Meet Your 2022 Contra Costa County Bike Champion Of The Year

Press release from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission:

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CA — Bay Area Bike to Wherever Days organizers have named the winners of the 2022 Bike Champion of the Year awards. Given to individuals for inspiring bicycling in their Bay Area communities, this award recognizes individuals in the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties for their commitment to bicycling as the primary mode of transport.

The 2022 winners included Najari Smith of Contra Costa County.

If the definition of “bicycle champion” is ever inducted into the dictionary, then there will be a picture of Najari Smith right next to it. If something bicycle-related exists, Najari has done it.

He started off by joining the Richmond Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee, which advises the city on bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure projects. Soon after he began organizing regular, frequent community bike rides, which he dubbed Rich City Rides and officially established it as a fiscally sponsored non-profit in 2012. The rides are extremely popular in the community (over 300 rides with over 20,000 participants) and often incorporate an educational aspect and/or community clean-up activities. Rich City Rides also regularly hosts bicycle clinics and repair workshops from the bike hub at Unity Park, a park located on the Richmond Greenway that they proudly helped design and build.

The non-profit hub at Unity Park serves as not only a space to refurbish bikes, but also as an educational hub, where local residents, primarily youth, can learn bicycle maintenance and take classes on bicycling. After spending enough hours learning, they can earn a bicycle for themselves.

Two years after founding the non-profit, Najari, along with his partners Taye McGee, Mykee Ramen, Rafael Fernandez, and Josue Hernandez co-founded the for-profit, worker-owned cooperative Rich City Rides Bike Skate Shop in downtown Richmond. The Bike Shop serves as a community pillar, welcoming youth and families to get everything they need to ride for health, endurance, and commuting while supporting the local economy. The bike shop is proud to provide these services that help people explore and enjoy bicycle commuting with a low carbon footprint and a high return on health and wellness. Now, Rich City is continuing to expand, recently moving into an old motorcycle repair shop to create a larger community space, the Rich City Gallery, that will be used for community events, classes, gatherings, and as an art gallery.

In just a little over a decade, Najari has changed the bicycle landscape in Richmond and beyond.

Each winner will receive a Lezyne Strip Pro Alert Drive from Mike's Bikes, a bicycle-only membership for 24/7 roadside assistance from Better World Club, a laminated, boxed set of San Francisco Bay Trail map cards from the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), and a customized cycling cap from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC).

Don't miss Bike to Wherever Days during the entire month of May, as well as Bike to Work Day on May 20! Details can be found online at Bayareabiketowork.com. Follow us on Facebook at @biketoworkday, Twitter @BikeToWorkSFBay, and Instagram @biketoworkday_bayarea.

Bay Area Bike to Wherever Days is presented by MTC (the transportation planning, financing and coordinating agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area), 511 (the region's traveler information system), and Amazon. BTWD 2022 also receives regional support from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), as well as from many sponsors at the local level. Prizes for the Bike Champion of the Year winners were donated by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), MTC, Better World Club and Mike's Bikes.

This press release was produced by Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The views expressed here are the author's own.