Three well-known Portland bike shops will go through major changes in the coming weeks.
11 days from now there will no longer be a bike shop on SW 10th and Salmon. The Trek Portland Downtown store will close on February 18th and re-open March 1st in a new building 1.2 miles away. And Gladys Bikes, the small but mighty shop that opened on NE Alberta Street in 2014 plans to call it quits. And in a serendipitous cycling situation, Golden Pliers Bike Shop on NE Skidmore will move into the old Gladys Bikes location and take over their lease.
Trek Portland Slabtown will be the new name of the downtown Trek store and a major upgrade as they move out of an older building and into brand new digs on the corner of NW 21st and Raleigh. An employee at the downtown store told BikePortland he’s “pretty excited” about the move. “We had a lot of issues with all the normal downtown shenanigans. I’m looking forward to being in a part of a town that’s a little bit more alive, has more foot traffic, and maybe a little less open drug use.”
The lack of downtown commuters has hurt Trek Portland’s downtown location hard. The new location is in a fast-growing part of northwest where new, multi-story residences and numerous retail business have sprung up in the past few years. If your bike needs repairs, the shop plans to keep their service department open during the move and will send out a truck to pick-up and drop-off customer bikes.
Another shop moving across town is Golden Pliers. This small shop opened on NE Skidmore just east of Interstate in 2018. In a social media post earlier this week, owners Kevin Purcell and Becky Newman said they’d been looking for a new location with more foot traffic and it just so happened Gladys Bikes lease was up for renewal. “We’re honored and obliged to step into the space,” Purcell and Newman said, referring to an offer from Gladys owner Cassie Hidalgo to make the move.
“We’re seeking a livelier area with more foot traffic, more retail neighbors, a little more room, and a building with some character and history. And this spot ticks all the boxes,” Purcell and Newman posted.
Golden Pliers should be moved into the new space by the second week of March.
And after a 10-year run, Gladys Bikes will say goodbye to Portland. The shop first opened in 2013 on N Williams Avenue with former owner Leah Benson at the helm and was purchased by Hidalgo in 2020 (just as the Covid emergency was declared).
“There isn’t one specific reason why we’ve come to this decision but rather several industry changes, financial situations, and the perfect timing of our lease being up; now really is a great time to end this 10 year chapter for us,” Hidalgo posted to the Gladys Bikes website this week. “We are hopeful the people will keep the vibes going and that bike shops in general will hold themselves to a higher standard of inclusion and kindness even through these hard industry times.”
You can support Gladys and their crew as they venture onto new adventures by grabbing some gear at big discounts now through February 10th. From February 13th to 17th, you can make an offer on store fixtures and whatever’s left.
The post-pandemic-boom-and-bust cycle has hit many shops hard. We are lucky in Portland to have quality places to find essential gear, advice, and service. Thank you Cassie for sharing Gladys Bikes with us, and good luck to everyone as you embark on these exciting changes!
Thanks for reading.
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Gladys Bikes closing is a huge loss for Portland. Back when it first opened on N Williams, it was the first bike shop where I ever felt truly comfortable asking all the questions I have and getting a bike fit (then offered by Sweet Pea owner Natalie Ramsland in the Gladys space). I was riding a lot, including longer distances, but felt incredibly intimidated in many of the big shops. I still often feel ignored in the big roadie-focused shops in Portland (even while men I’m with will get greeted multiple times). Gladys is the place where I confidently sent women who wanted to buy a bike, as I knew they’d be welcomed warmly and treated with respect. There are lots of great folks in many great shops in Portland, but it has been incredibly meaningful to have an unabashedly feminist bike shop. This closure leaves a huge vacuum. Many thanks to Leah and Cassie for what they created and built at Gladys. I’ll miss this shop a lot.
Great perspective. Part of growing bike mode share is making sure that everyone, not just MAMILs, feel welcome in bike shops.
I am a MAMIL, and I can tell you it’s not just women and people of color who feel unwelcome in bike shops.
I used to joke that every bike shop was required to have an a**hole stationed at the door to make comments about your bike:
And on and on. Many bike clubs attract the same a**holes, in my experience. It’s not a good look for the so-called cycling community.
