High Gear Cyclery go out of biz?

sota

New Member
Registered specifically to ask one question:
What shop did Peter wind up going to? There's literally no one else I trust to touch my bikes.

The loss of HGC really bums me out. All of my bike purchases from 2001 to now have been from there.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Registered specifically to ask one question:
What shop did Peter wind up going to? There's literally no one else I trust to touch my bikes.

The loss of HGC really bums me out. All of my bike purchases from 2001 to now have been from there.

Which Peter? Thau, the packrat upstairs, or Backert? Forgive my spelling.
 

sota

New Member
Gray haired, beard wearing, socks and crocks on the feet, drives a dark blue Dodge Magnum (pretty sure on that one) Peter. His appearance fit the nickname I had for him... Mr Wizard. :)

eta; I just realized, there was another gentleman there that could have fit that description. The one i'm thinking of is the older, skinnier, gentleman.
 

Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
Gray haired, beard wearing, socks and crocks on the feet, drives a dark blue Dodge Magnum (pretty sure on that one) Peter. His appearance fit the nickname I had for him... Mr Wizard. :)

eta; I just realized, there was another gentleman there that could have fit that description. The one i'm thinking of is the older, skinnier, gentleman.

that is vintage pete - you got a campy setup from the late '70s, he can fix it.
Jim or Eric (@Funk Freshington not @otherEric) will know
 

qclabrat

Well-Known Member
@sota, I think Peter was one of the last two mechs left before the shop closed. When I spoke with them, they were holding hope and didn't seem like they were looking to find jobs.
 

sota

New Member
I'm gathering some snark from the above; I hope i'm wrong.

All I know is, whenever something needed fixing and Peter did it, I never had to bring it back for any reason. Other guys, a derailleur would be slightly out of tune, or a brake cable a little looser than I preferred, or my seat would be wrong height. I rolled into the shop for the Tuesday ride about a minute before closing, with a flat rear tire. Peter didn't hesitate to take care of it for me so I could attend the ride, even though other staff were practically turning off the lights. He even got my Trek 1000 back into shape after my "Bad Day" on a bike.

I hope everything works out for the people involved.
 

qclabrat

Well-Known Member
I'm gathering some snark from the above; I hope i'm wrong.

All I know is, whenever something needed fixing and Peter did it, I never had to bring it back for any reason. Other guys, a derailleur would be slightly out of tune, or a brake cable a little looser than I preferred, or my seat would be wrong height. I rolled into the shop for the Tuesday ride about a minute before closing, with a flat rear tire. Peter didn't hesitate to take care of it for me so I could attend the ride, even though other staff were practically turning off the lights. He even got my Trek 1000 back into shape after my "Bad Day" on a bike.

I hope everything works out for the people involved.
Have to agree with your assessment of Peter and some other mechs there, when I got back into riding a few years back and went by to demo a bike, Peter noted my helmet wasn't set up correctly and fixed it for me before having me try out a bike. Though didn't get the same level of service the last time I bought over a wheel which needed a truing and the replacement of a few nipples. Nipples were not replaced when I picked up the wheel so they took it back. When I picked up the wheel two weeks later, they told me the wheel need a complete rebuild. When I told them I didn't want to go that route, they gave me back my wheel with the freehub taken apart. When I asked about reassembling the hub as it should be, the mech mutter something under his breathe. Took my wheel and business elsewhere after that.
 

Steve Vai

Endurance Guy: Tolerates most of us.
I worked alongside Pete for 9 years, he's an amazing mechanic. Unfortunately his turn-around times are about 10 times slower than they need to be to stay employed in a modern high-paced LBS. We lose a lot of sales to the internet so you need to turn around service in order to stay in business, something HGC had a huge problem doing. I'm sure once the place was near the end the service quality went up a ton because there were only a dozen bikes in the work load for the week. As a reference, HB will do 3 times that per day. Every day. All day. The key is turning high quality work around within a few days at most. We hired Dennis to work at our shop in Summit as he was the guy over there keeping that place above water.
 

jimmy g

Member
I worked alongside Pete for 9 years, he's an amazing mechanic. Unfortunately his turn-around times are about 10 times slower than they need to be to stay employed in a modern high-paced LBS. We lose a lot of sales to the internet so you need to turn around service in order to stay in business, something HGC had a huge problem doing. I'm sure once the place was near the end the service quality went up a ton because there were only a dozen bikes in the work load for the week. As a reference, HB will do 3 times that per day. Every day. All day. The key is turning high quality work around within a few days at most. We hired Dennis to work at our shop in Summit as he was the guy over there keeping that place above water.
Jim. What store is Dennis working at ? I just broke my bike and I’m maybe looking at a Giant HB is a giant dealer right?
 
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