All this talk of Conrads in New York and I just realized that even though I lived there all my formative bike years I never visited it. However I did on occasion visit New York's famed Stuyvesant. How this place ever closed is a mystery to me. My earliest memory of the place must have been on or about the summer of 1972. I was riding the weekend Central Park bike loop with a bunch of guys and one of them suggested a quick visit to Stuyvesant. When I say a bunch, I mean a big big bunch. Back in those days, twenty or so guys would ride together and perhaps stop near the old boathouse to compare bikes and exchange stories with three or four other "gangs" of bikers who also numbered in the twenties. One or two of these gangs meandered over to Stuyvesant. By the time we got there we were forty guys and there appeared to be another 10 or 20 hanging outside the shop. More bike conversation ensued, along with more oogling and touching and pontificating. The point here is that there were so many guys in shoes and cleats and leather straps that after a half hour we deemed it even impossible to get in. There were too many folks already inside! I don't know if the cash register was ringing for all the riders inside but even if only half bought something, it would have amounted to a small 1970's fortune! After a half hour a Stuyvesant employee came out and asked some of us what we wanted. People gave their order and he emerged back sometime later with tubes and patch kits and brake blocks etc. If I remember correctly he took and gave change on the sidewalk! The amazing thing about Stuyvesant's is that the store was big by any standards on the inside! (at least in the mid 70's - maybe they expanded which often happens to New York success stories like Zabars foods and the like). All this business equals money and profits which most owners would be reluctant to turn their backs on.
On another occasion in the mid early 70's, well after the biggest part of the bike boom, I went there with my brother to make a small purchase, and price out a new bike. I think I was there 20 minutes at least before one of the many employees got a chance to serve me. There were like fifteen customers in the shop on an off season day. I know some successful shops now, that are happy to see five customers an hour at any time. Maybe a New York shop gets more floor traffic than just about anywhere in the world but it would be hard to imagine a bike shop that would have been more busy than Stuyvesant.
I visited the largest bike shop I have ever seen, just last year. It's in Koln (Cologne) Germany. The place is so outrageously large that they have an indoor bike track that must measure quite a bit more than a sixtenth of a mile around. Bikes of all description are stuffed all around the track, and the stock of road, city and mountain bikes is simply enormous. The parking lot holds about fifty cars and most of the customers walk or bike in anyway. I think the bike boom and hugely successful bike shops are still alive and well in Germany. Good ideas never grow out of fashion in a well though out society, I would imagine.
Garth Libre in Miami Fl. who got dropped 200 yards by the strongmen of the morning hammer ride today. (71 degrees at 7:00 AM).