Two Wheeler Dealer: Localism of the hub and spoke variety
Wilmington has an identity crisis. It’s not sure if it’s a city or a town. A suburb or a beach. Or a strip mall. Contrary forces struggle mightily against one another. The convention center teeters downtown, the powdered anchors on all the local Fox affiliates tsk-tsk about some half-alarm fire in an apartment on Kerr, or do multi-part stories on carriage horses and their feed bags. Cheeseball realtors and craven developers clear out the last stands of pine trees in the county like it doesn’t matter.
Meanwhile a few businesses maintain the idea of Wilmington as a place. There are many great local businesses, actually, but few who are in a business that’s as encouraging of place and localism as Two Wheeler Dealer, a bike shop in the center of town on Wrightsville Avenue, just off College, that combines friendliness, professionalism, gear-head-iness, hominess, and great service and products in a way that only a real local bike shop can.
Located and staffed the way it is, the bike store is a real hub of local biking and other outdoor activities. The staff there all seem committed, and all seem to be doing interesting things. They sell products that range from rarefied racing models to the kick-stand cruisers, the kids’ bikes and mountain bikes of all kinds–they even have a couple of used surfboards in the back that the staff has cast off. The mechanics are almost unbelievably helpful—More than once they’ve put my bike up on the stand and fixed something quickly and gratis when I was biking by and went in just to say hi and inquire about an issue.
P.S. Bikes are one of those things you can grow used to, ride on, enjoy for years and come to see as part of the normal field of things, along with vacuum cleaners and potted plants, old surfboards, but then suddenly freak out on, as I’ve done again recently with the nice weather. This may be what I’m really talking about here:
Bicycles! A person on a bike is the most efficient animal on the planet! Wheels on people, man (voice of Tommy Chong), extensions! Human-powered vehicles that can go across the country in 9 days (RAAM), that can haul groceries and bring people together, help you smell the roses &cetera.
Since I wiped out on 5th street last fall and destroyed my gearing and brakes (and probably more) I have been in need of a good local repair shop. I’ll be sure to pay these folks a visit. Thanks for the tip!
Just to blather on a little, it really seems like a good time for biking right now. A biking era.
Bicycling always enjoys a loyal following among bicyclists, of course — among those who are affluent enough to buy high-end equipment, who travel to cycling destinations, who can cycle when others are working. But right now it seems to me like there are more kinds of bikers out there, more people who use and love bicycles without “being” bicyclists.
Bicycles are just too cool to be the sole province of dudes in lycra (and I am sometimes a dude in lycra). And these days they are not. Everybody loves ‘em. There’s an ecosystem of people-and-bicycles. One healthy example you now see at Two Wheeler Dealer and elsewhere is the urban, fixed-gear, emo sub-species, the young dudes in dyed black hair, Ramones skinny pants, and nose rings who build up and tool around on single speed or fixed gear bikes, sometimes without brakes, in whatever passes for cityscape in their area. Too, there are fat tire cruisers with mounted beverage cups, mountain bike posses like sirbikesalot, recumbent bikes, three-wheelers, new bike “SUVs” that you can put all your stuff in.
The only problem is that Wilmington could be A LOT more biker friendly. When I drive on Masonboro Loop Road (a popular route for lycra types) and cars come from the other direction, there is barely room for bikers, much less when they’re riding tandem instead of single file.
Wilmington is certainly not the only American city with this problem. Most urban areas were planned for the almighty automobile, a lack of foresight that has had countless unintended consequences (obesity and global warming among them). We can learn a lot from Europe in this regard.
Berlin, for example, features bike routes that cover virtually the entire city. Many simply follow along roads meant for cars, but the adjacent lanes are clearly identified for bicycles. Local laws so favor bikers that accidents are almost always the fault of the driver. So familiar are bikes in the German capital that even pedestrians must be on the lookout. In addition, bicycles are allowed on many subways, making much longer 2-wheeler trips in that vast city possible.
I agree of course, Ranald. Wilmington’s not very bike friendly at all. Masonboro Loop’s one of the worst; that long North-South route running parallel to College ought to be a bike artery, but the traffic is quick and thick, the sides are terrible, and there are new developments popping up all over the place that aggravate.
Still, people are working on It. There was that happy flap about River Road, one of the friendliest bike routes in the area, with miles of bike lane on an often not-very-busy road that can actually get you from here to there (from CB to downtown Wilmington, e.g.). The road was being moved to accommodate a new development, and its status as a bike route was in question. I think that developers kept River Road bike friendly and even improved it for bikers (last I heard).
The Cape Fear Cyclists also maintain some bike routes — maintain both physically, with cleanups and sponsorship, and with maps and information on their site.
For whatever reason, parents of the kids on my block can’t be bothered with fixing their kids’ bikes, so bike repair is a constant for me, and every penny counts. So I have found that bike repair at TWD is double the cost of Dick’s Sporting Goods. And the kid at Dick’s, (I think his name is Nick) doesn’t charge if there’s only a little something wrong with the bike. Which is pretty darn cool.
in case it wasn’t clear, the kids know my husband and i will fix their bikes (should never post on public forums and drink wine at the same time )