Claudia Friess

CLAUDIA FRIESS

On Yellow Bike Project’s internal and neighborhood community building:

“At Yellow Bike we have work days, basically.  That’s usually a weekend afternoon.  There’s always something that needs to be done.  Those are…for the coordinators and apprentices to get to know each other…And so, there might be some people you never get to see because they only work day shops, and you can only do evening shops.  So those work days are a good way to get to know people, and it’s always good to work together.  I feel like you get to know people much faster and more intimately when you actually work with them than if you go to a party or something and just talk to them.

“We have the birthday party that we celebrate…Yellow Bike’s anniversary…We basically invite the neighborhood and give kids’ bikes away.  So that’s something that people know about and the kids are excited about…Everybody knows about the shop, and a lot of people that live in the neighborhood come and fix their bikes and stuff, especially kids.”–Claudia Friess

Claudia Friess first moved to the United States as a seventeen year-old foreign exchange student.  After studying marine biology in Galveston, Texas and South Carolina, Friess relocated to Austin as a fisheries scientist.  Friess expresses her commitment to economic and environmental sustainability in almost every aspect of her life: as an employee of an environmental advocacy organization; a coordinator-in-training at Austin’s Yellow Bike Project, a collectively-run volunteer community bike shop; and as a resident of House of Commons, a vegan housing co-op.  In this excerpted interview, Friess discusses her introduction to Yellow Bike Project and House of Commons’ philosophy, purpose, and lifestyle.  She also argues for efficient, equitable public transportation, as well as for training Austinites to control their own means of transportation through bicycle workshops and community outreach programs.

You can read the full transcript here.