Visit our Seattle Pop-Up Shop

Pop-up shops have become increasingly popular and we’ve decided to give it try. We partnered with like-minded brands and designed a shopping experience that inspires your everyday lifestyle in sustainability and bikes. Add the Pike Place Market and you have a little bit of everything.

The store is located at 1528 1st Ave, Seattle, WA, across from Pike Place Market and will be open until the end of July and possibly longer. Come in and check out our latest Ag designs, bike gear from Green Guru, and clothing and accessories by Endurance Conspiracy. We are open 7 days a week from 12-8pm. We are very excited to be in this location to share the upcycling experience with even more people. You can even drop off your old climbing rope, bike tubes, and camping tents to be upcycled into new products. The perfect time to take advantage of getting rid some of those items sitting around the garage. Keep posted on upcoming events through our blog and

Keep posted on upcoming events through our blog and Facebook page and we hope to see you soon!

Graduation Gift Ideas

You’ve got a graduate in your family. It’s always fun to see someone mature and move on to the next chapter of their life. They’ve been fun times and hard times, but have been raised right and care about others, the environment, social justice, and are looking forward to making a difference with their life. So what sort of a gift might they like?

Fear not. A graduation gift from Alchemy Goods is not only unique and stylish, but is easy on the environment and made right here in the USA. We get a lot of questions here at Alchemy Goods about what we’d recommend for graduation gifts. Here are our top picks for gifts that will be faithful companions for your graduate’s next years:

Bags and Backpacks

Students are tough on gear. Luckily, Alchemy Goods products are built to stand up to any punishment your student can dish out. Our bags and backpacks look good while inner tube makes for a durable product that can be spilled on, thrown around, and keeps books and supplies dry on the way to class. We’ve got options for everyone including the Brooklyn Backpack ($139), Madison Backpack ($129) Dravus Messenger Bag ($159), or Jefferson ($139).

Wallets

With maturity comes greater financial independence. With financial independence comes a need to have somewhere to keep your cash. To avoid a wad of bills, id, and cards getting lost in the laundry, give them a new wallet that will go the distance. We recommend the stylish Franklin Reflective ($38). Other options are the Jackson ($44) which is better suited for travelers as it is sized up to accommodate international currency, or the Bryant Money Clip ($24) for minimalists.

Belts

Give them confidence and style with the gift of a belt. Their style will be on point with one of our reversible Delridge belts ($32). Made from recycled webbing and a reclaimed bicycle inner tube, the military style buckle can be reversed to either wear the Delridge with the unique inner tube side out or to show off the colorful webbing. Don’t forget to size the belt based on how your graduate wears their pants and how long of a tail they’d like. Our sizing is based on body measurements from a traditional waist placement. Size up if your graduate wears their pants lower on the hips or wants extra belt length. Another option is our venerable Ballard Belt ($42).

Accessories

Whether traveling, studying abroad, moving into the dorms, or just moving to a new place, everyone needs a great way to keep their toiletries organized. The Elliott Toiletry Kit is just that ($38). Made from durable truck inner tube, the Elliott will stand up to many a trip down the hall to the bathroom. It comes with a valve stem zipper pull and color matched zipper and lining. The Elliott Mini ($32) is a smaller version for the minimalist that can also be used as a makeup kit or to organize other small items like chargers and computer cables. We have several colors available to suit any personality.

Seattle Spring Biking Events and Community for Women Riders

At Alchemy Goods, we are all about bikes. Our foundations as a company were in cycling, and we will always consider the cyclist community our constituency. There are few things greener than bike commuting, and few things that can make someone feel as free, strong, and in touch with the natural world. But we also recognize that cycling can be exclusionary, and that access to biking information, resources, and community is a social justice issue.

Low income individuals and people of color are actually more likely to bike for both recreation and transportation than high-income or white riders, yet there’s one group that remains marginalized and underrepresented on the road: women.

One 2014 study of public bikeshare use by gender in the cities New York, Chicago, and Boston showed that women accounted for 24 percent, 21.4 percet, and 25 percent of all riders respectively. In London, a recent study showed that 77 percent of bike trips were taken by men, and only 5% of women identified as frequent cyclists. According to Rutgers University professor John Pucher, women constitute about 25 percent of bicyclists in the US, and at 28 percent (as calculated by the Seattle DOT), Seattle isn’t doing much better. In fact, according to data from 2006-2010, we aren’t even doing that well regionally:

2013 Leaders of Puget Sound Bike Share, Bike WA, Bike Works, Cascade Bicycle Club, and Seattle Greenways

There is no denying that there’s an imbalance, however, the times are changing, and Seattle has a ton of awesome bike opportunities for women right now. Indeed, in 2013, for the first time ever, every top leadership position in the five major Seattle-based bike organizations was held by a woman. We’d like to highlight a few of the cool opportunities for women-only rides and women-led groups in Seattle this Spring; and for general advice pertaining to women, we recommend checking out the super-helpful Women Bike Advice Column from Cascade Bicycle Club.

