Biking in Berkeley

Berkeley and the Bay Area is a great place to get around by bike. Fairly flat and compact, with a combination of bike and freeAC Transitbuses (for UC students) it's more than possible to get wherever you want to go in the East Bay or the city without a car. Here's some resources that will keep your wheels turning.

Fix your Bike for Free!

Sometimes, bikes break. The good news is, the most common bike problems are fairly easy to fix yourself, if you have the tools and knowledge to do it. In the Bay Area, there are places to provide you with both of these at no cost. Fixing your own bike will save you money, teach you some useful skills, and can be great fun!

Street Level Cycles (previously Tinker's Workshop)

SLC offers "Open Lab Hours" when you can use their tools and get help from their volunteer mechanics to fix your bike for free. If parts on your bike need to be replaced, you have the option of buying affordable used parts from them, or if money is tight, doing a little volunteer work in return for these parts. Check out the website for lab hours.

Location: 84 Bolivar St, West Berkeley (map)

Website: tinkersworkshop.org

The Bike Kitchen

Across the Bay, The Bike Kitchen is a cooperative bike repair shop, with an amazing collection of tools and parts, and extremely knowledgeable mechanics. Here, membership is $30 a year (or alternatively, six hours volunteer time), but this will give you access to almost all of their used spare parts at no cost. Their open hours are on weekday evening hours and weekend - convienent for students. Check the website for more info.

Location: 1256 Mission at 9th, San Francisco (map)

Website: bikekitchen.org

The Missing Link

The Missing Link is a worker co-op that sells and repairs bikes, but also offers a free repair space where you can use their tools to fix your own bike. It's the closest to the Berkeley campus and has the longest hours, but unlike the other places, help is not part of the deal. There is a bike repair book you can use for reference, and if the staff aren't to busy you might get some help, but don't count on it.

Location: 1988 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley (map)

Website: missinglink.org

Need a Bike?

Don't have a bike yet? One option is to build your own for little or no cost. 'Building' a bike is not as hard as it sounds. All I'm really talking about is putting the various pieces together - perhaps more accurately described as 'assembling' a bike from free, used components. The best place to do this is at the Bike Kitchen (see above). It costs another $30 or 6 hours volunteering (in addition to membership) to get "building rights", but as this is the only cost involved, it's the most affordable (and potentially the most fun) option for aquiring a bike. Plus, you'll enjoy riding it so much more knowing that you built it up yourself. The downside of this option might be the time involved.

If you're looking at buying a bike, the used bikes can be a good deal and more than sufficient for getting around Berkeley. Depending on where you buy your used bike, however, there's a good chance it will be stolen - bad karma, and it'll probably end up being stolen off you as well. To avoid this, try buying from Street Level Cycles (see above), where your purchase is more likely to support the community programs they run rather than the stolen bike industry.

For new bikes, Berkeley has countless bike stores, some better than others. The Missing Link (see above) is a good place to support as it's a worker cooperative, which means that all the staff receive an equal share of the profits and a good wage.

I Wanna Ride!

Perhaps the single best bike ride in Berkeley that practically anyone can manage is to go up into the hills and enjoy the spectacular scenery and views across the bay. The climb up may be a challenge depending on your fitness levels, but if you give yourself plenty of time then you'll manage it without too many problems. And if it gets too much, you can just roll on downhill all the way home!

The best road to take up is Tunnel Rd - once you get on it there's almost no traffic, and the climb is very gentle and gradual. Once you're up the top (the road changes in Skyline Blvd), you can turn left onto Grizzly Peak Rd and follow this along the ridgetop. You can come back down any way you choose - Centennial Drive (behind the Stadium), Euclid or Spruce are all popular routes. Taking Spruce, the ride is about 17 miles long, and you should allow yourself around 3 hours to do it (although it might take considerably less time). You get great views practically the whole way, so pick a clear day.

You can get a map of this easy but rewarding ridehere.The site that hosts the map is calledbikely.comand has a bunch of other great bike maps and rides around the Bay Area (and the world). Just search Berkeley at the site a see what you find.