A Place to Tinker: The Story Bearings Bike Shop

J.Rich Atlanta believes in elevating influential voices in our community. Today, we hear from Becky O’Mara, Co-Founder of Bearings Bike Shop in Adair Park!

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If you have ventured out onto The Beltline westside trail as it traverses Adair Park you have likely seen the exterior of Bearings Bike Shop directly across The Beltline from the old Farmers Market complex. While you may have seen the exterior of the building chances are you are unaware of the magic that goes inside. We took a moment to sit down and speak with Becky & Tim O’Mara the husband and wife duo behind Bearings Bike Shop, to uncover what inspired them to start the business and why they chose to call Adair Park home.

The Bearings story began with a simple gesture of neighbors helping neighbors. In 2008, Tim and I moved into Adair Park, a historic neighborhood in Southwest Atlanta. One day, 8-year-old Britney came by and asked us if we could help fix her bike. We came up with odd jobs around the yard as a way for her to earn the money to fix the bike. After she had helped around the house several times, we ended up surprising her with a new bike. Word spread and soon all the neighborhood youth wanted to know how they could earn their own bicycles.

“A concept was born: kids would be invited to earn a donated, refurbished bike by picking up trash in the neighborhood.”

— Becky O'Mara

Eventually an idea began to emerge: very few of these children had bikes, but all over the city many outgrown bikes were collecting dust in garages and basements. In Adair Park, residents were frustrated by the litter and dumping that tormented our streets. A concept was born: kids would be invited to earn a donated, refurbished bike by picking up trash in the neighborhood. With that, everyone won. We had stumbled into community development, finding a unique connection point to the youth in the community as well as a learning tool for teaching kids valuable life skills that go beyond the bicycle.

Out of this initial gesture grew Bearings Bike Shop. Our mission puts the right tools in the hands of youth enabling them to advance their skills to build productive lives. Today, Bearings is the largest earn-a-bike program in the city and serves over 300 students annually. Our vision is to see those that we serve take ownership of their lives with character and purpose and experience the freedom of economic mobility.

“Although the prospect of earning a bike is what draws kids to the program, the excitement of learning new skills and being part of a community keeps them returning, week after week.”

— Becky O'Mara

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Although the prospect of earning a bike is what draws kids to the program, the excitement of learning new skills and being part of a community keeps them returning, week after week. Our signature program is an after school drop-in program where participants can earn a bike by learning how to build and fix bikes. We teach mechanical skills and kids earn points for every hour they “work”, or participate in the program. They can then use their accumulated points to “purchase” bike parts and accessories and to use the shop resources to maintain their bikes.

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The environment invites staff and volunteers to build relationships with students and reinforce the character strengths that are leveraged in the bike shop environment. We also serve the community through a fully-functioning retail bike shop in which we offer full tune-up and repair services and sell quality refurbished used bikes. It’s also our primary training space for teens and young adults learning valuable employment skills in the context of a bike shop. Every summer, we employ 10 teens in our Frameworks internship program at the shop. Two to three young adults usually stay on with us through the remainder of the year, continuing to hone their mechanical skills alongside professional bike mechanics as they serve customers.

More than anything, our hope is that Bearings is a community hub where people of different ages and different backgrounds connect over the common love of bikes. We’ve seen the richness this adds to all of our lives. Often, that relationship can be the start of something beautiful.

Make sure to check out Bearings Bike Shop.
PRO TIP: They are about to open a new workshop overlooking The Beltline!

Khalil Thompson 9/4/20 Khalil Thompson 9/4/20

The History of Adair Park

Before there was Adair Park there was the West End, a small frontier outpost founded in 1830 outside of Atlanta and built around the railroad, Fort Mcpherson, and Whitehall Tavern. After the civil war the area west of the railroad (now Lee St.) began to be developed. Governors, Mayors, Georgia’s first poet laureate, world famous authors, prominent Atlanta businessesmen and executives began to build large Victorian homes on the westside of this suburb. The westside of town was annexed into the city of Atlanta in 1894.

The eastside of West End was slower to develop. After the civil war the area was mostly rural, raw land owned by a handful of real estate speculators who didn’t live on the grounds. The land was cow pasture and a pond occasionally used for baptisms. This is what would become present day Adair Park. There were a few early occupants however, notably Elbert and Catherine who were freed slaves and who the present day neighborhood streets are named for. The owner of the majority of the northside of the neighborhood and most famous resident was Anothy Murphy. He was the founder of the Atlanta Waterworks and Atlanta public school system. Murphy was a civil war hero, famous for chasing a stolen locomotive named the “General” through multiple counties. His great locomotive chase would be made into a movie starring Buster Keathon in 1926 and a Disney movie in 1956.

In the 1890s what is now the north end of the neighborhood between Shelton ave. and Pearce St. began to be auctioned off and built upon. Advertisements for these homes call the neighborhood “Southside Grove” (thank god it didn’t catch on) and state “This property is just the thing for a man of moderate means to get a good home in a good community where many good families who do not have sufficient means to get on streets where property is so high.” These were modest working class homes built for blue collar jobs such as mechanics, machinists, and railroad workers. The exception being the large A.G Gillette Victorian mansion overlooking Metropolitan avenue.

George Adair bought the portion of land south of Peace in 1883 at the age of 70, but development was slow. This could be because there was a pond/swamp in the middle of his land OR it could be because the owner died a few years after purchasing it. His sons would be ones to finish what George started. From 1910 to 1912, their Atlanta Real Estate Company designed the subdivision they named Adair Park and began the process of subdividing and selling lots in the neighborhood. Their designs included state of the art neighborhood amenities. They created a park out of the swamp, they built a new school in the center of the neighborhood, each house’s lot was 250 ft. deeper than what was standard at the time, and they ensured that residents would conveniently travel downtown on the Adairs Atlanta Street Car Line.

Indeed, there is no subdivision in the City of Atlanta where lots for homes, surrounded by every convenience and attraction can be purchased on such favorable terms and prices. Their development attracted a higher end clientele consisting of white collar workers, with the most common occupations to be salesmen, contractors, store clerks and managers (many in stores downtown), bookkeepers, company managers and officers, police and firemen, and railroad employees, most often engineers.

Home ownership exploded and Atlanta annexed both neighborhoods north and south of Pearce into the city in 1910, calling the entire area Adair Park.