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After School Bike Club at the Presidio YMCA

By Ben Caldwell  Photography: Ben Caldwell
Carlos Ramirez, a Grade 6 student at Francisco Middle School, in San Francisco’s North Beach neighbourhood, thinks he’s lucky to attend his school. Why? “Bike club!” answers Juan in a heartbeat. Francisco is one of nine San Francisco middle schools where the Presidio Community YMCA runs its popular bi-weekly after-school bicycle clubs – in partnership with the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. Francisco is also the only school in the city that has a bi-weekly bike maintenance class. Juan and his bike club mates were riding all over the city after just a couple weeks of learning the basics of on-street bicycling and brushing up on their skills in the school yard. In bike shop class, Juan learned to build a bike from scratch, piece by piece, and in January, he reaped the fruits of that labour, “earning” the bike he built. Juan’s teachers love the bike club too. This fall, Juan’s grades fell, and though his teachers tried everything they could to engage him, nothing worked. Finally, they threatened to bar him from participating in bike club. That did it; his grades promptly went back up – and have stayed up since.
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