Originally Posted by
Howard1975
Thank you everyone that has replied. Yes I know my new bicycle is a BSO department store bicycle, it's basically all you can find around here. I'm living in a small town, surrounded by farm land. There are no bike shops in my town, or in any of the neighboring towns. I have to travel some distance from my town, before I can find a real bike shop. Even many of the used bicycles available near me, will be the BSO department store bicycles. I don't expect to find too many higher quality used bicycles out in small towns or farmland. Most people living in small town America (and farms) just buy department store bicycles. Unless you're looking for 50 year old (or older) vintage bicycles, when many bicycles were still of decent quality.
I used to live in the Chicago area, but I moved away in 2018, to this small Wisconsin town.
A few North Side Chicago bike shops still survive since my childhood - one is Gary’s Cycles about 6000 North Clark Street, and another is Roberts Cycles about 7200 North Clark Sreet. Gary’s was where I went as a kid to buy a tube or a tire, or to get the bike fixed, and I worked at Roberts briefly in the late ‘60s.
But those are not the only surviving bike shops in Chicago, just the ones in my old neighborhood.