Sorry to hear about Gladys closing. They always welcomed me into the shop and never made me feel bad about my dirty chain.
Good luck to the people at Glady’s and golden pliers!
As for the trek store, just rip the band aid off. Multiple locations are failing, the service departments and quality of work are laughable compared to previous years as The Bike Gallery. All of the trek stores are minimally staffed by a skeleton crew due to higher ups cutting payroll non-stop. John Burke and his brown nosed cronies’ business plan ain’t gonna work here in Portland. Trim the fat. The FX, Domane, and terrible service work isn’t going to keep your stores afloat.
I have a friend who worked for Trek a while back. Upper management made fun of them for riding their bike to work
Wow, that’s terrible and amazingly out of touch, especially for a company that’s now selling e-bikes. What do they think people are going to use them for?
Jonathan:
I’m not sure when BG opened in that space. I don’t think it was the first location (Sandy was) and Jay Graves said it opened around 2000 or so.
IIRC I purchased a bike (Bridgestone RB-T) from the downtown Bike Gallery in the early ’90’s. Not the place they are now, but somewhere in the vicinity?
If my memory serves me, in the early 1990s there was a Bike Gallery location on west side of SW 11th between Taylor and Yamhill. That location is now an Indian restaurant.
Hey BikePortland readers, what with all of these bike shops (IBDs) closing in Portland, has anyone been keeping a rolling tally of how many are in the city limits? It was ~55 in the late 2000s or ~1 per 5000 population…the last time I counted.
Submitted for your perusal, the list: https://www.portland.gov/transportation/walking-biking-transit-safety/bicycle-shops-portland
Oh my captain, Oh my cap’n pastry! How did you get PBoT to put that list up sooo quick?
So it looks like the number is pretty stable…~49 IBDs vs low 50s from ~18 years ago. Looks like ~1 IBD per 13,000 pop…on the far face of it…and perhaps close to 1:10k way back.
Don’t count the Trek stores as IBD’s, they are owned by Trek Corporate.
Sorry for pedantry, but if it’s truly “just east” of Interstate, it’s still west of Williams and therefore puts it in the North “quadrant” of Portland with a N Skidmore address. So where is it exactly?
Golden Pliers is on N Skidmore, not NE Skidmore (N Williams is the dividing line between N and NE Portland).
They are in North Portland on Skidmore St. The building they are in is on the NE corner of the intersection N Interstate Ave and N Skidmore St.
I will definitely miss Golden Pliers. I hope their move is successful.
What’s clear to me about the story of the Trek move is that Measure 110 must be repealed.
Measure 110 is destroying downtown Portland as a place to do business. It is destroying our parks, and our streets, and our stores, and even the precious Oregon bottle bill is under threat.
This is all so users can do drugs?? I’m sorry, but I’m not having it. Put forward a measure to repeal Measure 110 and I will vote for it.
I know, I know – state Dem leaders have done a performative dance to show they are SERIOUS about reforming Measure 110, but it’s just performance, as it lacks the muscle needed to get drug users off the streets and into treatment.
Counter point: nuh-uh.
Measure 110 had better not be repealed. There is no good excuse to criminalize a health problem, and it’s simply inhumane to do. The people need treatment, not jail. Measure 110 wasn’t passed “so users can do drugs”. It was passed so they could get treatment. The cops, of course, choose not to enforce laws that still exist about public drug use (measure 110 did not make that legal), and treatment that was supposed to come along with 110 has not materialized. What’s needed is to fix that. Arresting people and putting them in prison for drug use would require the construction of new prisons, and it seems downright crazy to spend money doing that instead of treatment and shelters.
Fentanyl addicts don’t want treatment, A lot of heroin addicts don’t want treatment. Most meth addicts DO NOT WANT treatment.
Your position sounds so nice in a chat room, real world not so much.
Well meaning voters thought that people with addictions will simply just get treatment.
Reality has set in and your solution is not working and has no chance to work.
Time for other solutions instead of trite comments with no basis in reality.
