I ranted in another forum the other day about my seemingly endless search for a friendly LBS and then sat down and thought about it some and realized that I have found one that is pretty good.

Funny you should mention mom and pop hardware stores.... In my search for a friendly, helpful lbs the one that stands at the top of the list (although they are almost prohibitively expensive) is located in a loft area at the top, back of an old True Value harware store in our neighborhood.

I do go there as much as possible because of the service - - but the expensive part is no joke. We bought a bike for my son there knowing it was spendy and later seeing the same bike $40 cheaper, they charged me $1 a piece for some simple hardware to attach my baskets (in retrospect I probably could have gotten the same thing downstairs in the hardware store for next to nothing) and $5 for a small replacement part for our trail-a-bike which the company probably would have given me for free.

I am consistently impressed with their friendly nature. There are almost always people in there with cheapo, old bikes needing fixed and they are just as nice to them as they are to the folks spending thousands on high-end bikes. I definitely don't see that at other places.

Oh and I must give a shout out for our main REI store's bike shop. They are friendly and knowlegable, but very, very busy so you don't get much time to talk with any of them. If you do catch them with time, they're pretty good.