Metal Health Will Bike You Mad

I love DIY anything. Some things are just way easier to have mass produced (socks and underwear come to mind). Many things, though, benefit greatly from being smaller and handmade. Bicycle shops are no exception. I love any shop that has a definite sense of ownership to it. One such shop in San Francisco is Heavy Metal.

Heavy Metal is funky, cluttered and very down at the heel. If you blink you will miss it. We must have passed it a hundred times before I noticed it there. The guys that run it are no nonsense, like vintage bicycles and keep things very low key (all things I like). There isn't a corporate bone in the body of the shop. It is exactly the place I would have brought my bicycle to be repaired before I met Hubby the Bikeman.

The other day, I noticed a new sign in the shop window.

I am unsure if this means they ran out of them or just don't have them on principal. Either way, the plate is a good touch. The front door of the shop is pretty funny, too.

So if you find yourself on 29th Street, keep a look out for the bicycle shop placed between the kids fixing their vintage mopeds on the side walk and the loud corner bar with the hand written, neon yellow signs in Spanish. When you see the rusty old franken-tandem locked to a sign post out front, you will know you have arrived.