You mean, “we’ve done nothing and we’re all out of ideas”. Nobody thought people would just go seek treatment anymore than people freely and immediately seek treatment for alcohol addiction or anything else.
Decriminalizing the drugs is only half the solution. First of all, as has been repeated and ignored a billion times, measure 110 did not make it legal to use drugs in public. It did not make it legal to do the crimes people complain about it causing. Those things are entirely illegal still to this day, and so if the cops felt like doing their job and if we actually had public defenders to represent people in court, and if we actually had real treatment options (or for that matter, prison space you probably want to put people in), all of your concerns would be addressed. Having drugs be criminalized or not would have no impact on what cops are allowed to do with public drug use. Decriminalization only makes it so people who want treatment aren’t afraid to get it for fear of punishment, and people don’t have their lives further ruined by prison time on top of their already debilitating addiction.
What you are describing isn’t the reality of decriminalizing drugs, it’s the reality of doing that and not investing one cent into any programs to help people and leaving existing crimes and homelessness un-addressed.
So you want cops arresting people for drug use after all your pontificating? If drugs are not illegal but using them in public is, then you have to arrest and charge people with something.
What is that and what is the punishment?
You rarely make sense but this time you are talking in circles.
If people DO NOT WANT treatment, building treatment centers is really a waste of money.
What are you talking about? Nothing in M110 made it legal to do drugs in public. This is not in conflict with anything I’ve said.
Alcohol use has been legal for a hundred years. Yet, it is illegal to walk around the street drinking it. What crime do they get charged with? Probably that specifically, and whatever other crimes they do while drunk. This should not be hard to understand, but when you’re trying really hard not to understand it I guess it is.
I am trying to understand your POV.
You don’t want people in jail for drug use but want police to arrest people who are using drugs in public.
OK, then what because right now you could arrest hundreds of people who are using drugs openly in downtown.
What do you think should be done then?
Treatment?
Are you suggesting that we force people into it?
I have my doubts, but I’ll be generous.
I don’t want people in jail for drug use, because if jail was an effective treatment (like Fred suggested), the sentences would be like a month or two, which was not the case. So many people are in prison for merely having a small amount of a drug in their possession, not even using it. Plus, most of the illegal drugs aren’t causing the problems you’re complaining about.
If your complaint is that the punishment for public drug use is too lenient, or that cops aren’t enforcing our existing laws, maybe look into that. It is a separate issue from just saying all the drugs are illegal.
None of this amounts to “we should repeal M110”.
But if you’re seriously trying to understand my POV, you can just go back and read the last few comments and think real hard. It’s right there and you haven’t acknowledged it in the slightest.
You still have not listed ONE solution to the problem in like 6 posts so It’s just hard to even discuss.
If you don’t want 110 repealed and have no solutions to the problem except treatment programs
that people who use drugs and like using them have NO interest in.
So they are in public, destroying the public spaces, will not go into treatment and you oppose arresting them.
Isnt that pretty much your POV?
‘What have we missed because you never mentioned any practical solution.
You’re being obtuse, so I’m done here.
I have said a hundred times, if someone using drugs commits a crime, address the crime. If all they’re doing is being annoying, putting them in jail isn’t the solution. If what they’re doing is more severe, then that crime already has something that can be done.
Oh, are they? Then why hasn’t someone arrested them for destroying public spaces? It isn’t legal for you or me to just go “destroy public spaces”, and it isn’t legal for someone suffering from addiction to do it either. Destroying public spaces was not decriminalized by measure 110.
I say it again. Go back and just read the actual words I wrote, instead of attacking a caricature you made up in your head.
What would be really interesting is to find out how many people moved to Oregon because they thought the state had a more permissive drug culture and a lack of enforcement of the actual laws, versus others who may have moved to Oregon for example, a lack of sales tax or for the great car-optional society in Portland, post 110. There was a great recent article in the New Yorker about issues on 110 in southern Oregon.
This is relevant to a website about the cycling culture in Portland?
I totally support this mission. I think everyone does. But it isn’t working (a sign of our increasingly inept state government).
I don’t think anyone who is critical of 110 has proposed reducing treatment options.
Inept Government?
