Iresha Picot is a mental health professional in Philadelphia and the thing she prescribes is a free bike ride. She founded the Black Girl Joy Bike Ride in 2023; it runs weekly, and the route is a guided four to five-mile ride. Picot is 42.
She is direct about why. “As Black women, we’ve been conditioned to put everybody else’s needs before our own,” she said. “A lot of us are dying from stress-related diseases, from preventable diseases.”
The first season ran on passes for ten women. Picot has since bought 24 bicycles and given them to riders, paid for with a community grant from the Pennsylvania Environmental Council. About 26 women came to the most recent ride.
What the riders describe getting back is not fitness. Marisia Robinson, now the Circuit Trails Coalition manager at the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, said it changed the trajectory of her life. “So Black Girl Joy Bike Ride gave me friendship, confidence, belonging, a bike,” she said, “a healthier way to move through the world, and a whole-ass job.” She called the ride a pipeline for beginners.
Picot says the hard part is not the riding. “It’s free of charge,” she said. “They just have to show up and bring themselves.”
She does not take the credit for it. “I started this, but it’s a community effort,” she said.
Her instruction for anybody reading is one line. “Find something that you like and rock out with it,” she said.
