Despite the uneasy feelings after our impromptu meeting with Max, today wasn’t as unsuccessful as we thought it would be. I remember Kirill asking me if I was at all excited after he saw the discouraged look on my face after almost fainting at the notorious Ontario Wheelhouse. I say notorious for one main reason: it’s cursed. Well it’s not really cursed, but it brings us bad luck. Almost every time we visit the wheelhouse something bad happens.

We were one of the architecture student groups of Cal Poly Pomona tasked with the creation of a bike shelter installation, and we first came across the wheelhouse when we were looking for bike frames for our structure. The Ontario Wheelhouse is a grassroots community organization ironically funded by the Pitzer College that allows anybody to fix their bikes for free thereby promoting the use of bicycles for transportation. They gave us 12 bike frames for free and when the project was done, we were so grateful for their help, we decided to donate our bike shelter to them. At the end of the semester, Kirill broke his collar bone when we were trying to relocate the structure and the next day, their dog was hit by a truck as we were assembling it on their front lawn. All of this was to no avail, as a year later we discovered that it only took them a month to saw it up and sell it for scraps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We came back on June 21st, almost a year since we last talked to Max, with something different in mind. This summer, we planned to work with organizations that are aligned with our interests; primarily environmental and social justice organizations which could provide us with a design opportunity. Max and the Ontario Wheelhouse mentioned several small opportunities that we could potentially design for. Kirill then inquired about a garden or a farm that Max mentioned he worked with a year ago. We spent several hours cleaning and truing wheels; waiting until the garden, or huerta, was going to open. This is around the time when I started to losing my balance and sense of consciousness. So Kirill and I called it a day and headed out to get some food at Max’s recommended taqueria to alleviate my ill state.

We arrived at the garden and that’s when Kirill questioned my enthusiasm. It took us nearly half an hour to get out of the car, but we finally did and moments after walking in a woman by the name of Maria approached us and asked us what we were there for. We introduced ourselves and were overjoyed by her welcoming and enthusiastic aura. The moment we said “architecture students” she lit up and immediately said that has work for us. We were to come back Monday and participate in a community meeting for what was to become the redevelopment plan of the 3-acre site.