Campus cruiser, beater bike, not-an-electric-scooter—the bikes Harvard students ride around campus go by many names. What they often all have in common is their various stages of disrepair. For many students, giving their bikes the Tender Loving Care they deserve rarely makes it to the top of the to-do list. Most bike shops are pricey, and students do not have time to make the trek off-campus, opting to instead risk their safety by operating a broken bike, or simply locking it and abandoning it.
After a month of brakeless cruising around campus, I hit my breaking point. I realized repairs were necessary for the longevity of not only my bike but also myself. A friend had sent me an Instagram post announcing the reopening of Quad Bikes for the spring semester. Soon after, my bike and I shared our final brakeless journey to the bike shop, and one quick service later, I was overjoyed to again experience the beautiful art of stopping without dragging my foot on the ground.
Quad Bikes has serviced the bikes of Harvard from a room in the basement of Cabot House’s Eliot Hall since 2003. Cabot House is one of the three Harvard Houses in the Radcliffe Quadrangle, known as “the Quad,” which is widely considered a frustratingly long distance from the Yard, the Square, and all athletic facilities.
After the shop became abandoned during the pandemic, students lost a valuable source of accessible bike maintenance on campus. Everett Sapp ’23 started looking to “try to fill that void” during the summer of 2022. The bike shop was up and running when he was a freshman, and as a student in Cabot House, he had learned about Quad Bikes and understood the impact that a restored shop would have on students, after seeing his friends abandoning their unusable bikes.
“At Harvard, [biking] was just the go-to mode of transportation for me,” said Sapp, a lifelong biker. “Mountain biking, road biking, gravel biking—it’s definitely the most fun way to get around a place.”
Sapp and his roommate, Liam McInroy ’23, collaborated to reopen the shop. With the help of Cabot House Dean Ian Miller and building manager Mike Russell, they reached out to the previous managers of Quad Bikes. “We worked with them a ton and started to close out the past version of Quad Bikes,” said Sapp.
Previously an independent business providing services for both students and the community, the new vision for Quad Bikes was based on the business structure of Cabot Cafe, a student-run business in Cabot House. Sapp and McInroy applied for funding grants, and Quad Bikes was able to take off after being awarded a decent sum from the Office of Sustainability.
After receiving an installation of two new brake pads and a cable, chain lubing, and some zip ties to secure loose parts, I expected to rack up quite a bill. Since the shop opened in spring 2023, “it was all free, both the service and the equipment that we provided,” said Sapp. Quad Bikes could provide gratis bike-fixing thanks to the awarded grants.
“When people would leave they’d often ask, ‘Oh, how much do we owe you?’ And being able to say that ‘you don’t owe us anything’ was pretty special,” said Sapp. “A lot of smiles were had because of that, and [it] made the work even more rewarding.”
Since Sapp graduated in 2023, it was Julian Li ’25 who witnessed my smile upon hearing that the repairs were free. Li, a resident of Currier House in the Quad, took over the position of co-manager this year.
“My first intro to biking, or specifically bike mechanics, was just figuring out how to take care of my own little vehicle,” said Li. “Going from doing a lot with bikes to doing absolutely nothing was a little daunting to me,” he said. “I reached out to whatever email was listed for Quad Bikes as early as 2020 because bikes have been a huge thing for me my whole life.”
Li didn’t hear back for two years. When Sapp looked into reopening the shop, he looped in Li due to his prior interest. “From the get-go [we] wanted to make sure that this was something that could last well beyond us,” said Sapp. Li maintains Sapp’s enthusiasm for biking and the future of Quad Bikes.
“This is something that really has been built from the ground up,” said Li, reflecting on how all that remains from the original shop is the space and some old tools. Now, after being open and entirely run by the co-managers for three semesters, Li believes Quad Bikes is ready to expand its staff.
For first-years freshly quadded this Housing Day, Quad Bikes could be the special Quad community they seek. Li hopes Quad Bikes could “get them really excited about a project in a student group in the Quad that they could really make their own and be a big part of in the coming semesters and years.”
“Bikes I feel like are a huge part of the identity of the Quad,” said Li. Valuable tools for any student, bikes have become necessary to decrease the commute to class for many Quad residents specifically. My blockmates said they would get bikes if we get quadded.
Li considers the culture of biking as a redeeming quality of being in the Quad because procuring a commuter bike opens doors far beyond just Harvard’s campus. “You’ve searched for this new way to get around campus and discover that, ‘Oh my gosh,’ a bike gets me everywhere,” said Li. “It opens you up not just to the rest of campus but through really all of Cambridge and all the city. I regularly go downtown just to see something different, and it’s what, a 15-minute bike ride.”
Biking beyond the bubble, or around campus, can appeal to any student, too. “Kids on all parts of campus definitely can rely on bikes and utilize them just as much,” said Sapp. The shop may soon sell refurbished abandoned bikes for low prices to students, according to Li.
As a campus bike shop, Quad Bikes sees more than your standard repairs. “College student bikes are pretty shit, right?” questioned Li. After seeing the frightful excuses for bicycles that students including myself ride, I must agree. My brother recently revealed that he had ridden my bike into the ocean and had thought the gears had completely locked up, rendering it useless. Now I understand why I was allowed to bring it to college. “Everyone’s just got a beater,” said Li.
Working with campus cruisers offers a unique experience for mechanics. “How you tune-up or repair a very good, taken care-of bike is very by the book,” said Li. “When an old student bike comes in, things are frozen in place that haven’t moved in five years, complete parts are missing.” Odd fixes are exciting for mechanics, and sometimes have peculiar solutions—Li recounted standing on a table to twist a bike out of a stubborn seat post. “There isn’t a rulebook, manual, or a YouTube video on how to explain because it’s just like, ‘How did it get to this point?’”
Already invaluable for students, Quad Bikes hopes to become university-integrated in the future.
“It adds a ton of value to the community in general to raise awareness of the feasibility of biking around campus,” said Sapp. He envisions Quad Bikes as an accessible resource to enable students to bike safely on campus as both an enjoyable and sustainable way to get around.
Thank you, Quad Bikes, for making riding my little dilapidated vehicle much more enjoyable and safe.
Clara Lake ’27 (claralake@college.harvard.edu) enjoys biking with functioning brakes but does not want to be quadded.