UPCOMING EVENTS

SHE BIKES–Seattle Cycle Sirens, April 14th, 6pm

This ride around Mercer Island will cover 14 miles with 700 feet of elevation gain, offering a fun challenge to beginners

Seattle CycloFemme, May 8, 11am

The amazing national organization CycloFemme has an annual nation-wide all-women ride every year on Mother’s Day. This year, CycloFemme is partnering with local Critical Lass to host a ride running from Cal Anderson Park to Seward Park, celebrating with a picnic at the finish line.

RECURRING EVENTS

Women’s Saturday Group Rides–Cascade Bicycle Studio

From CBS in Fremont, four women will be leading these Group Rides every Saturday from April to August, meeting at 9am. All rides have different durations, paces, and paths, so follow the above link to check out their schedule and find the right ride for you, whether that means challenging climbs and new terrain or just having an opportunity to learn how to ride in groups on the road.

Menstrual Mondays

Every First Monday of the Month, this group of ladies rides out from the Seattle Center Fountain (meet up at 6:30pm, depart at 7pm!) for an easy, fun, and social ride around town.

Critical Lass Seattle

These free, fun, and easy group rides are only about 45 minutes, kid and partner friendly, and a great entry point for women who might be nervous on the road.

Heels on Wheels

This group mostly organizes impromptu group rides through Facebook, so join if you’d like to stay in the loop for events, bike-centric happy hours, or a newsfeed full of great articles and discussion.

Happy Spring trails, Alchemists! We truly believe that “sharing the road” applies to everyone, not just cars, and we hope that Seattle closes its cyclist gender gap and continue to host awesome opportunities like these!

Alchemy Goods Late Winter Lookbook: Seattle Urban

Here’s our latest installment of the Alchemy Goods Winter Lookbook, this time showcasing Seattle Urban. Urban means a lot of things in this town, including a Belltown apartment, a skyscraper downtown, the Kerry Park lookout on Queen Anne, and the iconic Seattle Public Library. Even though we’re a brand with the rugged design of an outdoor line, we take pride in our versatility and urban adaptation. Alchemy Goods bags can be used anywhere from the top of a mountain to a city-center classroom or office, and we love knowing that our products get taken on so many different kinds of adventures every single day.

Alchemy Goods Winter Reading List: 4 Books to Make You Rethink the Way You Think

These dreary, rainy days of midwinter might not be ideal for any outdoor activities, but they’re perfect for curling up with a good book. If you want to read something that will challenge your preconceptions, light a fire in your imagination, and keep you turning the pages with rabid interest, we recommend any of the following four Alchemy Goods favorites.

Cradle to Cradle, by Michael Braungart and William McDonough

This amazing 2002 collaboration between Braungart, a German chemist, and McDonough, and American architect, asks people to take nature as their model for industry. As you might deduce from its title, Cradle to Cradle urges the construction and manufacturing industry to consider the afterlife of the things they’re building, most of which are not usable for anything after their finite lifespan is over. From bridges to carpeting to automobiles, 90 percent of manufactured materials become waste, but what if there was a plan for creating new life. Fun fact: the book itself is made from a special up-cycled material.

The Art of the Common-Place, by Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry is one of America’s most cherished voices of the agrarian community. A novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, and farmer, Berry has been bringing national attention to the local and personal for decades with a voice full of wisdom, art, and insight. The Art of the Common-Place is a collection of 21 essays on agrarianism, agriculture, and community, but also a meditation on how to live. If you’re wondering if it’s for you, check out his thoughtful, heartbreaking essay for The Atlantic, Farmland Without Farmers, regarding the American loss of a way of life and the land that made it possible.

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, by Elizabeth L. Cline

If you’ve ever wondered how it is you can buy a T-shirt for $5, when you imagine the process of harvesting cotton, which is then made into fabric, then sewn into a garment, then shipped from overseas and then shipped again to your store, with a price mark-up at each point along the way—then this book is for you. (And so is the infographic from Adbusters below!) Cline examines the industry of cheap clothing, sold ubiquitously in America at places like Forever 21, H&M, and Target, and the human and economical cost of clothing that is, in so many senses, worthless.

Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, by Barry Estabrook

TomatolandPPBCover This New York Times best-seller tells the story of a vegetable—or, if we’re being technical, a fruit. The year-round appearance of those bright red, globe-like tomatoes on the shelves of every grocery store in America are taking a horrible toll on the environment, from the dozens of herbicides and pesticides they require to the yields the land cannot naturally support. You’ll also learn things that will probably make you just want to grow your own, like the fact that most tomatoes are picked hard and green and then gassed until they turn red enough to sell.

Keep up-cycling, rethinking, and reading, Alchemists! Awareness is the only way we’re going to make a dent or a difference. And please, if you’re going to buy a book, buy it from a local bookstore!

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