I have been in a lot of bike shops. Big shops, tiny shops. Community-run shops. Shops in the back of a Walmart. Clean shops, pristine and glistening. Filthy shops. Shops with 100 year histories, shops that look like they opened last week.
I've rarely encountered bad shops. A few, for sure. Once I went into a shop in Coos Bay that I can only describe as mean spirited. I've never been cheated in a bike shop though. Never had anybody flat-out lie to me, or do shoddy work on purpose.
What I have found a lot of, however, is what I call the "Bike Shop Attitude". And I find this interesting, not just as a comment on bike shops, but more of a comment on life in general. The Bike Shop Attitude goes something like this: there is a right way to do things, and buddy, you are not it. I should mention: I ride a "real world" bicycle. It does not look like it came out of an advertisement. It is filthy. It is covered with stickers. The derailleur on the back comes from a different brand than the cassette it's installed next to. It's like wearing stripes with plaid.
Every hobby - in fact every human endeavour - has these unwritten rules. You have to wear running shoes if you're going to go running. You have to wear a wet suit to surf. You need to have an XBox if you're a real video gamer. Some hobbies go further than others. You can spend a ton of money buying a triathlon suit, a triathlon watch. But few hobbies are more "stuff-centric" than cycling. Nobody loves being a gear snob more than cyclists.
But we all face this, all the time. People who want to tell us that we can't or shouldn't, because we don't have the right thing, or we don't look the right way. We can't dance unless we look like a dancer. Or run if we don't look like a runner. Just today I was told by a bike shop employee - who I think meant well - that there's no way I could ride my bicycle across the country "looking like that".
Imagine my surprise when I told him I had already done so. Twice.