Monday Blues: The Stacks

When I worked at the museum, "the stacks" meant one thing. Someone might say to a coworker, "I'm going into the stacks" and you might pick up a note of trepidation in their voice. You might go back into the stacks and find some rogue patron wandering around lost,  and you'd have to confront them, "oh, hey, the public is not allowed in the stacks. You'll need to leave. NOW." Maybe you wouldn't be so gruff about it, but you would be kind of peeved at yourself that someone was able to sneak past without being noticed."

Anyway, I started this post about a different kind of "stacks" way back in 2019 (the top two photos are from that post, the bottom two were taken last week). Every May, following graduation at the end of the Spring Semester, abandoned bikes are collected from around campus and brought to the Pitzer College Green Bike Program, where they are stacked one against another, and sometimes one on top of others (ideally, students will bring them back voluntarily at semesters' end per agreement). There the bikes will be stored, refurbished if needed, to be brought up to working condition, and then raffled off to in-coming students a few months later when the Fall Semester begins. It is a great system that provides students with an inexpensive means of getting around. I don't actually know it anyone calls this twice a year collection of bikes "the stacks," but the term makes sense to me.

The Monday Blues has been an occasional feature here at the blog since inception; the blues, an emotion, a color, a genre of music, with a cycling twist.