In Glasgow, a queer bike shop is reshaping cycle culture

You’ll find Dynamo CIC tucked away in a quiet corner of Govanhill, Glasgow – the bit still untouched by fancy coffee shops, yoga studios and bakeries. It’s in the unit next door to Glasgow Autonomous Space, a social centre where the city’s most marginalised mobilise to fight capitalism and other forms of oppression.

Today, I’m attending a DIY bike repair session. They run most Saturdays to empower folk to fix their own bikes, instead of having to pay through the nose at a traditional bike shop. And seeing as Dynamo CIC is a queer-run, feminist bicycle workshop modelling an alternative cycle industry, autonomy for the community is front-centre of their mission. 

Inside, you’ll find several copies of the Dyke News Scotland by the door underneath a poster that reads ​“TRANS PEOPLE BELONG”. There’s bits of bike everywhere, including three elevated upside down ones in the workshop. Five people attend to them with spanners and wrenches, working away under an embroidered sign that says ​“FUCK MACHO BULLSHIT FOREVER”.

The atmosphere is completely different to any bike shop I’ve entered before. Usually, the first thing I do is apologise for encroaching on their space, then tell them what I need help with, wincing at the eye roll and again apologising for not knowing how to do it myself. Until now, I’ve never stopped to ask: is there any other profession where the customer is expected to know how to do the job themselves?

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At Dynamo CIC, there’s none of that. The owner and founder, Sylwia, is helping a workshop attendee, Freyja, change the pedals on her bike. Sylwia hands her the tools she needs to do it, demonstrating the exact movement needed, and when Freyja successfully removes one everybody cheers. 

Freyja loves cycling, especially around Glasgow – a mostly flat city with a terrible transport system – yet she often feels uncomfortable in bike shops. ​“I had a really negative experience recently,” she tells me as she picks clogged oil out of her chain with a screwdriver. ​“I was thinking about building a bike for commuting, and was told everything I wanted was wrong. My opinion and needs were wrong.

“Coming here today, I was excited,” she continues. ​“I have things to fix and I know I’m not going to be judged, just helped.”

Annie, a volunteer who’s traveled from Edinburgh to help Sylwia today, nods knowingly. Annie’s had similar experiences. They went to get their bike serviced and found they’d switched their pedals without asking. ​“I didn’t like the pedals,” Annie says. ​“And I didn’t like getting pressured.” 

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So they learned how to change the pedals themselves, and found it so empowering they began learning more and more until they became a bit of a bike nut themselves. They’ve just spent about 10 minutes telling me about the different types of back bearing with total enthusiasm.

Everybody in the workshop today has similar gripes. Clearly, FLINTA folk don’t feel comfortable in most bike shops, which are generally dominated by cis men. ​“Patronised”, ​“upsold” and ​“disempowered” are words that keep coming up. 

I bought a new bike from a store in Glasgow’s south side and was told I’d better hurry up because they were closing in an hour. A year later, I went back to get mudguards fitted. The fitting cost was excruciating, and a week later a screw came loose, jamming my wheel. I’d heard about Dynamo through the grapevine and turned up exasperated. Sylwia fixed it for free.

When Annie decided to learn more about bikes, they knew it had to be somewhere they felt welcome. ​“I wanted to learn somewhere that people weren’t talking down to me,” they say. ​“With most bike shops, I bring my bike in for one specific problem and pray I get it back when I need it and it doesn’t cost too much. Other than that I just nod and smile. They’re male-dominated, and have a tendency to railroad you into shit. I get it’s sometimes about safety concerns, but you’re on the back foot when you have no knowledge yourself.”

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Dynamo CIC flips that on its head by teaching its community how to fix their own bikes. No task is deemed too basic. Sylwia fixes my bell and then diligently shows me how to pump my tyres based on the pressure specifications printed on each one – information I didn’t realise existed. 

Sylwia tells me it took them a long while to get to this point. They opened Dynamo three years ago after spending enough time in traditional bike shops to understand the culture was never going to change from within. As one of the few non-males in the industry, Sylwia realised if they wanted an open, inclusive environment, then they’d have to create it.

