Help Erin Get To Bike Framebuilding School

Hi! My name is Erin and along with my spouse I own Boom Boom Bike Room. We are a small bike shop committed to the preservation of person powered steel bicycles.

For those of you that don’t know about the shop: we opened at the beginning of 2021 with the hope of filling the world with restored bikes. We are barbers by trade and had finally opened our own barbershop a few short months before the pandemic shut us down for most of our first year. We somehow managed to get mostly through it and when the shop next to it became available we signed the lease while we were still shutdown. Our barbershop didn’t bounce back quickly but we tried to do the best we could running two businesses. We worked tirelessly and had a few guardian angels along the way. We never gave up hope and after barely hanging on for two years we finally got a fantastic crew in there at the beginning of 2023 that has helped the shop to flourish. Boom Boom has become everything I hoped for and I want to always be improving it so that is why I am here asking for your help.

The next step for our business is for me to go to learn how to build bicycles. To do this I will need to take two weeks off from work and travel to another state. I need to pay for the program, flights and lodging while also supplementing the income I won’t be making. I don’t have vacation time because I’m self employed. I don’t have savings because between building a barber shop, getting through the pandemic and opening Boom Boom the well is dry.

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet and the thing that brings me to ask for money is because I really want to do this and usually I can figure out a way but this is just a big financial undertaking I can’t bare because of health issues. A month before opening Boom Boom I found out I was pregnant with a baby I never thought I could have. It was joyous until it almost took my life which resulted in our baby coming two months early. She was totally fine but I wasn’t. To say life was hard is an understatement. We don’t qualify for paid family leave, unemployment or disability because we are self employed and I had to take over 3 times the amount of time off I had saved up for to recover enough to be able to stand up again and do my job. I’m leaving out the worst of it because it’s hard to think about but I could really use your help.

Help if you want to support rad things. Help if you believe in sustainability. Help if you support small business. Help if you just want to help. I’ll appreciate every dollar that comes my way and whatever doesn’t go directly to funding my education will be directly put back into Boom Boom Bike Room.

It has taken me two months to write this and publish it because it might be the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Thank you for any and all donations.