Brooklyn’s Bike Shop Boom

I’ll have more on this later, but Here’s Park Slope has news of a new bike shop coming to 476 Fifth Avenue between 10th and 11th Streets.  If you’re counting, it will bring the total number of bike shops in Park Slope to seven, if I’m using a real estate agent’s definition of the neighborhood.

In addition to this newcomer, you’ll find:

• Ride Brooklyn on Bergen Street between Flatbush and 5th Avenues
• R&A Cycles on 5th Avenue between Park Place and Sterling Place
• Dixon’s Bicyle Shop on Union Street between 6th and 7th Avenues
• 9th Street Bikes on 9th Street and 6th Avenue
• On the Move on 7th Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets
• 718 Cyclery on Seventh Avenue between 16th Street and Windsor Place

If I’m missing any, please let me know.  I’m not even including bike shops within walking and riding distance of these in other neighborhoods, such as Rolling Orange in Carroll Gardens, Bicycle Station and Bespoke Bicycles in Fort Greene, Brooklyn Bike and Board in Prospect Heights, and other off-the-radar stores in the area.

Many of the above-mentioned shops opened only within the last three years during a recession.  So, while critics claim that no one is riding in bike lanes, or that the census shows that the DOT is overestimating bike commuters, or even that the DOT has cooked the books on ridership, Brooklyn, the epicenter of the city’s bikelash, is in the middle of a bike shop boom.  Of course, the opening of another bike shop is no more definitive a measure of biking’s popularity right now than the opening of a mortgage broker’s office was a measure of a healthy housing market in 2008, but it may be a positive sign that small business owners are willing to bet big on biking’s future.