Its more like people like doing drugs, they don’t see the downside, they obviously don’t think it’s hurting them or don’t care, you can’t force them into treatment…..
‘What does the government have to do with that?
The only thing the government can do is attempt to restrict or control the supply which is not easy…
Or, hear me out, government could step in and improve access to health care. Addiction is a mental illness, whether you care to accept it or not. Other mental illnesses include, but aren’t limited to, depression, anxiety, attention deficit, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder. These can all lead to addiction as an outlet. Why don’t we treat them?
Are you going to physically take them to treatment against their will?
Asking questions like “Why we don’t treat them”, assumes people want treatment which is not the case.
The “them” in my comment was not the people, it was the illnesses.
Yes to all of the above! The government could do that, and we’ve given them lots of money to get started… so why can’t they deliver?
Because that would be socialism.
/s (but not really)
No, that would be government. Ours is just not particularly competent, and our current leaders don’t seem to feel much urgency to fix things despite having ample resources.
Good question! Do you think repealing measure 110 would help them get started? Or should we, I don’t know, go after the root of the problem.
I don’t think legalizing/illegalizing drugs would have much impact on our ability to provide treatment resources either way.
The root of the problem is an incompetent state and county government.
That is correct. And in basically any other legal issue, if the government fails at something we usually don’t give them more extensive new legal tools they can abuse people with!
I mean, we do (patriot act, etc). But we look at that as a terrible mistake in retrospect and wish we had listened to the people who were saying we shouldn’t do it at the time…
Nonsense — we try new approaches to problems after earlier attempts fail all the time. M110 was itself a “new approach”. The public feels rather strongly that it is not working, so the legislature is almost certainly going to change it, and if they don’t, there will likely be a ballot measure to repeal it altogether.
Yes — voters set a side a huge amount of money for treatment services, and we have very little to show for it.
In typical Oregon fashion, we approved a noble idea only to implement the easy part first without having the hard part in place. The treatment services were the key to making 110 work and no one thought to have those services readily available when the law took effect.
How can you get treatment for doing something that is illegal without the inherent risk of getting arrested? Who is going to trust that their life won’t be further destroyed by a prison sentence when they do the right thing to try getting their life back on track?
For the people so up in arms about the human suffering they see (not the suffering itself, just that they see it), measure 110 didn’t make that legal. It didn’t make dealing legal. It didn’t make public use legal. It didn’t make camping legal. It didn’t make stealing to pay for your addiction legal. Just like speeding drivers, it’s already illegal to do all those things but nobody is enforcing it.
Another perspective:
Many addicts have had their lives saved by being arrested, which is the only way they would have gotten into treatment.
Here is just one such story.
It’s pretty obvious to everyone that the voluntary options in M110 aren’t working, and nor will the milque-toasty tweaks the Dems want to put in place.
Just one story is exactly what that is, but data is what it isn’t.
It’s never been illegal to seek drug treatment.
What a lot of places have done is set up a drug court where people can get diversion into treatment, using the threat of jail time to incentivize participation. It’s imperfect, of course — people will often “play along” to avoid jail — but at least they get some exposure to social services. That seems more effective than the threat of a $100 fine that most people aren’t even willing to make a phone call to avoid.
(And not to quibble, but distinguishing between decriminalizing drug possession and legalizing it, while technically correct, is not important in any practical or political sense. The “that isn’t technically CRT” line just isn’t effective.)
The funds are there to deliver those services, so why isn’t it being done? Is it because A) the non-profits charged with it are incompetent and actually better suited to launder taxpayer funds instead of providing services, or B) the treatment that needs to be provided to help the underlying intractable mental health condition is so similar to a mental institution that those responsible for providing that care won’t because they are uncomfortable doing so?
Is it just possible that those who are supposed to be solving this issue aren’t able, both in competence and disposition?
Regardless, 110 is on the ropes in the current iteration.
Non-profits are often better for laundering money than doing what they advertise, so you get no argument from me there. None of it should have been done through non-profits, our government is too afraid to actually do anything itself, that’s neoliberalism for you.
