When an 11- or 12-year-old Jan Maloff rode his bike to school in the 1960s, he said, he would usually stop on his way home. He’d turn in at Elmcrest Children’s Home — an orphanage at the time, he said — and let the Elmcrest children ride on his bike for a while.

“In my mind, I thought, ‘If I become rich, I’m going to make sure everyone has a bike,” he said.

Although Maloff, now the funeral director at DeWitt Memorial Funeral Home, never became rich, he has been able to provide Syracuse residents with an estimated 50,000 bicycles in the past 17 years. This year marks the 18th year of Maloff’s annual Christmas Bike Giveaway, which he said fills the three gymnasiums of Fowler High School with 2,500-3,500 free bicycles each Christmas season.

Since late November, Maloff and about 30 volunteers have been “swinging wrenches” at the New York State Fairgrounds, which has served for the past five years as a drop-off and restoration center for the bikes. Advance Cyclery, a bicycle shop on Seeley Road, has been providing parts to restore the bikes since the giveaway began in 1995, said manager John Galli, adding that this averages about 1,000 inner tubes each year.

The bikes will stay at the fairgrounds until Dec. 20, the Friday before Christmas, when up to 10 Department of Public Works trucks will move the bikes to Fowler High School, Maloff said. Those hoping to receive a bike — Maloff doesn’t require recipients to show any proof of their neediness — start lining up outside the high school at 4 or 5 a.m. on Saturday, he said. Once the doors open at 11 a.m., he said, about 2,500 bikes will head to a new home within an hour and a half.

While he acknowledged that some bikes won’t go to good use, he said he figured 90 percent of the bikes that leave the gym go to someone who needs it and will ride it.

And it’s not just for children, he added.

“I want mom and dad to have a bicycle too,” he said, pointing out that low-income families can spend time together riding bikes rather than spending up to $100 at the movies at Destiny USA, for example.

In his time volunteering with b.i.k.e. Syracuse — a youth biking program on the Near Westside — Common Councilor Bob Dougherty said he had seen firsthand how excited children get about the giveaway.

“Some of our kids have gotten halfway decent bikes through that,” he said. “The kids on the Westside really look forward to it.”

And while weather poses a natural problem to cyclists for at least part of the year, he said Syracuse is a generally bike-friendly city. It’s something that both former mayor Matt Driscoll and current mayor Stephanie Miner have pushed, he said, and something that the Common Council continues to consider.

Starting in January, he added, the council will renew efforts to pass a Complete Streets proposal to make Syracuse streets safe for any form of transportation.

 

Published on December 4, 2013 at 1:10 am