Bikes Are Always in Season: Best Deal at the Farmers Market is a Free Bicycle Tune-Up

STOP BY THE Mount Pleasant Farmers' Market Saturdays at Lamont Park (17th & Lamont Streets NW), and you'll see familiar piles of leafy greens and scrumptious fruit. You'll also find Ben West peddling a service of a different sort. The 35-year-old has been offering free bike tune-ups (10 a.m.-1 p.m.) since April. "It works perfectly for the markets," he says. "It's friendly, low-key, green."

What began as a help-your-fellow-neighbor effort grew to a weekly venture for the D.C. resident. It wasn't much of a stretch: West's day job consists of promoting cycling activism and events as the Washington Area Bicyclist Association's bike ambassador.

Got a dusty cruiser in your garage that may need some oil? Or a Schwinn with gummy tires? Cruise on over. The aim is to help folks get air in their wheels and oil on rusty bike chains, and to offer cycling route suggestions. It's a quick fix — not a comprehensive mechanical overhaul. (West recommends those with serious technical issues hit up a local cycling shop.) In the three-hour time span he's at the market, West and fellow volunteers put a positive spin on things for typically 30 cyclists.

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Bloomingdale Farmers Market to Blossom Soon

Map It:  New York Ave 

UP AT THE CORNER of 1st and R streets NW in Bloomingdale, two neighborhood newcomers are preparing to bloom. Big Bear Cafe, which was supposed to open earlier this spring, is still putting the finishing touches on its space just off Florida Avenue near North Capitol Street.

Meanwhile, according to Advisory Neighborhood Commission 5C03 member Stuart Davenport (who's part of the team behind Big Bear), a regular Sunday farmers' market is getting ready to launch June 17. From an e-mail:

We have farmers lined up with local vegetables, fruits, free range eggs, pork ribs and sausage, and I think we now have a baker!