"James Thomson" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Quoted message said:I'm not sure that the mythical English village LBS is any more real.
Mark South said:They do exist. Infact, the classic example to me is in central
Cambridge: University Cycles. The parts pile starts behind the
counter and just keeps going.They exist, just as ancient shops piles high with dusty obsoletia may exist
in Paris, but they're the exception rather than the rule.
You only need to locate a couple though.
Quoted message said:I don't think most people would think of Cambridge as a village,
Ask people from Oxford ;-)
Quoted message said:and in any case it has a
particular set of circumstances that make the local bicycle market quite
unusual.
Yes indeed, the fact that nearly all of it is geared to foreign students who
want a bike like the ones where they come from.
I picked Cambridge because I know the area well. There are village bike shops
around Cambridge, but University Cycles has the champion collection of old bits.
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Many of the shops that cater to the new utility cyclists
date from this period, and sell mainly Dutch bikes.Quoted message said:The Dutch being the people who never stopped making utility
roadsters like the now-famous Behemoth.Right. My point was that the shops now serving the utility cyclists of
Paris will, in many cases, never have sold bicycles based around French
standards, just as many of the British bike shops that emerged in the
nineties have never sold cotter pins or Sturmey-Archer toggle chains.
Accepted.
--
Mark South: World Citizen, Net Denizen