Indie Spotlight: Cycle Lab
A new series celebrating those forging their own path without the help of The Man.
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Handily located just off the bike messenger junction of Old Street and Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch, East London sits the brand new Cycle Lab.
Despite the pretty self-explanatory name, there's more to this independent bike shop than that. Although the services on offer are largely in keeping with those of other cycle shops, the friendly and genuine service sets it apart from the ‘have a nice day’ sterile approach of most chain stores. And it doubles as a juice bar too!
Just as importantly you won’t find the staff looking down their noses as you wheel in that rusty, dusty old thing that has spent years locked in your shed. As stated on their website “there is no elitism here”, so don’t worry if your bike has seen better days or isn’t at the cutting-edge of the latest craze. Equally if you need any help tuning your top-of-the range racer then mechanic Krisztian – with 14 years experience under his belt – is your man.
As the store's smoothie guru Michael says: “We understand that for a lot of people, riding a bike is just about getting from A to B, and it’s important that they have a local shop like ours on hand to help them along the way.”
If all you need is a quick-fix for a puncture, then take a seat, read a magazine and it’ll be done by the time you’ve finished your juice. Just make sure Alfie (the shop's boxer dog and third member of staff) doesn’t lick you to death in the meantime.
For any aspiring DIYers out there, the Cycle Lab also offers two day maintenance courses, which will teach you how to strip, clean, rebuild and replace your own pride and joy.
What more could you want?
Krisztian the mechanic
Michael the smoothie guru
Alfie the friendly boxer dog
Bikes!
Fruit!
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Indie Spotlight: Cycle Lab (text) by Dermot Rice is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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