Non-essential time sinks are closed, or closing, and to keep from going insane you are probably putting a lot of socially-responsible solo miles on your mountain bicycle. You will limp it along, for now, and there will be a COVID-come-down eventually. The return to normal will be accompanied by a mad mass of fair-weather-riders looking to salvage summer antedated by only a fleck with regular-rippers crashing to make up for deferred maintenance.
Aside from the current nothing-else-to-do factor, bicycle commuting and mountain biking are increasingly popular activities. Bicycles – especially high-performance bicycles – are continuously more complex and proprietary-tool-dependent for repair. Demand for more in-depth service increases as riders keep their bikes longer in the face of maturing performance and geometry and with the dollar having rarely been further from par with the USD. The service season is facing unprecedented compression and there is a key component missing: excellent, experienced, career, bike mechanics both proclaimed and promising.
Some have chased better-paying opportunities in the bike industry or turn wrenches in locales with lower costs of living and many have moved on to other vocations entirely, tired of the crappy combination of demanding, disrespectful, customers and their “bicycle emergencies,” un-supportive owners, and sh*t money because “they’re just bikes.”
Whatever the reason, whatever the destination, whatever the new opportunity, one thing is beyond clear – there is an unprecedented shortage of quality folks turning wrenches on the North Shore. Everyone in the industry knows it.
Yet more worrying is that, in the most natural definition, wrenching on bikes is, and has long been an apprenticeship program. Established wrenches pass on their knowledge to newcomers, on the job, and support each other with specific challenges regardless of what shop colours they fly. Locally, the trade is being hollowed out as we lose both those awesome elders and future all-stars to other locales or occupations.
With obvious exceptions, local bike mechanics have long been treated as easily replaceable with August layoffs being a rite of passage for those starting out and low pay v. experience justified by a lack of formal training and some obscure ‘doing what you love’ factor. Some of the nicest folks I know were once customers in shops I worked at, but one truly awful interaction can certainly ruin a day.
It is boldly amazing having some jerk tell you “how lucky you are to do what you love” after cajoling you into bleeding coffee-coloured sludge out his long-neglected brakes a half-hour past close on a Sunday night and then have him turn around and groan about the $50 bill because “it’s just a bike, I could have done it myself.”
It is still surprising how much sh*t folks working retail on the North Shore are excepted to eat from some customers. If you haven’t served food, stood behind a sales counter, answered the e-mails or picked up the phone I do not think it is possible to appreciate why so many good folks have said “f*** it” and gone on to do the same job somewhere else.
Our largest, potential, local landlord, the District Of North Vancouver, is actively campaigning against any measures to reduce the cost of housing on the North Shore and local shops are crippled by the same triple-net-leases that are dragging down community-creating businesses of all sorts. There is international pressure (read: online competition) controlling the margins shops can charge for parts or bicycles and at the same time, this extinction event has shops struggling to hang on to the staff they have that do plan to remain local.
All this points to substantial upward pressure on service prices to cover living wages for folks turning wrenches and increased expectations for respectful treatment by customers. I do the vast majority of my family’s bicycle service work so those higher prices will affect me personally in a positive way – namely less of the awesome personalities I know and love leaving the local community and/or leaving the industry. I hope it happens soon before the local mechanic scene gets hollowed out any further.