At former Bike Kitchen Assistant Manager Andrea Sandeen’s first Access Night, her bike repair advice competed with the sound of a full brass band. It was 2021, and both the Bike Kitchen’s women and Queer-centric weekly hours and UBC Jazz Club practice had moved outside to the Nest courtyard because of COVID-19.
“The trumpet was going, like, 'doo doo doo doo doo!' super loud, and I was yelling at the top of my lungs, and I was the only mechanic working trying to support like seven people at a time,” said Sandeen. “It was cuckoo for cocoa puffs.”
Access Nights have calmed down since then — now, they’re inside the Bike Kitchen in the UBC Life Building on Wednesday evenings, staffed by at least two mechanics. They have the same purpose though: providing affordable bike education for women, Queer and Trans people.
According to Sandeen, Access Nights are about making biking accessible to “people who might not otherwise get a foot into the biking world.” Access Nights are free, since the Bike Kitchen waives its usual $12 per hour tool fee.
A 2023 report by the Centre for Active Transportation in Toronto found that the bike mechanic field is “heavily white male dominated.” Access Nights cut through that noise to give underrepresented bikers space to get their hands dirty.
I’d been to the Bike Kitchen for repairs, but never to an Access Night. As soon as I decided to write this article, I got hit by a car coming out of an alley as I biked down Broadway. I emerged unharmed but with a twisted wheel. My girlfriend’s brake cables broke that same weekend.
So, I went to an Access Night in August not only as a student journalist, but as a woman with two broken bikes and a dream. As long as you’re not afraid of rolling up your sleeves and asking someone with cool tattoos for help, that's all you need.
“You can [show up and] know nothing, like, ‘What's a bicycle? I don't know, I'm here to learn,’” said Sandeen. “That's a great place to start.”
Sandeen’s commitment to low-barrier education stems from their mechanic origin story: a “shitty ex who was into bikes.” Every time they worked on their bikes together, Sandeen left feeling belittled. After they broke up, she set out to empower people to fix their own.
“I want to provide a positive experience so people don't have to depend on their partners to have a sustainable mode of transportation, to have a way of getting around the city,” they said.
The Bike Kitchen used to have women-centric access nights and 2SLGBTQIA+ access nights on alternating Wednesdays. That changed this spring, merging into a single access night since it was “a bit too granular for average folks,” said Sandeen.
There isn’t an identity police bouncer at the door — just the expectation that on Wednesdays, from 6:15–9 p.m., the Bike Kitchen makes space for people who might feel put off by straight, male-dominated bike culture.
“I look like a feminine person, and being in traditional pro bike shops, I've had people be anywhere from casually misogynistic to straight-up aggressive because of the way I look,” said Sandeen. “People talking down to me, people over-explaining things, people giving me straight-up wrong information that I know to be factually incorrect, but acting like it's correct.”
Unfortunately, Sandeen’s experiences aren’t uncommon. So, especially on Wednesday nights during biking season, the Bike Kitchen’s stands are usually full.
As Mira, a bike kitchen mechanic whose last name has been withheld due to privacy concerns, helped me unscrew my wheel, another amateur mechanic was waiting for their expert opinion on an experimental Facebook Marketplace refurbishing project.
“Access Nights get busy,” said Mira. “I would love for there to be two other mechanics staffing, but it is what it is.”
With more funding, Mira wishes they could hold a whole access day. But Bike Kitchen funding has been a problem since 2016.
Two years ago, shop manager Alex Alvarez told The Ubyssey the Bike Kitchen was in a $30,000 deficit. The Bike Kitchen filed AMS referendums to increase their student fee in both 2022 and 2023 to cover costs and keep programs like Access Nights running — although only last year’s referendum passed.
The fee increase is tough for students to swallow, but Sandeen defends it as an investment that benefits everyone through cleaner air, less crowded buses and fewer cars.
“My spiel is that everybody wins when more people ride bikes, even people who do not ride bikes.”
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