By: RTNN Surly
How did I get into bikes?
Wesley Ferguson, 26, is a bike mechanic at Venture North Bikes & Coffee, a North Minneapolis non-profit organization working to increase racial, economic, and gender equity within and beyond the biking community. He has a degree in Film, a hound named Harvey, and a thing for video games and mountain biking. These are his experiences as a Black man who rides bikes, told in his own words and edited for length.
I went to college at Columbia College in Chicago, for Film, and I had like a 10-mile commute from class to home. One day I was coming home [on the train] and the Cubs had just won, and this Cubs fan throws up on the back of my head. It goes down the back of my shirt, and I look out the window and there’s a bike shop right there. And I’m just like, you know what? Public Transit, no more. I bought a fixie for $250. I didn’t care if it was raining, I didn’t care about the weather. I’m not taking the train or bus ever again because I’ve always had something happen.
YouTube made it easy to work on a fixie. I would go through tubes like every other week, so it got to the point that I could take off my tires with just, like, a spoon. That’s how I learned. I didn’t have the tire levers. I just had the patch kit and spoons.
One day I used all my birthday money to order this one bike — a purple Throne, a fixie. When it arrived, it was 100% not put together. Like, the headset’s not in, the bottom bracket’s not in. And I went back to the order to see if I’d made some sort of mistake, but no. I purposely clicked that version, to assemble it myself. So I was like, alright, CHALLENGE.
I had to basically do it with all kitchen utensils. My degree in film is in production design — building sets — so I had all this extra pink foam. I would fill it with cement and make dumb tools out of that. “Alright, this is gonna have to be my headset press.” That was how I put the headset in. And that weirdly worked.
I like single track so much I wanted to continue it in winter. So I have a Wednesday in Gray Sweatpants. It has a blue Hope hub on it, Moloko Bars, and like half the stickers on it are blue. The other half are black. But that’s out of commission right now. I’ve been jacking parts off it for other bikes since it’s not winter.
It’s based off my favorite Ninja Turtle, Donatello. He’s the only practical one in real-life applications! If you’re gonna build a superhero team, they’re all kind of equal when it comes to fighting styles. Raphael is a hothead and a loose cannon. Leonardo’s a natural-born leader, but he’s not the strongest. I’m definitely inviting Michelangelo to, like, a bachelor party. Not inviting him to save the world. But Donatello. Tech guy. Bow staff. Purple.
One guy hit me up for some Campy hubs I was selling. Just single-speed, front, rear, that’s it. He says, “I have no cash on me. I will trade you this Cross-Check frame with 105 hubs on it.”
I’m like, “HELL YEAH!”
CTTO: Post related to: https://surlybikes.com/blog/realities_of_a_black_man_in_the_bike_world