“The name Dynamo means your movement generates electricity,” Sylwia tells me. ​“It’s cheesy but our slogan is ​‘Power the change you want to see’.”

Sylvia is about 5ft 3in, with short, straight, sandy hair, thick rimmed glasses and the kindest face you can imagine. They’re wearing a flannel shirt over a black hoody and cargo trousers and always seem to have a spanner in hand. Their fingers are black with grease, oil and soot, and everything they say has a kind of reassuring quality to it, like they never, ever want anyone to feel stupid.

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Sylwia grew up in a town just outside Warsaw, Poland and got their mitts on their grandma’s bicycle aged seven. They were riding with confidence within the hour. ​“From that first time I rode the bike, the world just opened up,” Sylwia tells me. ​“It’s so much more fun than walking, and I could go a lot further and still be back in time for my curfew.”

Back then, bikes weren’t for kids. They were purely functional, a way for older people to get their weekly shop faster, but Sylwia soon became a hobbyist. They loved tinkering with it. Taking the wheels off, adjusting the brakes, taking it apart and putting it back together. They loved nothing more than cycling off to some faraway forest or lake and when they were 11 they voyaged all the way to their mate’s house in a village 15km (9 miles) away, asking strangers for directions as they went. The episode nearly gave their mum a heart attack. ​“I left a note but it fell off the door,” they remember.

In 2016, Sylwia relocated to Glasgow after meeting some friends based in the city through bike polo. Their first job was at a popular bike shop chain with over 50 stores across the UK. ​“I was there for six or seven months,” Sylwia says. ​“It was like death by a thousand paper cuts.”

I ask for an example of a paper cut. ​“I was a mechanic, and the guy on the shop floor was a sales person. If a guy came into the shop, he would naturally go to the man. So I would see him roll in with his chain off the cogs, ask how I can help, and he’s like, ​‘No, no, I’m fine. I’ll speak to the guy,’ who points right back at me, and I’m like, ​‘Okay. Ready now?” 

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Sylwia had similar experiences at a social enterprise bike cooperative based in Glasgow, where they often felt like an afterthought or a token. ​“They had a little box of posters and old illustrations, and every guy that was on a bike was having a cool adventure through a forest and every woman was dressed in sexy clothes. I just got fed up and felt there was this massive gap in Glasgow.”

Dynamo CIC opened in Glasgow’s affluent West End in 2023, before snapping up its current spot in Govanhill in 2025, preferring it as a neighbourhood that’s always been for people on the margins. Govanhill is the first port of call for many of Scotland’s minority groups: Jewish families fleeing persecution in the early 20^th century, Pakistani communities arriving in the post-war years; Eastern European migrants, particularly Roma, from the 2000s onwards. 

Since the 2010s, it’s become increasingly queer and anarchist, with scores of DIY, grassroots initiatives packed into a very compact area. Not far from Dynamo CIC you’ll find the largest independent zine library in the UK, a queer-led community sauna, Scotland’s only Roma Cultural Centre, a tool library, a community newsroom and MILK, a community hub that supports refugee and migrant women in Glasgow. And that’s not even half of it.

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“The majority of people that come through the door now are either women or queer people, or cis-het guys that get it,” Sylwia says. As well as repairing bikes at reasonable prices, Dynamo serves the community through its bikepacking library: a £50 annual membership that gets you up to five items for 10 days any time throughout the year including tents, sleeping bags, mats, rain bags, and panniers. ​“That stuff can be super expensive,” Sylwia says.

Ultimately, the dream is to create a biking community across Scotland for everybody: every gender, every ethnicity, every age, body type, fitness level. Dynamo CIC is powering the change they want to see by making everybody feel welcome and never, ever making anyone feel stupid. 

“For ages, I was waiting for somebody else to build a cycle space where I felt safe,” Sylwia says. ​“And finally I realised… it’s going to be me. I’m gonna do it.”

Alice Austin is a freelance journalist. Follow her on Instagram.

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