Actually, it was 2 shops.
On Monday, I called a couple ships close to my work asking if they carried chain ring spacers. I have some cranks and rings and wanted to build up a triple.

The first shop was confused when I asked if they carry the spacers by themselves or as a package with bolts.
They said I should bring everything in and they would take s look.

The second shop was nuts- it took almost 5min of talking to get the mechanic to understand what I wanted. I kept saying 'the spacers that you use when attaching a small ring to a double to make a triple. The holed are drilled out. 'He finally said 'oh you mean chainring spacers?' As if I hadn't said that a dozen times.
The mechanic then asked if I knew I was building up something old. I told him I knew it's with components from 85 thru 90. He then said 'that stuff is at least 8 years old, we haven't carried triples like that in years.'

He suggested the local collective, and I agreed and said its closed on Monday which is why I wanted to see if the shop had anything.


I hadn't expected them to have spacers, I was just hoping they did. I don't expect them to carry anything old for me to buy at any one time.
But I would expect a mechanic to at least know what I was describing in less than 5min since there are millions of bikes still in use with older triples.

Oh well.
Some scrounging thru small bins at the collective yesterday netted me everything I needed for a whopping $2.50 so I bought cables as well to make it worth the transaction cost.

I mentioned an "Ashtabula" crankset and they just stared with that deer in the headlight look. I wasn't buying anything along those lines but it came up as part of a random conversation.

It happens .. low wages = high turnover . only the Owner has any longevity..

It pains me to say it as a guy of 48, but realistically, I doubt there are very many LBS's around here whose mechanics were even alive when you're talking about late 80's parts. And while there may still be millions of bikes around the world still using bits from that era, it's highly unlikely that they'll have seen many, if any of them, come through the average shop.

I once took a TA triple to my LBS that was missing one of the (odd-sized) chain ring bolts and the spacers, expecting little success. Of course they didn't have that chain ring bolt.

But it took the mechanic less than two minutes to produce a handful of alternative small parts from some drawers and hand them to me saying: 'here, that should do it'. No charge. It all fit perfectly.

I pretty much gave up on all the LBS when I needed new cones and balls to rebuild a shimano front hub.
I wound up buying a new 105 hub on Amazon for $13 and took the parts out of that.

When I argue with these dunces, I end up feeling like the bad guy. I shouldn't.
One of my L.B.S's assured me that chainring spacers do not exist. He had just installed a chain for me, on my road double, and it was rubbing against the inside of the large chainring.
I e-mailed the guy I bought the crank from on Ebay (bicyclist's retreat) and he sent me 10 little, brass, .4mm spacers for free which worked (and still work) well.

Why is this still a thing?

I brought a wheel with a flat sew-up glued on into one shop and asked about sealant... guy tried to sell me a slime tube - I said "t h i s is a s e w-u p." He said... so you don't want the tube?

I brought my bike into another shop when the little spacer at the back end of my front derailluer fell out... the piece that holds the two plates in place. I figured I'd have to buy a whole new FD... guy looks at it and says... "Is that all that's wrong? Let me look <30 seconds> Found it. Here. How about $1?"

My LBS is Yellow Jersey (Yellow Jersey, Ltd., Arlington WI USA Everything Cycling Since 1 April, 1971!). Is there any better C&V-oriented bike shop in all of North America or even the world?

I guess nobody is a smart as you are. Is that the point of this?

Hardly the point. The point isn't close to that.
I was simply surprised that a mechanic(actually 2) didn't know what chainring spacers are.

I completely acknowledge that a typical mechanic would know more about diagnosing and repairing a bike in less time than I.

Rhetorical question alert!

Please, sir, can you sharpen this old saw....

I went to our Cannondale dealer asking for the little plastic (3) top tube cable guides. Knowing it was probably going to be a futile pursuit, I prefaced by saying "just on the outside chance you may have a little bag with them hanging around from the '80s". The mech/rep was relentless in his search and concluded with a follow up call to me 2 weeks later to tell me "sorry, we cant get them". Turns out he contacted a regional distributor for the parts.

I brought my bike on vacation for about a week this summer and realized almost immediately that I hadn't tightened the headset enough and it was coming loose. I took it to a local bike shop and told the obviously high kid in there the problem. He told me no problem and proceeded tighten the top nut as tight as he could with a big crescent wrench even though I could see the correct tools hanging on the wall feet away. He rolled it back and, as you'd expect, the headset hardly moved. I asked him if I could do it really quick and basically taught him how to adjust a threaded headset. I guess they only really deal with garbage beach cruisers and threadless headsets.

I came back the next day and talked to the owner. Apparently the kid was his nephew and basically a warm body there to inflate tires and other little things during the busy season. He then showed me his NOS 531 Team Raleigh the hes getting ready to sell for +$2500 and let me peruse his two storage containers full of bikes.

And then there are actually a couple of good ones. I needed a special cable holder for a brake lever on a bike I was fixing at the co-op I help at. I showed the LBS guy a pic on my phone and he rustled one up. He also paid me a compliment of being someone who stops in that is intelligent, so maybe I get better treatment for being smart.

-SP

My LBS is very C&V friendly with great mechanics. They have parts bins full of useful old used parts as well. I can almost always get anything I need there. I guess I am lucky. Most shops I go to other than my LBS are useless for old things.

Sorry. The watermill is down. The creek done run dry.

The best part of the OP:

I need to find some water bottle cage clamps. Debating whether to just order some from Velo Orange or check a few LBS,'s. The shipping is way more than the parts.

I have been fortunate in finding competent LBS's. The one I like to frequent is owned by a guy that collects 1890's bikes. He knows bikes. The problem is not his knowledge but the fact that he has to make a living selling what the market needs. His inventory is used bikes that are the full range. He makes most of his money on smalls and repair.

What I have found is that a number of them have at least enthusiastic riders. What they know is dependent on their age and interest. Some cherish the C&V stuff which ends up in conversations that are probably too long!

Black Friday mean.

When I was working in bike shops in the seventies I would have had the same sort of response if someone had come in and asked me for a "suicide" front derailleur or a 1-inch-pitch chain.
Brent

When I was working in a bike shop in the early 1970s I remembered two high school friends with 1960 Varsinentals with front suicide shift, and I was given an old Avanti track bike with inch-pitch as a wedding present. (Since it came from my wife's brother, I guess she forgave such a groom-targeted wedding present. )

I worked in a shop way back in 1984. If anyone called on the phone about anything more than 5 years old I told them to "bring it in." I'm not sure what I would have said if someone called about something from the 50's....