NJ.com
By Peter Genovese | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
ASBURY PARK — “Miss Kerri, this won’t come off,” said King Woods, who was working on a Dunelt bike.
“These old bikes, it’s always a tight fit with the forks,” Kerri Martin replied, handing the 14-year-old Woods a screwdriver. “Wiggle it down.”
The wiggling worked, and Woods continued on his repair job.
“I’m a bike doctor,” explained Jack Pitzer, who was working on an Electra Townie 7D. “I’m taking bikes and giving them a second life. I give a diagnosis, get them treated and send them home.”
He smiled. “We never lose a patient.”
At Second Life Bikes on Main Street, the patients are bikes, and they all have stories. The 38-year-old Martin, who started fixing bikes once a week in a church garage four years ago, now presides over an operation that includes 10 volunteers, scores of kids and 1,000-plus bicycles.
The 12- to 18-year-olds, most from Asbury Park, Neptune City and Neptune Township, come in after school to repair bikes. When they put in 15 hours of work, they earn a free bike.
How does Martin keep track of their hours? Time cards, which the children fill out, sometimes to painstaking degree. One logged out at 4:58 on a recent day.
“I’m not a hard-ass but you have to earn that bike,” Martin said, explaining her overall philosophy. “You can’t come in here, sweep the floor for an hour, and get a bike.’’
While in college, the Freehold native lived in Germany, France and England on an exchange program, getting around on her trusty German bike. After graduation, she worked for a German investment firm in New York City, but after 9/11 — she saw the first plane to hit the World Trade Center overhead while biking down the West Side Highway — she decided to “quit the corporate world’’ and move to the Jersey Shore.
Martin worked at Bike Haven in Fair Haven, then Brielle Cyclery in Brielle. Along the way, she met “Father Bill’ — the Rev. William McLaughlin, pastor of Holy Spirit Parish in Asbury Park — who told her that if she cleaned out the church garage, it was hers to use.
Martin started accumulating bikes from her parents, friends or “just picking them off the street,” got local kids involved in their repair, and pretty soon what was known locally as “Bike church’’ needed larger quarters.
Last year, Martin moved her 200 or so bikes to a 600-square-foot room at the Jersey Shore Rescue Mission in Asbury Park. She moved them again in April, to the 7,500-square-foot space she leases on Main Street.
The donated bikes are everywhere — on the floor, the wall, the stairway leading to a loft where there are even more bikes. There are Firecrackers and Blast-Offs, Freewheelers and Free Spirits, an occasional Mongoose Rockadile, Magna Electroshock or Roadmaster Excitement.
Bins, buckets and crates are jammed with derailleurs, brakes, grips, chains, handlebar stems and helmets, all donated. A tool bench is stocked with screwdrivers, wrenches, hammers, pliers, ratchets, blade saws and duct tape. Repair slips are held together by clothespins. One sign reads, “Give me your tired your poor bikes.’’ Another: “God grant me the courage to sell my car.”
That’s one thing Martin doesn’t have to worry about; she has never owned a car.
Second Life Bike’s philosophy is stated on a pamphlet: “We rescue bikes. We fix bikes. We sell bikes. We earn bikes. We ride bikes. We love bikes.”
Prices vary, but don’t go looking for price tags. There are none.
“I don’t want to have a store feeling, and I just kind of know (the prices),” Martin said. “I’ll check Craigslist, I know what other shops are selling them for.”
About 200 children have worked at Second Life Bikes this year alone. Some put in a few hours, never to be seen again. Others, like Woods and Dajon Williams, are determined to get that free bike.
“When I get my bike,” said the 11-year-old Williams, thinking ahead, “I can come here and fix it.”
The volunteers include Pitzer, by day a bike mechanic, by night a sound man at The Saint, a local club. There is Pete Leather, a self-described “company restructuring victim” who can be found here in the middle of the night repairing bikes. And Nathan Muniz, a veteran who calls the work his personal “rehab,” instead of “just collecting my check and vegetating.’’
And then there is “Miss Kerri,” who may be fun but is no pushover.
“All the time you spend here sitting on the couch, you need to be fixing bikes,” she playfully scolded one teen.
But Second Life Bikes is more than a bike shop, or after-school diversion for kids. Martin recently held a bike-riding class in the parking lot at the Windmill, across the street, and she wants to hold more. Most of her charges are boys; she’d like to get more girls involved by starting a girls’ bike club. She envisions classes on health and nutrition, and maybe at some point would turn over part of the space to bike- or environmentally related micro-businesses.
“There’s a bigger picture here,” Martin said.
Second Life Bikes has become a hot property: Martin has received calls from Girl Scout troops, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Rotary clubs, even parole officers.
“People want to be a part of this,” she said.
Martin, meanwhile, has become a familiar face around town.
“I can’t go anywhere without, ‘Bike Lady, the bike’s great,’ or ‘Bike Lady, it’s making a noise,’ ” she said, smiling.