Originally Posted by mtnbke

To be fair, I found, when I was up Mass AVE from MIT a bit, and living on dear old Irving ST, that the "wrenches" working at Cambridge bike shops to be marginal at best.

I was always amazed how the female wrenches at Ace Wheel Works were top notch, but at Broadway BIcycle School they had about as much knowledge about how to fix or fit a bike as your grandmother. It was all so normative for them: Everything English 3 speed is great, everything else is junk. I was looking to learn some stuff I didn't know (building wheels, facing BBs, etc.) and I learned I wasn't going to learn anything there. So I read this article as a function of the facility of the mechanics as much as anything. That and that Harvard deserves some equal press in that they had some god awful bikes in their own right.

I remember when ATA opened. That shop just took the buzz from Ace and they never gave it back. It was awesome hearing their stories about trading olive oil for components as the budget for the Turkish teams didn't cover decent kit.