just a little non-elitest mentality story for you...spent the morning repacking my rear hub. i live right around the corner from r&a cycles in brooklyn- sort of the equivalent of river city in portland, without all the cute little sculptures on top. r&a sucks. before i moved close to it, i walked in there after a wreck in which my chainring had been bent. i wanted to buy a new one so that i could ride home instead of carry my bike. they told me that they didn't sell chainrings, after i finally got their attention.
anyway, i went to this other bike shop, dixon's, to buy bearings today. the guy there gave me a bag of about 35 bearings for the whopping sum of a dollar. i didn't realize that my suzue hub used two different sizes of bearings, so i had to go back. dixon's helped me fnd the right size and gave them to me for nothing. while i was there they also tuned up a lady's bike for a sack of bagels. just goes to show there are some people out there who care about something besides money.