Used to be that bike messengers were just about the only ones willing to brave the mean streets on two wheels, but we now live in an age where even dogs are riding bikes. Join us tonight and grab a free Stumptown stubbie (plus one for the road) as some spokespeople who’ve seen it all discuss the evolution of biking culture in NYC.

Keegan Stephan will have some news to share: this week the writer, activist, and co-host of “Bike Talk” (WBAI) announced the creation of Bike Yard, a pop-up for cooperative bike repair that’ll be located in Havemayer Park through next year. Stephan founded Cranked Up!, a cycle club and advocacy group, while at Sarah Lawrence and, after graduating, opened a bike shop in the South Bronx. He started volunteering — as a mechanic and eventually as an instructor, administrator, and organizer — at the legendary environmentalist non-profit Time’s Up in 2010 and went on to revitalize Right of Way, the direct-action street justice group best known for its unauthorized bike lanes.

Brendt Barbur started the Bicycle Film Festival in 2001 after he was hit by a bus while riding in New York City. The festival — along with Joyride, its affiliated art show — has since gone beyond the streets of the East Village to become a worldwide phenomenon, and has traveled to over 50 cities (it made a stop in London earlier this month and visits North Carolina next week). This year’s New York installment featured 60 screenings of bike-related films and a blowout performance by Blonde Redhead.

AJ Nichols was repairing and selling bicycles out of a basement studio — and teaching at 3rd Ward — before he took a storefront on Bushwick Avenue this past summer and opened Harvest Cyclery, a vintage and used bike shop with a focus on reclaiming underappreciated rides.

Daniel Leeb is a documentary filmmaker also known for his video installation work with artists such as Doug Aitken and avant garde musician Hisham Bharoocha. In 2003, he founded Cinecycle, a Williamsburg-based production company and boutique marketing studio that, among other things, has documented the rise of bike messenger culture in cities around the world — most notably in a short film, “Messenger,” that was commissioned by Puma in 2004.

They’ll all be coasting into the Newsroom at 7 p.m., so join us then at 155 Grand Street, off of Bedford Ave., in Williamsburg.

Amid the gloom and doom over closing record shops, there are a couple of glimmers of hope. Last week, Academy Annex  (check out photos of the new store at 83 Oak Street below) while a Bushwick newcomer hit the corner of Knickerbocker and Jefferson.
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Would you believe that we woke up this morning from the world’s biggest New York Comic Con hangover? The last two days since the convention ended on Sunday are a bit of a blur. These photos come from a memory card found in the tights of a discarded Robin cosplay on the bathroom floor that we don’t remember wearing. John Barrowman isn’t in any of them … yet.
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Earlier this week we got some literary types togeth to , and now we go east to Bushwick. Tonight at the Newsroom, a trio of Bushwickians will read from their recent work and talk about writing in the neighborhood. To keep you riveted, we’re giving away stubbies of Stumptown cold brew. So, yeah!, come see:

Brando Skyhorse: The LA-born author of the highly praised debut novel The Madonnas of Echo Park (winner of the PEN/Hemingway award and Sue Kaufman Prize) is a fixture at KGB‘s Sunday Night Fiction series in the East Village, but he actually makes his home in Bushwick. Tonight he’ll read from his forthcoming book, Five Fathers. The memoir of growing up with five stepfathers and being a Mexican-American who was raised as a Native American will be published in June of 2014 by Simon & Schuster.

Paul Rome: You’ve seen this guy around. He manages the Wyckoff Starr and his performance literature has packed the house at the Bushwick Starr — so he has a lot of starr power? Anyway, his debut novel, We All Sleep in the Same Room, comes out this month (see the just released book trailer). The psychological bender, about the unraveling of a Union Square labor lawyer, has already been called “a powerful symphony of melancholy and wisdom” by National Book Award finalist Howard Norman.

Patricia E. Gillespie is a professional filmmaker whose writing appears in Bushwick Poetry, a just published anthology of Bushwick poets. She teaches at the New York Film Academy.

7 p.m. at the Bedford + Bowery Newsroom, 155 Grand St., nr. Bedford Ave., Williamsburg

Making “upcycled vintage from 20th century pop culture” ain’t easy: to do it, artist Golly Bishop sometimes drives 800 miles to acquire vintage bedsheets, sleeping bags and curtains at yard sales; then he cuts out characters like Batman and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and sews them onto T-shirts. He’s been practicing this “post-modern archeology for a brave[ish] new world” full-time for the past five years, but in recent months the exorbitant cost of living in the city forced him out of the East Village, his home of 12 years, to a new studio space in the Catskills.
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