Every other week on NHPR, we like to put a spotlight on people and places doing interesting things around the state, on Give Back NH.
Learn more about Queen City Bicycle Collective, including events and how to donate, here.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Early in November 2025, a small shop on Elm Street in Manchester is filled with bicycles, some assembled, some not. Bicycle parts strewn across workbenches throughout the shop, the sounds of bicycle repairs filling the room.
Next door to the shop, sit Abby Easterly and Tyler Glodt, board members for Queen City Bicycle Collective, a nonprofit with the mission of getting and keeping the Manchester community riding bicycle safely and affordably.
That's our focus this week on Give Back New Hampshire. Now in their 10th year, Abby, who helped found the organization, says the idea for Queen City Bicycle Collective came from other bicycle collectives around the country.
Abby Easterly: Seeing how great this model was working in Tucson. And then I did visit a couple others too, because I was really taken with it and saw how important that was.
From there, Tyler says, came the repair clinics.
Tyler Glodt: Started off initially as a project in the sort of center city of Manchester focused on affordable bike repair.
Since those initial clinics, thanks to the community support, Tyler says the shop has evolved tremendously.
Tyler Glodt: At the outset, you know, we were largely fully volunteer organization, I was a volunteer. Since then, you know, we have paid staff that are, you know, working during open shop.
One of those paid staff members is Zachary Nunnink, who is responsible for those earlier sounds of repairs.
One of the things he values in his work is the ability to help the community, whose only mode of transportation is a bicycle.
Zachary Nunnink: I think it's good to get bikes back out there for people, for transportation. For a long time, a bike was my only form of transportation, so like I had some level of passion for it. It's nice to teach people and it's stuff that a lot of the things that I maybe didn't know at one point and really could have benefited from knowing, right, it's nice to, like, equip people with that or like give them that knowledge.
Watching her son work on bikes in his youth, Abby says, showed her the value of the work and how it could be beneficial for the Manchester community. That belief is still a core value of Queen City Bicycle Collective.
Tyler Glodt: You're here with your bike, doing the repair, learning how your bike works and how to maintain it.
Zachary Nunnink: They're the one who fixed their bike, right? And I'm just sort of here to help facilitate that and like, guide them through it.
Abby Easterly: The idea is that it's "do it together repair" and the tool is, in the end user's hands.
Another key aspect of Queen City Bicycle Collective is their yearly "Earn a Bike" program.
Tyler Glodt: So we have a "Earn a Bike" project that this will be our 10th year doing where kids at Beech Street School on Manchester's east side and Gossler Park on the west side. The kids in fourth grade have a chance to earn a bike through additional curriculum that's all administered by the school. So our job is to supply the bike. They're psyched. They're stoked to to get the bikes for sure. It's a real special day.
But what about those kids who may already have a bike or want to do something else?
Abby Easterly: To make it really right for every kid, we have repositioned it and it is now even called the "Earn a Bike/Be Active" program, and that allows the students to choose a different Be Active package that suits the way they want to be active.
Check out NHPR's story on the 2025 Earn a Bike event here.
Before leaving, I wanted to know what the feedback from the community was, and something Abby said resonated with me. Quotes from two people who have benefited from Queen City Bicycle Collective's services.
Abby Easterly: "This is my car. My bike is my car." Another one I always remember is the guy that explained that on foot he can get jobs in his immediate area, mostly minimum wage jobs. With a bike, he can get out to the better paying jobs on the edges of our city, where some of the light manufacturing and whatnot are. So it makes a huge difference. And with the better paying job, he would perhaps be able to become housed.
