Bike Advocacy: Art for Bike's Sake Fundraiser

We recently hosted a fundraiser for Milwaukee's local community non-profit bike shop, Vulture Space, here at our new home in Riverwest. We've long been supporters of the guys at Vulture Space and when they reached out to us to see if we'd be interested in hosting their annual fundraiser, we were all in. We've had a few smaller functions at our space like our Meet the Maker frame building event and a few community yoga classes. However, the Vulture Space fundraiser really showed the full potential for our new shop. When we moved into our new location we realized with it's tall ceilings and open floor plan that it would be great for events and we designed the space so that our displays would be mobile so we could quickly convert the shop into an event space. 

The Art for Bike's Sake event was a little different than what we originally had in mind though because what the guys at Vulture Space needed to do was to convert our shop into an art gallery so they could display a host of bike related art that would be for sale at the event. This meant fully removing all of our products from our existing displays and rearranging things so art could be easily viewed and purchased by the attendees. 

A number of local artists that support Vulture Space donated an amazing variety and quantity of items for the event and a few days before the big party, artwork started to roll into the shop. 

The day of the event the rest of the art arrived and we closed the shop early to convert our bike shop into an art gallery. With the help of the Vulture Space crew we got to work hanging and displaying art and after a few hours the store was ready for what would turn out to be a wild night.  What was unique about this event was that in addition to people being able to purchase art, they could also get a tattoo, ride an assortment of handmade tall bikes, watch an artist create a mural in our parking lot and purchase beer that was generously donated by the guys at Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Guests started arriving around 5PM and I would say over the course of the night there were about 400 people that rolled through the event. One of the great things about our new location is that's it located in the heart of Riverwest which is a diverse community that's home to a huge community of cyclists and is also the home to the Riverwest 24 hour race. Because of this, when the party spilled out into our parking lot, the neighborhood didn't even blink. Beer was flowing until about 11PM, tons of art was sold and more than a few people walked out of our space with some new ink. When the party wrapped up the guys from Vulture Space hung around to help us get the shop in order and just like that things were back to normal.

We couldn't have been happier about how the event turned out and we're glad the guys at Vulture Space were able to use our new space for their annual fundraiser. Hopefully there will be many more epic parties like this to come here at Fyxation Milwaukee. Stay tuned!