Support your LBS

Suport your local bike shop! Okay I said it, it's out of the way. I know if you're reading this blog you've probably heard this a million times and have your own LBS that you frequent with a regularity that non riders consider unhealthy. So I don't need to go on about why its good to support your LBS. You already know that. So instead I'm going to talk about how awesome they are.

I was in the airport on my way home for a well deserved winter break when a text rang in from my old boss back at my home shop "Pho Phriday on saturday, be there, or be fired". Needless to say I was there. I rolled in three minutes late the next afternoon for my first lunch back on the east coast to "your late, get the fucking food" and a hundred dollar bill being whipped out of the register and stuck in my hand. Ten minutes later I pulled back in to the shop with seventy-five dollars of Pho steaming in the passenger seat of my pickup truck and the parking lot slowly filling up.

The shop was filled with mechanics and customers alike, guys that had been frequenting the shop for fifteen years and other who started coming last year, all crowded around the dinning room table and clamoring over pho. Our shop is a second home for most of these people, guys who need an escape from the rigors of work, home, school, or just the daily grind. Some ride out of the shop, several times a week, on the decades old legendary shop rides, others just come in on their day off, riding a wheelie through the front door with an ice cold beer in their pocket. It's a place where anyone who rides, skis or just needs a place to chill is always welcome. Its not uncommon to walk in to the smell of food cooking and people crowded around the grill, swapping war stories and waiting for their dogs and burgers to finish cooking.

My shop is a place that I'll always have a place in, and if you ride, you have a place there too, and no matter where you go there will be a shop just like this one where you can find your place. So sure, you can save a few bucks online, but just remember, what you get out of your LBS can never be bought through warehouse .com stores. So you know what, fuck it, I'm going to say it. Go suport your local bike shop.