Making An Entrance

There was a time, about ten or fifteen years ago, when it seemed that every other urban and suburban bicycle shop was trying to be a "bicycle boutique".  There are still shops like that, though, it seems, not as many as there were in those days: I guess folks who can afford such places don't have the time to go to them, so they shop online.

The "boutiques" did everything they could not to seem like bike shops.  If anything, some of them tried to look and feel like the sorts of gyms young people with lots of disposable income frequent in order to meet other young people with lots of disposable income.  Or they tried to look like the sorts of coffee bars that try to be like Starbucks without being Starbucks.

There's a certain kind of atmosphere, though, that simply can't be achieved merely with track lighting and espresso machines.  Those things simply can't match a great entrance:

Some things, you can only find in Italy--Florence, to be specific.

Workshops Or Boutiques For The Holiday Season?

Recently, I've devoted a couple of post to bicycles made into Christmas ornaments, or bicycle-themed holiday decorations.  And, I know that as I write, there are bike rides in progress that wend their way along streets of highly-decorated houses and stores.


 

All of that got me to thinking about how--and whether--bicycle shops are decorated for the holiday season.

 


In many shops, you'll find garland winding through wheels of display bikes, frames festooned with strings of lights and orbs hanging from handlebars and other bike parts.  A few have more creative, or at least elaborate, displays.  

In my experience, the most decorated shops are the ones catering to two ends of the bike market spectrum--kids and rich yuppies. I know, because I have worked in both types of shops.

 

I've also worked in shops that sold high-quality bikes, parts and accessories that were neither flashy or cheap, and were run by honest--though, perhaps, grumpy--mechanics.  At one such shop, said grumpy mechanic/proprietor gave me some small tools in a metal Band-Aid box with a red bow stuck on top of it.  I am told that I received the most elaborately-packaged gift he gave anybody that year.  Perhaps I don't need to say that his shop was about as decorated as Kim Kardashian is clothed on any given day.


It was the sort of shop in which you had your wheels built or frame prepped, if you didn't have the tools or skills to do such things yourself.  And you would go to it for advice. But for aesthetics, not so much. But whatever you bought, or whatever work you had done, there was a gift that kept on giving.