I was really pleased to learn Saturday from my friends on Twitter that Bicycle John’s, a shop that caters to serious cyclists with modest to big budgets, had opened a shop in Santa Clarita.
Bicycle John’s brings to seven the number of bike shops in the SCV, rivaling the number of auto dealers on Creekside. Okay so that’s a silly measurement, but you can’t deny there’s a market out here for bikes and mountain, road and recreational cycling.
The new Bicycle John’s shop, located way up Golden Valley Way, may not be that easy to get to on a bike but it’s centrally located and a welcome addition to the SCV Cycling community.
It competes most directly with Performance Cyclery, the SCV’s largest bike shop, on Railroad Avenue. Performance, incidentally, is moving to the old Trader Joe’s space on Cinema Drive, uniting (albeit nostalgically) my two favorite loves, food and cycling.
I don’t want to mis-characterize it, but the SCV”s newest bicycle shop is a place you go to for elite-level bicycles. These guys sell French, German, Italian, and American handmade bicycles built to exacting standards. They’re knowledgeable and friendly, so much so that I shirked my ThinkSCV ethic and bought a Seven road bike from their Acton shop in 2009. I’ve put over 2,000 miles on my prized “Silver Bullet” since then and I have no complaints about the bike or the shop. I even received a certificate with the bike with the signature of the woman who welded the titanium frame together in Boston, Mass. Most excellent.
But I refuse to sell the competition short. The fact of the matter is that if you’re a cyclist in Santa Clarita, you have a lot of great options. Roger over at Newhall Bikes has a humble shop but a big heart with some good deals and lots of Newhall boosterism, which we’re fans of on this site (his yearly Reggae parties are kick-ass!). The guys at Valley Bicycles on Railroad have a bike for everything from road to mountain to BMX to fat-tired cruisers. Performance has serious road and mountain bikes while Canyon Bicycles in Canyon Country and Sport Chalet have some great general purpose bikes.
All shops, save for Sport Chalet, are locally owned so you can feel good about your purchase.
With the City expanding bike lanes in the Industrial Center, now is a great time to get out and explore the SCV on two wheels!
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