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Comment by RankingMember | Hacker News Reader

> Another place I experience this phenomenon is bike shops. They'll start talking to you with specialized vocabulary and won't give you the time of day if you don't know exactly what they're talking about. Yet, I brought my bike to the bike shop because I'm not an expert bike mechanic. Funny enough, I couldn't find a bike shop that wasn't like this so with the help of youtube I do all my own bike work now.

Ugh, the industry still needs to do so much work to this end. There are good shops out there, fwiw, but the elitism is real. Totally counterproductive for a means of conveyance that is so elegantly classless (in the positive, egalitarian sense).

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I design and build things 100x[0] more complex than any bicycle, yet I don't know the jargon and feel like an idiot when I got into my local bike shop to ask simple questions. They are mostly nice and understanding, but the jargon and elitism is still very real that my wife doesn't like going there.

[0]though adjusting the tension spring on the brake levers still puzzles me sometimes... Looser should mean it travels more when you squeeze and release the brake lever, right? Stiffer spring has less displacement for a given force. Not quite. https://www.sheldonbrown.com/canti-direct.html#parallel

There was a focused effort to "professionalize" the hobby by researcher (crank) John Forester. Thousands of cyclist deaths can be attributed to his efforts, which included promoting "serious" cycling over accessible and casual transport, and personally destroying early plans for widely-available bike lanes in California a la in the Netherlands. Though not as infamous, you can think of him as a mini Moses.

Wow, I had read his book but had no idea that he was so influential pushing efforts to remove separated bike lanes in California.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRPduRHBhHI

The children and elderly should simply learn how to bike 45mph in the road.

I bought my wife's bike, which she'd purchased back in England while on a fitness kick, to a local shop in Manhattan for a brake service years ago. I have never forgotten the interaction: the hipster douche who greeted me launched into a multi-minute tirade about how Decathlon was "ruining cycling in Europe" and how I was complicit in doing the same in the USA by bringing this abomination into his store.

I'm pretty sure I know who is more responsible for ruining cycling.

Fortunately my local shop in the suburbs here couldn't be more different. They're patient and lovely with my kids, efficient and non-condescending with my wife, will even send a little car to your house to collect a broken bike for service - whether or not they sold it.

That's interesting. I have a Decathlon bike (UK) and was thinking there's not much elite jargon or such like and they are quite straightforward and reasonably priced for fixing things. Different strategy I guess.

They are probably a good choice if buying a bike as they are reasonably cheap but have decent availability of spares and servicing unlike no name Chinese bikes.

Yeah they're basically fine. The hipster's main complaint, I think, was that Decathlon was very big in France and that size was causing local bike shops to close. So I have some sympathy for the argument, but certainly not the way it was presented.

Catering exclusively to snobbery is everywhere in commissioned sales.

The only bike shops that aren't this way are going to be relatively small and new establishments where the owner is the only guy there. Do not expect the advice or inventory to be all that great.

If you just want the advice, catch the salesman that he's eventually forced to hire when they're off work at the bar.

Speaking about elitism/classless - in some german towns, there are more and more non profit self help bike repair places. Good concept I think, but sadly not for E-Bikes it seems. At least I was told that much, so I had to start getting my own repair gear.

Most of them live and breathe biking. They choose to make close to minimum wage to "do what they love", they don't own the store. I think it's genuine excitement and enthusiasm that you take as elitism. Often, it's a big part of their identity... "how could anyone else _not_ care as much"?

I used to bike with a few bike shop employees and they were only in it to eke out a living doing something adjacent to the thing they love, selling bikes was not their passion, riding them and talking about the tech was.

At least 10 years ago, wages in the whole sector were pretty low, so you'd only work there if you really wanted to and valued perks like buying bikes at wholesale (hey, that's half off) and having access to tools or a mechanic buddy.

I'm very familiar with the type of people you're talking about and they're not the elitists I'm talking about. There's a separate segment that, while they may also live and breathe biking, use their specialist knowledge to gate-keep and make people not on their level (customers) feel "less than". It's very shortsighted, because independent bike shops can't afford to be turning off customers- these kind of experiences push people to corporate shops (e.g. Trek), which at least have formalized oversight/training in how to treat customers.

What do you actually mean? Bikes have parts with names that are not common knowledge, do they use these names instead of showing you pictures or something? It's same with every trade: a car mechanic, a carpenter, a plumber etc will use the proper names for the things they work with. If you don't know what these names mean - just ask.

My auto mechanic doesn't expect me to know what a catalytic spanner housing is. I say "it's going WUMP WUMP WUMP when I turn left at highway speeds", and he diagnoses it.

This is not that.

Sure, but if you ask him what he has done to the car is he going to say "There was a boo-boo on the thingie in your wheel and I fixed it!"?

I'm not sure what you mean. My comment isn't about people using proper terminology- that's not gatekeeping. By gatekeeping in this context I mean things like being dismissive to people because they have a lower-end bicycle or treating them like they're stupid because they didn't know not to use WD-40 on a bike chain. Experts that use their narrow field of authority to demean rather than to educate/assist.

I see. It's how they stay in business - even if they pay minimum wage to the mechanics they are still not going to make rent servicing Walmart/Amazon specials. And even if the owners agreed to pay the labor/parts, which are more expensive on these than on bikes from reputable manufacturers and definitely more than the bike itself costs, they are still going to be priced out of their insurance in the long run (especially on Amazon e-bikes).

Nonsense. Genuine excitement and enthusiasm does not mimic bad manners.

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