West Sac Repair Cafe teaches self-reliance, sustainability | Focus on West Sacramento

Gerardo Zavala

February 3

For just over half a year, West Sacramento residents have been able get their bicycles and clothing repaired for free during a monthly West Sac Repair Cafe on the last Saturday of every month.

Admission for the event – held at the Arthur F. Turner Library at 1212 Merkley Ave. – is free for all West Sacramento residents and is held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Ani Durst created the repair cafe in June 2023 in an attempt to teach people how to be more sustainable and to address the growing issue of clothing waste.

"There's a lot of repair cafes all over the country and other countries and I found one going on in Illinois," she recounted during a Dec. 30, 2023 repair cafe. "When I saw it online, I said, 'We can do this in West Sac,' so I started talking with people I know and asked if they would like to do this in West Sac, and they said yes."

Taura Olariscy fixes clothing during a repair cafe Saturday, Dec. 30, 2023, in West Sacramento. Olariscy said she has been volunteering since the cafe started seven months ago. (Gerardo Zavala/Daily Democrat)

Durst said the local library offered a room where they could set up sewing machines and allowed Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates to repair bikes outside.

"SABA was willing to do the bicycle repairs and we just started talking to seamstresses and a seamster, and they all volunteered," she said. "So we just wanted to start small on something we knew we could handle and get the word out."

As the event has grown, Durst said she's planning on providing more services starting with cell phone and computer advice in January.

"They can't really offer to repair them because they don't have all the parts, but they can consult with people," she explained regarding cell phone repairs. "And then we hope to go on small appliance repair and electrical repair" in the future.

Durst, who organizes the sewing component of the repair cafe, said her group typically helps between 15 to 20 residents with clothing repair for blankets, dog beds, jeans and more.

When sharing some of her favorite memories from previous events, she recounted a time a young seamster helped a Vietnam veteran.

"We had a guy come in who's a Vietnam veteran and he has a vest with a bunch of patches on it and he was going to some big get-together back east and needed a new patch," she said. "So here's this probably early 80s guy and a 20-something seamster. If they were talking politics they might be in different camps, but here is this young person sowing this patch on this Vietnam veteran's vest and it was just so sweet."

Furthermore, Durst noted that West Sacramento is a diverse community and hopes to find ways for the cafe to be able to provide more help in the future.

Volunteer Hillary Pollock hems a pair of pants during West Sac Repair Cafe Saturday, Dec. 30, 2023, at Arthur F. Turner Library located at 1212 Merkley Ave. in West Sacramento. "It's important to reduce, reuse recycle and it's nice to be a part of helping people do that," Pollock emphasized. (Gerardo Zavala/Daily Democrat)

"West Sac is a community that's really mixed ethnically and that's reflected in our cafe," she emphasized. "But we're also just trying to reach out to communities where people can't get to us. Eventually, we'd like to spread out a little more in West Sac, not just be here."

Pierson Rohr, Durst's neighbor and director of outreach and partnership for Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates, said the organizers of the cafe reached out to him earlier this year to see if his organization would be interested in providing repair services for the cafe.

"The repair cafe is something that… makes sure that West Sacramento has resources to make a repair culture and get away from the throw-away and replace sort of thing that kind of ties all of us down," he emphasized.

His organization has averaged 30 bike repairs during each of the repair cafes, although Rohr said he's noticed higher attendance at each session.

"We put up paper flyers and try to get local businesses to help amplify (the event)..., but we definitely need more awareness," Rohr argued.

Furthermore, Rohr noted that the cafe is currently working on finding a more permanent location not in the library.

"We're trying to see if we can reach out to the city to get some funding from them or any sort of benefactors in the area," he explained. "Ideally, in the future, we'd like to get set up permanently in one of the rooms in the community center."

Additionally, Rohr is a commissioner on the Transportation, Mobility and Infrastructure Commission for West Sacramento, which has highlighted the need for transit hubs in the city.

"Part of transit is keeping transit running and that's a major function of SABA," he said regarding his organization. "SABA's mission statement is to get people out of their cars and on their bikes to help with congestion, health and everything like that, so there's a lot of different programs that we do. Free bike repairs is really only one of them."

To learn more about the Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates, visit sacbike.org.