Comments (0) BEST BIKE SHOP - 2006

Tempe Bicycle

Good bike shops are a lot like good bars: They have their own smell, their own special mood. They are not too clean, they are not too new, they are staffed with people who might otherwise not be employed. They are not designed off some corporate template for success, but rather off someone's obsession. Tempe Bicycle is a good bike shop, the best of the good bike shops in the Valley. And no doubt, it gets its cool energy from its locale, just three blocks from Mill Avenue and ASU — close enough to be bicycle counterculture, not too close to have been made into College Disney like much of Mill. Yeah, yeah, they know bikes. They service well, they have a fine selection of tech and tough off-road and on-road rides. That makes them good, but not necessarily special. A lot of bike shops have good gear and good gurus. But here, you get the bike culture: that sometimes stoned world where the disdain for the combustion engine goes hand-in-hand with good music and good fun and a universe of progressive ideas. Much of this world has been stamped out of ASU by "public-private partnerships," et al. But it will never completely die as long as the Tempe Bicycles of the 'hood survive.