Below is the text of the interim lease letter given to me (jake) on October 10, 2007 by Deb.  I retyped it from the paper version she gave me and was pretty meticulous about getting it exactly the same as she tyoed it, but typos may be my fault as well as hers.  With that in mind, please keep the original text intact so that everyone can see the same thing and put their comments below it.  Ok, have at it!

BEGIN LEASE TEXT ---------------------------------------------------------------

Attn: Free Ride

214 N. Lexington Street

Pittsburgh, PA 15208

Re:  Letter of agreement for 2008 Free Ride rent

This letter applies to the year 2008 until a formal lease agreement is developed and signed.  Construction Junction (CJ) agrees to allow Free Ride to occupy approximately 2,240 square feet of warehouse space.  The monthly rent shall be flat rate of $400.00.

Free Ride agrees to keep the space in good condition and any modifications to services, ie electrical, HVAC, etc., shall be approved by CJ.  Free Ride agrees to keep record of CJ materials used and shall reimburse CJ for those materials on a monthly basis, to be included with the rent amount of $400.00.

Rest rooms shall only be used for that purpose.  CJ has provided a sink just across from the entrance to Free Ride for convenience and to maintain better cleanliness in the rest rooms.  There shall be no washing of hardware, bike parts, dishes, food, or any other materials in any of the sinks.  Dumping of anything other than the water, drinkable liquids, and soap is prohibited

There shall be no use of any equipment that has a flame.  Free Ride is to maintain a properly maintained fire extinguisher.  Free Ride shall minimize the storage of oily rags and used tires/inner tubes that are set aside for recycling. (would like to set a maximum volume).

CJ encourages Free Ride to use the metal scrap dumpster, the recycling bins in the parking lot to minimize waste that would otherwise go into the garbage dumpster.

Free Ride and its participants shall use the separate man door located at the far end of the building.  Free Ride will be responsible for securing the building and parking lot at times when they are open beyond CJ store hours.

END LEASE TEXT, please leave comments below this line! ------------------------------

will says:

The stuff about the sinks and bathrooms looks a bit rough, same goes for the last paragraph on entrances & locking up, the rest seems pretty reasonable. It would be nice to figure out what the specific sink/bathroom issues are and address them more directly. Generally, I have very little understanding of what problems we have caused, or have been blamed for causing, for CJ. Deb sure seems to be concerned about some things, so obviously something's going on. It would be nice to understand her concerns better (and address them while still meeting our needs). For example:

a) Has Deb gotten specific complaints about problems that have been blamed on us? What were the complaints, who made them, when did the stuff in question happen?

b) What does CJ use the new sink for? I've seen a lot of random stuff in there, pitchers, plants, etc.

c) Clearly we make a big mess... sometimes we clean and sometimes CJ cleans. Is Deb unhappy about hours of CJ labor spent on cleaning?

d) We probably are responsible for partially clogging the drains fairly often and occasionally stopping them up. Is that what Deb is upset about?

e) We probably go through a fair amount of toilet paper and paper towels that CJ pays for. How much are paper products costing CJ? How much of that is from our usage vs CJ and all the other groups that come through. This seems like overhead that should be part of the rent rather than a matter of pay-by-the-sheet accouning. On the other hand, our usage might be a pretty large fraction of what gets used, and how is CJ supposed to figure out who's using how much?

f) What problems have resulted from people not using the Free Ride entrance? Does Deb understand that quite a bit of the wrong-door activity has nothing to do with Free Ride?

These are the specific sections of text that seem problematic to me:

1) "...keep record of CJ materials used and shall reimburse CJ..." is pretty vague. What does CJ "materials used" mean? When and why would we be using them? Do they want us to pay for paper towels? If so, no biggie...we use a bunch of them, so it seems fair for us to pay for them (or maybe just buy our own).

2) "...shall be no washing of...in any of the sinks..." doesn't seem to be directly addressing whatever CJ's concern is. What's the issue...food and goo clogging the sink, splashed grease? We are going to be getting grease on stuff, at the very minimum from hand washing...no way around that...we work on bikes. Food down the drain is quite avoidable though (scrape it into the trash). No washing of dishes is kind of silly. What about pitchers, etc when they have beer bashes and the like? Seems like the sink was put in largely in preparation for the Steel City Big Pour; if that wasn't about washing dishes or other food related stuff, what was it about?. If the issue is clogging the drain, fine. Lets have text saying we have to make sure not to leave the drains clogged; that's a pretty reasonable thing to ask for.

3) "...Dumping of anything other than...drinkable liquids..." again does not seem to be directly addressing whatever CJ's concern is. Does Deb think we're pouring benzene or other crazy shit down the drain? That one's easy, a bit of that might have happened before, but we've already put a stop to it, so no problem. Do they want no grease spots or grease down the sink? Sorry, that's gonna be a problem. Do they have issues with simple green? Why? That seems a bit unreasonable. Do they want to eat off of/wash dishes in the new sink without getting any bike grime on their stuff? If so, a) why can't we use it for dishes, b) hold on a minute...the point of us helping pay for the sink was to have a place where we could make our mess in peace, not for CJ to have a free/subsidised dish sink we can't use.

4) "Free Ride...use separate man door...will be responsible for securing the building... open beyond CJ store hours" All well and good if we're the only ones using the building, but frequently we're not. What about dance rehearsals, Solar Decathalon work, etc? I frequently see non Free Ride people using other entrances...if CJ wants to let that happen, no big deal I guess, but blaming stuff those people might do on us is not cool. Also, we are not necessarily going to be the last ones out.

 (morgan says) what the fuck is a man door?

(jake sez) a MAN door is a term used to describe a building entry/egress device which is supposed to be a portal sized for a HUMAN PERSON (much like the door to a bedroom or office, for example).  in this case we are talking specifically about the entrance which has Free Ride's nice vinyl graphics on it and is indeed sized for the use of PERSONS rather than fork lifts, cats (although they'll fit), fire trucks or space ships. however through the magic of patriarchy, we now have a device that has been named for the 50% of humanity that somehow came to represent 100% of humanity.  i want to change that dumb fucking line, too.

 (shaun sez) Well then, since we reject patriarchy, I think we should naturally reject this entire sexist lease letter. No compromise!

 (jessica says) I'm concerned about the line where we are responsible for securing the doors after hours.  Sometimes it's not physically possible (busted gate, frozen shut, etc.).  I think it should change to something like "except in cases where material disrepair in the premises make this physically impossible for a normal person."  Just so we don't end up liable for something that happens some frozen night when the gate won't move.  Also it should specify we're responsible for securing our people-entrance (the controversial "man-door") and the front gate - NOT for entrances we don't use, but other people do and might leave unlocked. 

It should specify what 2,200 feet we are getting, so they can't make us move again.  And, what is she counting to get that number?  Originally we had 2000; is she counting the gap they left at the non-wall long side of our space?  We didn't ask them to leave that gap.