[CR]Local bike shops

(Example: Component Manufacturers:Avocet)

Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 22:35:11 +0900
From: "Dennis Young" <mail@woodworkingboy.com>
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Subject: [CR]Local bike shops

What is worse than a modern bike shop that has no knowledge or display of classic parts? It's one in the larger town next over from me that has a treasure trove of classic goods, but the owner is so burnt out and corrupted that he puts a untouchable high price on everything you spot, and keeps it all in such a miserable mess that he no longer knows (or probably cares) what all he has in there. It would probably take a good hour to move the junk and good stuff out of the way, while holding your nose, to get to the stairs leading up to the second floor storage. One of the oldest shops in Japan, and all kinds of frames from the 60s and 70s, and probably earlier, are still there in the original paper wrappers. Leaning against the wall behind a heap of you name it is a unused Cinelli Pista from the early 70s. My size too! You can see an all gold Colnago from some lost era that still faintly glitters in another rubbish pile. There are spots of the old Bianchi green to be seen here and there too, and one can only wonder what uncovering their totality would reveal? Those items can be detected in the foremost part of the shop, but as the interior stretches way back into the cobwebed dark cave like depths, what comes to mind besides hidden wealth is the Steven King story of the poor guys beneath the old mill that ran into the huge rats! Any offer to help sort out the place is met with impatient disapproval, and the last time he responded to my pleadings with a, "I'll pull out a few old things for you", was three years ago, and still nothing has materialized. Someone was going in there while he was away and stealing things and auctioning thenm off on the internet. A former customer spotted a rare frame being sold from the same town, and went in and noticed the vacant spot where just such a item had been hooked to the ceiling for years. Sure enough, the one being autioned belonged to the shop and the owner never even noticed it's absence. They arrested the culprit and it turned out he had taken and sold a number of frames, all without the owner missing them. I never go in there anymore, and it is depressing to even walk by the place, so I take a different route to the post office. Before any of you hop on the first flight out, thinking you are going to come over here and score, take my word for it, it's hopeless. Whenever a few of the locals into classics get together around here, the talk always rolls around to cocerning that shop. First is everyone saying how they have given up on the owner, and second is, "What can be done?" Besides all this, the place is a overripe tinderbox waiting to ignite, and the owner lives inside with his emphysemac father who must be at least a hundred now. When I used to go in there, the owner would often be away and his father would shout out from behind the tatty old shoji screen the Japanese equivalent of, "I hear ya out there and don't take nothin! Got any smokes?" It's sad at best.

Dennis Young
Hotaka, Japan