I don’t see why institutionalizing people or mandatory drug treatment is off the table. That’s not prison or the felony or lower charges that go with it and have a lasting effect on your life. That’s a separate thing. People who have serious and dangerous mental illnesses need help, sometimes against their current will. It’s a travesty that we decide to let people rot instead.
Here’s the thing I think a lot of people don’t seem to grapple with: prison and doing nothing are not the only two options. It’s a false dichotomy. I only listed the options I suggested in my second paragraph to make the point that there are other options, maybe there are even better options than that. Either way, re-criminalizing drug use is not the way. I have a hard time believing criminalizing drug use would be taken seriously as an option today if it wasn’t for the failed drug policy we’ve had until recently. It just doesn’t make sense and isn’t a solution. And frankly should have been seen as unconstitutional from the beginning.
Appreciate the added context, we’re in agreement on a lot here.
There has to be a mechanism that allows for the prohibition of drug use in public spaces when the result of that drug use is material loss of physical faculties. Other than that, institutionalization, mandatory treatment in lieu of incarceration, drug cessation shelters, etc. should all be on the table, but it doesn’t feel like those are more popular than the current situation is unpopular, yet…
There IS a mechanism and it is in effect right now, no new tools for overpolicing required. There is no enforcement, just like there is no enforcement of traffic laws.
I don’t think forced treatment should be considered off the table in some cases, like for people arrested for repeated offenses of one kind or another where the drug use was a factor. Definitely not all cases, because I don’t think some previously illegal drugs should even be considered problematic. Psilocybin for instance shouldn’t be considered a thing anyone needs treatment for ever. Cocain is fairly harmless for moderate use (at least as harmless as alcohol). So the criteria really is “is this causing people to do something that is a crime”. And if the answer is yes, you have your answer. They’re doing a crime, go after that.
For some reason, the city thinks it can no longer arrest people for doing drugs in public without a change in state law (which they’ve asked for and will probably get).
So you may say there is a mechanism, but everyone else seems to disagree.
Does it think that? Where have they said it? Because either they haven’t said that, and you’re just making it up, or they have said it which is an outright lie, and you’re oddly not up in arms about the city blatantly lying to your face about it.
More likely, the cops have made subtle or not so subtle insinuations about it, the same way they lie about DA Schmidt being soft on crime, which, come on. Cops lying about what they can and can’t do? Must be a day ending in Y. If we all can see the people shooting up in the street, so could the cops and don’t pretend like you believe them when they say they can’t go after someone for that.
If you’re ever confused about what measure 110 did (it sounds like a few on here are) just think about how alcohol or weed work. You are not allowed to drink in public, you’re not even allowed to be visibily drunk in public. There are barely any places of business where you can even smoke a joint legally.
Is there more or less drug use after M110 passed or not?
Did we have 100 overdose deaths a year before M110?
You never address the actually effects of M110.
The resources used to rescue 3 or 4 people a day on the street alone are taxing the city.
You seem to know nothing about addiction at all.
Fent and Meth are not anything like weed or alcohol and you insist on lumping them together.
Yes, it does.
I’m not just making this up, officials are not blatantly lying to my face, it is not part of some huge police conspiracy, and I’m not confused about what Measure 110 does.
From the lying NYTimes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/us/portland-oregon-drug-laws.html
Or, if they’re too fascist, from OPB:
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/09/02/portland-revisits-ban-public-drug-use-legal-issues/
It says it right there in the quote:
So, public alcohol consumption is not allowed, and the only reason public drug use isn’t covered is that 50 year old law didn’t mention it. Seems like an exceptionally easy fix that has nothing to do with repealing measure 110 or even significantly changing it.
Yes that’s right. I never said we needed to repeal M110 to outlaw public drug consumption. I wrote:
and you accused me of making things up, the city of lying, the police of conspiring, and me not knowing what was in M110.
There isn’t enough research or available data about the effects of most drugs on the body and brain to make the determination that psilocybin, cocaine, or any other drug is fairly harmless. There is also the perspective that addiction and its experience are different for everyone, and while some may be able to fight it of their own free will, others won’t. This makes it difficult to determine who should be forced into treatment and who shouldn’t. At least, please don’t sign me up to be the judge of all that. What’s the real point? Some drugs probably should be strictly controlled, but we need a lot more real research and data to figure out which ones, how, and the extenuating questions that result.
