This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Luke Breen, co-owner of specialty bike shop Perennial Cycle in uptown Minneapolis. The following conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Perennial is a specialty bike shop. We do cargo bikes, city utility bikes, and commuting bikes, and have been a niche business for 33 years.
Perennial focuses on community events. Last year, we did 35 organized community rides. So, while we do rely on selling bikes, we’re very community-driven. That’s always been a big piece of Perennial Cycle.
You cannot be in Minneapolis without ICE’s presence impacting your day-to-day. You just simply cannot. Imagine: We had to shut down our schools to keep children safe. It is insane what is happening right now.
As a bike shop, we’ve had meetings so we can be aware of each other’s levels of anxiety — how we’re doing, is everybody OK? For some people, it’s going to affect them a little differently, and we’ve come up with a plan for if ICE is on the block.
We were closed on Friday, January 23, for the ICE OUT protest. To me, it’s a big ask to have small businesses go on strike, and later I heard that it was the first general strike in 80 years. I’m really glad that Perennial did that.
I also went to the march in downtown Minneapolis last Friday afternoon and was a little overwhelmed with emotions. I had no idea how massive it was. When you’re in a march like that, you can kind of see the few thousand people that are around you. It isn’t until later when you see those overhead videos posted online, and it’s like, ‘Oh my God.’
It had an amazing vibe. There was not a lot to cheer about, and yet there’s a lot to be together about. It took a lot of awesome organizing to pull that off. There were restaurants that were handing out food. There were tables with cases and cases and cases of hand warmers. It was minus 10 when I went down there, and the wind was blowing. I did not expect that many people because it was so cold.
After Alex Pretti was shot, we came together to raise money and find community
We held a fundraiser for MIRAC, a local immigrant rights organization, scheduled for Sunday. I talked with Brieanna, the artist and screenprinter I am working with. We considered canceling. Brieanna and I decided that canceling is exactly what ICE would want us to do. We did not cancel the event.
There was a line outside the door that was a half-block long at one point. Tons of people showed up. Everybody was just happy to be part of the community. A couple of legal observers explained what it’s like to be an observer, knowing that lots of people are very curious about it, but it’s pretty intimidating when you just go by what you’re seeing on the news and on Instagram. That was part of the aim of the fundraiser: to foster observer conversations.
We raised over $4,000. We brought in, I don’t know, probably like 20 grocery bags of food for a food shelf. All those things were great, but the most appreciation came from people saying they were happy to be together, happy to have a place to go and be around other people who were kind of in mourning.
We had little cheat sheets with information about the event that we handed out when visitors walked in the door. One of the things was, “Yes, we’re a bike shop Monday through Saturday, but today we’re not. Please don’t ask us questions about bikes.” We just didn’t have the capacity to do bike stuff.
There were plenty of people at the fundraiser who weren’t familiar with the bike shop. But plenty of people who were like, “Wow, this is kind of weird. Why is this happening in a bike shop?” And that was kind of fun explaining that, actually, this is very normal because we focus on community events. We have Cambros containers for serving coffee to 100 people. We have serving trays for treats. We have all the things that are necessary to organize an event like this. The bike shop actually already has the musicians who were singing.
It’s off-season for me. I am really happy to have found a place to plug in to be useful during what’s happening in Minneapolis right now. Numerous people came up and thanked me for opening the shop and doing the fundraiser. Most of the kind words were about community and not about raising money.
ICE, in addition to tariffs, means my business is dealing with multiple crises
Hopefully, the shop will make it through, but honestly, it is a real challenge.
Our city’s under siege, but in reality, we all know it’s our country that’s under siege. We know a lot of people are super challenged by what’s going on right now. I sell pretty expensive bicycles. These cargo bikes are not cheap. So for me, the tariffs have completely turned my life upside down. I’m learning that there is a plural for the word crisis, and it’s crises. And that’s what I’m looking at — one crisis on top of another.
I have high seasons and low seasons. It’s a low season, so I have to be very protective with my money right now. Any loss of income is a big deal because we’re barely going to cover expenses for the month. This is a typical cycle for a business in Minnesota, a very seasonal business, so none of that is overwhelming. But, yeah, that’s why the strike was definitely a big ask, and I’m so happy I did it. I believe that the store will reap rewards on the other side of this.
