Pedal to the Metal at Cabot’s Quad Bikes
Bicycle wheels adorn the walls of Cabot House basement. Tools, screwdrivers, and rags lie on wooden tables and hang from pegboards. This is Quad Bikes, a student-run shop dedicated to fixing the bikes of students and faculty.
Since Quad Bikes manager Julian K. Li ’25 was a sophomore, he has been working to reopen the operation after it shuttered during the pandemic. Li’s previous experience working at bike stores in the Boston area made him passionate about building a shop that the Harvard community can rely on.
“Cambridge is one of the most bike-friendly places in this country,” Li says. “Quad students really rely on their bikes to make that Quad-River journey a little more palatable. If you just look around Cambridge, you can see that bikes are such an essential part of people’s livelihoods, navigating the world, and being connected to the neighborhood.”
Li first learned to tune up bicycles in 2019 while working at Ace Wheelworks. There, he found his passion for tinkering and fixing things and enjoyed seeing his work help customers get from point A to B more easily. Later, Li picked up another job at Breakaway Courier Systems as a bike messenger in downtown Boston, delivering letters, legal documents, and packages.
“My quarantine was just bikes, bikes, all day,” Li says.
At Quad Bikes, Li and his roommate enjoy the same kind of hands-on projects. Students and faculty bring in their broken bikes, and Quad Bikes is able to get them up and running again after some oiling, fixing tires, replacing screws, and repainting.
Li boasts of their seemingly spotless record: of the hundreds of bikes that have rolled in, Li says, “we have yet to have a bike come in that we were not able to roll out in safe working condition.”
“Having someone walk in with a broken bike and walk out with a fixed bike — there are few things I've done at this university that have made people so instantly happy,” Li says.
In line with its mission of empowering Harvard’s bike community, Quad Bikes also holds educational workshops teaching people how to fix smaller issues on their own.
“We want it to be a hub for learning and empowering people to engage with and use their bicycles,” Li says. Workshop attendees get a souvenir Swiss-army-knife-style multi-tool keychain emblazoned with the Quad Bikes logo to help them use what they learned.
Due to the 2023-2024 academic year club freeze by the Dean of Students Office, Quad Bikes is not yet a registered student organization. Without access to funding and organizational support, Li says that Quad Bikes looked to different funding sources. The reopening was supported by the Harvard Office of Sustainability, which provided a grant for the club.
Li says the funding went toward stocking up common parts needed for repairs such as cables, brake pads, and tubes. Quad Bikes also received funding from Harvard Undergraduate Urban Sustainability Lab to provide free tools at workshops.
Li is grateful to Cabot House for opening its doors to Quad Bikes.
Faculty Dean of Cabot House Ian J. Miller says he feels that Quad Bikes is exactly the kind of student initiative that needs to be supported.
“Our job as administrators is to remove impediments to student discovery and success. And Quad Bikes is — along with the Cabot Cafe — a sort of path-breaking operation,” Miller says.
Miller believes organizations like Quad Bikes provide their student managers an opportunity to develop skills that will help them in great ways later in life.
“Not only is it a fantastic sustainability initiative — not only does it touch on issues of transportation and accessibility on campus — but it’s an initiative for students to be able to seek employment,” Miller says.
Miller also says Quad Bikes is helping the Harvard community travel around campus and the greater Boston area more sustainably.
For Cabot House tutor Richard Allen ’22, the rebirth of Quad Bikes has particular sentimental value — he recalls his blockmates working at Quad Bikes before the Covid-19 pandemic when he was an undergraduate. Allen has been working closely with the Quad Bikes managers to continue the organization’s mission.
“I’ve been very inspired by this. I think I’ve come to see it as a little bit of a passion project of my own as well,” Allen says.
With only two mechanics at the shop currently, Li and the Quad Bikes team persevere to support the Harvard community and its bikes and transportation.
“Nothing is worse than having this super convenient form of transportation that gets you to the SEC from the Quad, and all of sudden your bike breaks down,” Li says. “To have an accessible resource that can ensure that what you take for granted is always available and functioning — people really do appreciate that.”
— Magazine writer Vivian W. Rong can be reached at vivian.rong@thecrimson.com.