for more to gather. El Bicicrofono (bicycle-trailer-stage) was staged just outside the space adorned with signs and served as a platform for people to speak out from. When the ride started, El Bicicrofono with its car sized breadth, took a whole lane as the head of the ride as we all rode along in deafening silence, which is a harsh distinction to the sights and sounds of a raucous exuberant party ride that the community is accustomed to.

So come October we reunited with No More Ghost Bikes to coordinate a night of talks, live music and party for the Re:Ciclos 2022 Fundraiser. The night of, Raff and Anne Marie (of Trash Pandas and No More Ghost Bikes) gave an introductory talk to the aims of No More Ghost Bikes as outreach to more members of our sprawling bicycle community. The Fundraiser was a wonderful night: in addition to working with No More Ghost Bikes, the fundraiser stood as in solidarity with Bici Libre, a sister community bicycle project, which at the time was fighting eviction from their long held space (and home) in MacArthur Park (RIP). Xela, a longtime coordinator with the O.V.A.S., made our T-Shirts and was also present the night of live screen printing as well as selling their own prints as Reject Retail. That fundraiser night was not unlike other bike project fundraiser nights in that swaths from the whole community come together to make the magic happen and propel us onwards and upwards.

Upcoming we are slated to host the five-year anniversary of the Trash Pandas in Songs in February 2023 and we are so excited to continue our partnership of collaboration and solidarity with No More Ghost Bikes.