I don’t know which you think is worse, forcing people into treatment or forcing them into prison. I don’t know how anyone in their right mind can think “we can’t force people into treatment, ergo we should make these drugs illegal to possess and consume, punishable by forcing them into prison”. It isn’t even a self-consistent opinion.
And I should remind you, Measure 110 didn’t make it legal to deal or produce anything. That is still quite illegal.
The third option, watching people die on the streets, isn’t so hot either.
Where did I say anything about forcing people into prison? My response is to your claim that cocaine is harmless at a moderate level of use – it’s pretty bold and without any real evidence. Many of your arguments here are fine but maybe you’re losing track of what’s important: figuring out how to help people who need it. That can’t happen if we’re not honest about the effects of the drugs as well.
Not just downtown, many neighborhoods as well.
Repealing or reforming 110 would be a huge boost to active and public transportation in my opinion. I think most Portlanders are willing to use different modes, but the first time a parent with their children sees someone smoking fent on the MAX is the last time they ride it.
My workplace, downtown, pre-COVID I’d say 80-90% did not drive to work. Bus, walk, bike, run, etc.
Now, and primarily because of the environment around our building and people can park in the building, 75% probably drive.
I’m one of the few that still rides transit. I gave up on MAX, too damn scary. I ride the bus now, but even it has its moments.
If someone asked me how they should get to work downtown, I’d tell them, DRIVE.
You make a great point here, Solar. Even in relatively staid SW Portland, regular riders of the #12 bus (Barbur) have become leery of riding it b/c there are so many unbalanced people on it. I haven’t stopped but I was shocked the other day to see an obviously addled young man stagger onto the bus and the bus driver actually yelled back to him, “You forgot to pay your fare!” The addled man just mumbled something in response.
You probably saw that Trimet is backing a measure to criminalize drug use on transit, which is good but it won’t stop already addled (that’s my PC word of the day) people from using transit if they are allowed to board without paying , which is of course the MAX’s big problem.
I feel like there’s something else that has decimated foot traffic downtown but I can’t pinpoint what it is. I’m gonna text my friends that do their jobs in a sad, spare bedroom or kitchen table “office” and see if they have ideas here. I’ll report back!
What is it?
I’ve been meaning to check out Golden Pliers ever since someone recommended them to me on a bikepacking trip. But Gladys has been my most visited bike shop. They’ve been very helpful with the saddle library and I did my first (only) bike fit there.
Seems I can just keep going to the same place now to check out Golden Pliers. But I think Gladys will be missed!
I can’t say enough good things about the saddle library, and I am incredibly disappointed to hear that Gladys is closing. I’m not aware of anything similar to their saddle library at any other store in town and it was an absolute godsend for making sure you were picking the right saddle.
I think Clever Cycles has a saddle library. I don’t think it was unique to Gladys Bikes, although I don’t know, maybe it is rare. I don’t know how on earth you would ever know what saddle to buy otherwise.
I’ve been in other stores where they can measure your sit bones and then recommend a saddle based on those measurements, but the ” check out a saddle” offering at Gladys was new to me. It looks like Clever Cycles basically only sells Brooks saddles which is cool if that’s your jam, but falls short of the range that Gladys offered.
Well shoot, I didn’t know what I had there I guess. It was the first place I got a bike fit and they suggested the saddle library as part of the fit, and I thought more people did that. I guess I’ll just always buy the same saddle for the rest of my life 😛
This is shocking and illustrates how some cycling shops are not interested in providing service to all those who ride bikes for transportation but rather cater to a faddish cycling subculture.
Glad to see Golden Pliers moving to the Gladys space. That building is has some real issues with retail – for sure lacking the needed foot traffic, GP might be the longest running tenant. Sad to see you leaving the neighborhood, but it is a great opportunity!!!
