LA Times: At L.A. County General, salvaging the bicycles that patients left behind
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LA Times: At L.A. County General, salvaging the bicycles that patients left behind
"...At the shuttered LA County General Hospital, a bike mechanic toils in the basement to salvage some of the hundreds of bicycles left behind by patients...."
(likely paywall)
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-01/at-la-county-general-salvage-operation-for-bicycles-patients-leave-behind -
LA Times: At L.A. County General, salvaging the bicycles that patients left behind
"...At the shuttered LA County General Hospital, a bike mechanic toils in the basement to salvage some of the hundreds of bicycles left behind by patients...."
(likely paywall)
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-01/at-la-county-general-salvage-operation-for-bicycles-patients-leave-behindWow, the bike mechanic who is doing this...
"....Reyes said he always had a fascination with bikes but was surviving on odd jobs when the pandemic derailed his plan to open a music venue. Seeing that bicycle shops were doing well, he found a vacant storefront on Whittier Boulevard a block east of the Sixth Street Bridge and opened shop in July of 2020.
He has an unusual business model, finding bikes at yard sales and sometimes making bulk deals, refurbishing them and selling far below what they would cost new.
He also opened his doors to the community as “third place” for events like a cumbia night to raise funds for Palestinians. ....:"
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Wow, the bike mechanic who is doing this...
"....Reyes said he always had a fascination with bikes but was surviving on odd jobs when the pandemic derailed his plan to open a music venue. Seeing that bicycle shops were doing well, he found a vacant storefront on Whittier Boulevard a block east of the Sixth Street Bridge and opened shop in July of 2020.
He has an unusual business model, finding bikes at yard sales and sometimes making bulk deals, refurbishing them and selling far below what they would cost new.
He also opened his doors to the community as “third place” for events like a cumbia night to raise funds for Palestinians. ....:"
"...Rosas was a neighborhood kid who dropped out of high school during the pandemic and started coming to the shop to work on his low rider bike.
“We saw ourselves in him,” Reyes said. “So we decided to help him out.”
He did an internship and earned a job...."
"...Two volunteers with the cycling advocacy group People for Mobility Justice handed out helmets and lights to everyone who took a bike...."
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"...Rosas was a neighborhood kid who dropped out of high school during the pandemic and started coming to the shop to work on his low rider bike.
“We saw ourselves in him,” Reyes said. “So we decided to help him out.”
He did an internship and earned a job...."
"...Two volunteers with the cycling advocacy group People for Mobility Justice handed out helmets and lights to everyone who took a bike...."
@ai6yr My father in law owned a business manufacturing potentiometers in Chicago. One of the workers in his shop near Midway Airport was assigned to repair children's bicycles he bought at police auctions and add them to a shipping container in his parking lot. Whenever the container got full, he sent it to an imaginary address in a war-torn country, assuming the local mafia would grab it and sell them – which he was fine with, because that meant they had volunteered to be his distributors, and however they got there more kids would have bikes.
(P.S.: Credit where it's due: he was Eugene Maurey, WW2 Army captain/artillery forward observer, founder of Maurey Instrument Company, and self-published author of a fantastic war memoir and several books on... wait for it... exorcism.)
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
