I’m running for Carrboro Town Council because building a small business here helped me find the community I’d always been looking for and I was raised to hold the door open for the folks behind me, so that is exactly what I hope to do for my Carrboro neighbors, now and in the future.
I’ve lived here since 2001, so you may know me, by face at least, but if you don’t, your bike nerd friend probably does because I’ve fixed a few thousand bikes over the last 22 years.
If I am new to you…well, hiiiiiiii, I’m Jason. I’m the only child of a single mom and a philanderer. I was born in Portland, Maine, raised on food stamps in Tennessee, schooled in the backwoods of south Georgia, honed to a razor’s edge by the public institutions of Jacksonville, NC, and educated in the arts of Philosophy and Music at ECU in Greenville, NC.
I moved here from eastern North Carolina when I was 23 because it felt like a haven, and I fell into place pretty naturally. On workdays, I spent my time as a crew leader for Habitat for Humanity, and on the non-workdays, I spent my time volunteering at the Internationalist, cooking meals for Food Not Bombs, drinking beer and shooting pool at OCSC, and playing guitar in a punk band.
I saw some of the best shows of my life at the Cradle and Go!, I spent a few hundred hours wandering the stacks in Nice Price Books, I learned how to fix bikes at the Recyclery, and in early 2007, I borrowed $7500 to open Back Alley Bikes (in an alley, through the back door of The Merch). I spent most of my days for the last 15 years working my ass off fixing bikes there and that’s probably how folks know me now, for better or worse.
I sold the shop and property (the former Nice Price Books!) in 2022 and the whole operation is now in the capable hands of Tamara and Rob. A win for them, captains of their own destinies, and for me, freewheeling for the first time since I started working at age 14.
Oh, and I didn’t mention it earlier because I couldn’t find a way to fit it neatly into the story, but I spent six years on the Chapel Hill Transportation and Connectivity Advisory Board, two of them as chair, and I learned a LOT about how municipal government functions.
I think my position at the intersection of service and business is unique and that it has equipped me to do a good job as member of Carrboro Town Council, but I suppose there’s only one way to find out…