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Comment by rsingel | Hacker News Reader

R.I.P. Sheldon

https://www.wired.com/2008/02/sheldon-brown-w/

Came to say the same, I meet him once in his shop, what a great person he was. His wife also has a great amount of bicycle knowledge from what I heard.

And the shop itself closed in 2021 after being open for nearly 70 years. I purchased my Brompton there.

That is a shame, I figured Harris would be the last small shop left.

Unfortunately, I have seen a few family owned shops taken over by a "large" company, namely Trek. Others have just closed. I only know of one or 2 family owned shop left these days.

His wife was a professor at the Northeastern computer science department when I went there. A wonderful teacher.

Ah that’s the reason why reading several articles on the site it felt out of date. For example the website states “Disc brakes have become increasingly popular on mountain bikes and are gaining some popularity for other bicycles” whereas in my experience disc brakes are popular for all kinds of bicycles.

A lot of the information is indeed old, but then so are a lot of bikes. :)

Things are still being updated, primarily by John Allen. There's some writing about changes on the blog: https://sheldonbrown.com/blog/

(I have every expectation that he'd be quite pleased to entertain well-written updates from other parties, if anyone feels like being constructive. John is pretty easy to contact.)

That's actually more recently than I would have guessed. He had already departed by the time I discovered bike building in the early 2010s.

Time is strange.

> Sheldon Brown, a beloved iconoclast bicycle tech guru, died Sunday from a heart attack. He was 68 63.

Curious, what does "He was 68 63" mean. Is it a bicycle gear joke about his age at death?

Probably just a typo. He was 63.

Surprisingly young

I’m a little surprised to learn that Jobst Brandt outlived Sheldon Brown. He was 9 years older than him and Brown died at 63.

72 is still an awfully young age to die.

For a couple of known cyclists, 63 and 72 is a bit worrisome.

https://archive.ph/BhxAx

MS sucks. We need to end Epstein-Barr virus!

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