Blinking and biking
into the light

The messenger-friendly Belleville Cycle Co-op
moves out of their cave and onto the street

OPEN TO THE CYCLING WORLD:
Minor Cordero and Caroline St-Laurent

by TRISTAN LAPOINTE

Behind the Bell Centre, through the loading dock, past the janitor’s office and you’re there. Getting directions to the basement location of the city’s only messenger-run bike shop, Belleville Cycle Co-op, wasn’t easy. Their old store, tucked away in the bowels of 1000 St-Antoine W., was a well-kept secret among the city’s 300-plus couriers. Having recently moved into a storefront on Bleury, Belleville has come up from the underground.

Running a shop that caters to underpaid messengers isn’t easy. A thousand square feet of floor space in a basement with no sign meant Belleville had to be a different kind of bike shop. So they carried simple stock; tires, tubes and the other consumable parts that messengers eat through regularly. Service-wise, the goal was to be able to turn around and fix people’s bikes ASAP, to literally keep messengers on the road.

The worker-owned business structure, originally lifted from another co-op in Minneapolis, has, for better or worse, seen them through the hard early years.

“It’s a worker’s co-op,” says founder Caroline St-Laurent. “You have to invest money to become a member. Everyone who works here has the right to say what’s on their mind and we try to work it out democratically. We’re really open towards money. Everyone knows what’s up and we collectively decide where to put the profits.”

The shop was founded in 2006, when St-Laurent and a couple of other messengers decided that delivering mail sucked, and opened a courier-friendly shop instead.

“I was on welfare and my friends were working as messengers,” she says. “When you’re downtown working on a bike, there’s almost nowhere to go to get it fixed. I had an idea for a shop and started trying to get grants.”

And grants she got. Emploi-Québec’s Soutien au travail autonome program, designed to help budding entrepreneurs build and manage their small businesses, put St-Laurent through a four-month business course and gave her another eight months to develop a business plan before she could get the dough.

“We ended up winning a provincial prize for the best co-op proposal that year and got a lot of money from the Quebec government,” she says. “I think it worked because I obviously knew what I was talking about.”

The move to the new space on Bleury means a few changes. While couriers’ bikes will always have first priority, the extra 800 square feet provided by the new location includes a few amenities the last space lacked. A free DIY repair station is already in place and more complete bikes and stock are hanging on the walls. Aside from repairs, Belleville also organizes races, either one-offs like last week’s longest skid competition, which saw a dedicated few skidding track bikes down Bleury for glory and a yogurt container full of loonies, or the annual Course des Morts on Halloween.

“We want to emphasize the community aspect of the shop for messengers and non-messengers alike,” says co-op member Minor Cordero. “We’ve got the DIY space and we’ve already decided to open up a coffee shop soon. Belleville has always been a hub for messengers and we want to extend it to everyone.”

CELEBRATORY BBQS WILL BE
HELD AT 2111 BLEURY ON FRIDAY,
AUG. 20 AND FRIDAY, AUG. 27, $5
FOR BURGERS AND BEVERAGES.
MORE INFO: BELLEVILLECYCLE.COM