Listen: Earlier this week, we heard from Giovanni, one of the most outgoing bike mechanics I’ve ever met. Today, we meet two of the Valid Bike Shop’s most loyal and hard-working employees — Brandy and William. They’ll both be spending their next few months at the shop in North Division High School, and I spoke with them just before their summer kicked off.
William came to the shop knowing a bit about bikes, but not much about working in a bike shop. He got formal training from his instructor at the Valid Bike Shop, Jake Newborn, which he’s already put to good use — as you can hear in this piece, I even take advantage of his expertise a bit:
Brandy shows me their cargo bike
Brandy is one of the shop’s longest-standing and able mechanics. So, when the Valid mechanics took on the project of building a custom-made cargo bike for Fondy Market, Brandy was one of the leaders in creating this awesome piece of engineering (scroll to the bottom for the audio piece).
Learn more about the Wisconsin Bike Fed , the Milwaukee Workforce Investment Board , North Division High School , and make sure you check out that video on the Valid Bike Shop. And! Students will be there all summer fixing bikes to sell — if you need a new used bike, they’re the place to go.