First to the two shops moving. I hope the move has a positive outcome. To Gladys Bikes, from just the few comments I’ve seen you will be missed. I hope the future works out for you. I used to tell people that you couldn’t swing a dead cat and not hit a bike shop in Portland. With the number of shops closing that’s not as accurate as it used to be. I know for riders who participate in a auto-free life style shops closing or moving may become an issue. It’s even worse when you find a repair shop that is honest, does quality work and charges a fair price and there no longer there.
Like many of you I miss the old Bike Gallery(s). I have visited the Trek store over in Beaverton several times. My interactions with the employees has always been good. What I miss the most is the lack of choice (bikes, parts, accessories, etc.). That’s the problem with being a factory store.
I myself miss Performance and Supergo (in Seattle). One of the few bike shops in East Portland was the Performance in Mall 205 (with Home Depot and Target). Too bad they went bankrupt over an election in Pennsylvania (and massive debts with their suppliers). I see the Bike Gallery that used to be on Division at 110th was bought out by the David Douglas School District. Just the Outer Rim now.
Are you being serious?!! Why not just go straight to Amazon? Shops like those are the reason great locally owned businesses fail.
This is part of an extended shakeout that began in the 2010’s, due to multiple factors:
— the general graying of the largest segment of the bicycling public, as more of us got older and changed our bicycling habits and distances;
— inflation has hit the bike industry hard, particularly in the ability of wages to keep pace with cost of living, and the rising cost of insurance and brick-and-mortar rental and upkeep;
— traffic patterns and individual driving habits since the Covid lockdown have shifted, making it harder to ride in some urban and suburban areas;
— the lockdown itself, and it’s fallout, have changed Portland’s “bicycle culture” from what we remember in the late 90s and early 00s;
— Portland remains a town that has never really wanted to become a city, and we are struggling in those growing pains with uneven infrastructure developments, a lack of affordable housing and a lack of political will to improve in those areas;
— the bicycle industry’s insistence on revising bikes and components every single year and its refusal to support older technologies for a longer period of time, and insistence on specialized branding of each possible kind of bicycle riding, all of which is forcing consumers to keep up or get left behind.
While the closing of a bike shop is sad for those directly affected, it comes as no surprise in the bigger picture and the ebb and flow of things. I wish everyone involved a positive transition and outcome.
Good comment, BethH. I’ve got one quibble. Inflation was pretty temporary — it went up fast and came down fast and is now around the Fed’s 2% target, without a recession. I mention it because people mistakenly think that prices have to come back down for inflation to be over, which isn’t true.
I mean if we’re being pedantic. They said “inflation has hit” in the past tense. And while the rate of increase in costs of goods and services has slowed, the effect of those increases continue to ripple through the economy. Costs of doing business as well as living expenses for consumers are still much higher than they were prior to the “pretty temporary” inflation of the last few years.
You’re correcting a statement they didn’t make.
“Has hit” sounded like some sort of continuous tense to me, but I’m not grammarian.
I’m not being pedantic, though, What’s-his-name and the R’s have been campaigning against Biden with accusations of “runaway inflation,” whether we are experiencing high inflation or not is a campaign issue. In fact, for decades Republicans have been using fear of “runaway inflation” as a justification for economic austerity, and an inadequate fiscal expansionary response is why the recovery from 2008 was so slow.
Biden’s expansionary response worked, without a recession or higher unemployment. It’s important to recognize that, score a lot of points for the Keynesians.
So I call out anything that might feed into that R narrative.
Portland’s got a bunch of problems, a lot of which are local.
I totally agree the political narrative around inflation and its effects are obfuscating the economic realities of what is going on. And for the most part the soft landing has been a success compared with the other possibilities.
But that is simply not what the comment said. Dismissing the real pain and difficulties that business and consumers still feel due to recent inflation is not politically helpful either. Denying peoples’ lived experience with higher rent, insurance, food, etc prices or lecturing them on the definition of inflation is not going to help get your point across. In fact, it can “feed into the R narrative” despite your efforts.
Businesses are more likely to deal in longer term leases and when those come up for renegotiation they experience the delayed increase, possibility years after the initial market rise. Add to that higher borrowing costs as the fed soft lands this, and it can push organizations into difficult places well after the inflation event is over.
