The bikegeeks have now outlived another coffee shop.   First Westgate and now our most recent home, the Mercury Cafe.

The Mercury Cafe  was a well-loved haunt for not just the bikegeeks, but lots of groups in the bike community.  The Chicago Critical Mass art show was held there for a few years running and various other community events took advantage of their copious meeting space, yummy food, and free wi-fi.

The following is on the front page of the Mercury Cafe Website:  (provided for historical sake)

IT IS TRUE --- MERCURY CAFE IS CLOSING IT'S DOORS BY OCTOBER 4TH.

THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT. UNFORTUNATELY THE ECONOMIC TIMES PROVED TO BE A BIT TOO MUCH.

I was glad we could provide a space where different groups could meet each other. It was nice to see that everyone from books clubs to knitting clubs to Muslim/Jewish open mic to feminist meet ups could find the place comfortable enough for themselves.

Alas...  We'll miss you Mercury Cafe.

Both this site and the Break The Gridlock site are now no longer part of the Westgate system of shared logins.  This was done to allow the sites to be updated independently of the rest of the Westgate sites. Both sites have now been updated to Drupal v6.

Because of the amount of bikegeek work that has been going on outside of the Monday meetings, we'll be curtailing the "weekly" part of the meeting plan.  Meetings will still happen, but on an irregular schedule.
Please contact us if you want to come on by and we'll let you know if someone was planning on being there and, if not, see if we can arrange something.

All the Westgate sites have (finally) been updated to the most recent version of Drupal 4.7. For a long time they were stuck on Drupal 4.7.5, a very old version. At the same time, the sites have been broken up from the old monolithic Drupal installation to the installation-per-site technique that has become a recognized best practice.

At last night's meeting, the Westgate sites were moved off our old production server, whip.bikegeeks.org. A moment of silence and some beer-poured-on-the-ground for this old work-horse of a machine....

As of today, all bikegeeks sites are now running DreamHost with the exception of the West Town Bikes site which is running on a host owned by bikegeek Paul. DreamHost provides this account for free because of Break The Gridlock's looming 501c3 status.

On the Monday before the month's Critical Mass ride, bikegeek bikegeek meetings will be considered Planning Meetings.

These meetings will be used to facilitate new members into the group, give group consideration to new initiatives, and to generally have round-table discussions that benefit from a larger attendance. bikegeek members who cannot attend regular weekly meetings are encouraged to make it to these planning meetings.

As a review, here's a list of the sites in production and in development:

production

Auto Show Shutdown Association
bikegeeks (this site)
UIC College Of Cycling
Break The Gridlock
Friends of Chicago Critical Mass
Cycling Sisters
Campaign For A Free And Clear Lakefront
Stolen Bike Database
West Town Bikes
Working Bikes

and, in production, but not under Westgate

Bike Winter
Chicago Bike Shop Database
Bike Chicago Forums

sites planned/thought about/ or otherwise in development

NEIU College of Cycling
Chicago Midnight Marauders
Depave Chicago
Ding Your Bell (.org)
Logan Square Walks
Mothers Against Driving

Of course, and needless to say, if anyone reading this would like to help out, get hold of us or just show up to a meeting!

When we were in for our meeting last week, we noticed that the Mercury Cafe had replaced their wireless access. The new one is running WPA encryption and the key is posted by the register. My linux laptop connected readily and without incident. At this point, we're calling the Mercury Cafe our new home.

We have selected the Mercury Cafe as our new, provisional new home. We'll be testing the waters there for the next few weeks.

As always, check the meetings page to see our current meeting space. Meetings are sometimes moved for various reasons, with notices disseminated on the mailing list.