At my age, with everything I’ve seen and experienced at the hands of our federal government and with how gridlocked it all is now, I no longer care if my statements feed into a party’s narrative. I am burned out on holding my nose while I vote. I am burned out on voting out of fear. I am burned out on basically everything about the two-party system and its efforts to survive and to remain employed and overpaid by maintaining a closed system that effectively shuts out 90% of the electorate. #Sorrynotsorry
Inflation is a never-ending story. Prices basically never come down again on most items. But there have been spikes in inflation that exacerbated the problem, and bicycles have not been immune.
Inflation is a rate. 🙂
Once I see that my $50 part now costs $100, I may decide to live without, regardless of whether it will be $150 next year. It will take a while for things to settle down and for us to adjust to our new inflated reality, even if inflation drops to 0.
I agree. The perception of inflation lags the change in the inflation rate for that very reason.
You should try deflation and depreciation some time. Japan had deflation for years – why buy today what is going to be cheaper tomorrow? – and their economy tanked. Depreciation is even nastier – that $2,000 TREK you bought in 2003? – go to Bicycle Blue Book and it’s now being listed for $60 value. Your parts from that period are now utterly worthless – maybe valuable to you, but to everyone else it’s garbage. Most cars lose 40% of their value as soon as they leave the lot.
If you want a long-term and medium-term perspective of the bike industry, BRAIN periodically publishes a lot of statistics from bike distributors and importers.
One statistic they had was that the number of independent bike dealers was halved between 1990 and 2010.
BRAIN=Bicycle Retailer And Industry News
I lived through the seventies, and the Paul Volcker recession. Paul Krugman wrote a few weeks ago that one of the reasons that perception of inflation is so off is that a lot of people have never experienced it.
Yup, I remember those days, even though I was just a kid then. 18% interest rates on CDs (certificates of deposit) financed my college education at U of O in the late 80s, my parent’s 30-year fixed-rate government mortgages that basically paid them to keep them, since their rates were lower than the inflation rate. Back when the stock market was pretty much off-limits to common folks, before Al Gore and the internet. You still had to get a visa (permission from governments) to travel to Europe. Disco. Cigarette smoke everywhere, even on the train and airplanes. Yeah, I don’t miss the 70s. Except Monty Python.
True, but there have been spikes on spokes also.
To add to BethHs excellent list:
I know you are talking about the kind of housing that people live in, but your statement got me thinking about all the improvements in bicycle technology in the last 40+ years for the low-end commuter bikes, how a $350 bike sold these days is much lighter than those sold 40 years ago, much more able to stop, more better gearing, they are simply better and safer for users. And one of those huge improvements has been much better affordable entry-level cable housing, often lined on several layers of coil, plastic, and teflon, with grease already in the inner lining. Disc brakes are another huge improvement, along hydroform aluminum frames, much higher tolerances on spokes and bearings, lighter and stronger cranks, and more durable cables and freewheels.
I help run a local community bike shop here in Greensboro NC (I’m the numbers guy who writes most of the grants and sorts parts). Most of the donated bikes we fix up for the homeless and recent immigrants are older mountain and city bikes from 1990-2010, with V-brakes or cantilevers, and we get a lot of people crashing because of those brakes, they stop too hard with the front brake and do a face plant. Disc brakes are essentially anti-locking – it’s not impossible to do a face plant with disc brakes, but it’s really hard, you have to be trying to do it to pull it off. Even with the old bikes and parts, we update the cables and housing, replace the pedals, the stretched chains, and so on, with the bikes ending up being lighter than when they were new way back when.
We give everyone a helmet, front and rear lights, and a basic cable lock, paid for by grants from the corrupt health care industry. Most of the bikes that get stolen from our clients, the client eventually comes clean and admits they never actually locked the bike. In rare cases we give some homeless clients a better bike and lock, but only if they are reliably sober and have a history of really trying. Our immigrant clients on the other hand are generally eager and reliable customers, until they can afford their first car (or more often a van), then they abandon their bikes in their back yard – we are slowly recovering them for other users.
….Any chance Golden Pliers is going to take over the “Saddle Library” at Gladys too…?? One of the greatest inventions of mankind in my opinion….