Actually the last Now I read gave that honour to Cycle Therapy, Carlaw & Dundas East. They don't sell bikes, just a really really good wrench named Sherri and lots of parts, accesories but it is worth going to see how a bike store could be. Comfy chairs and a couch, nice decor & carpet, magazines & books, videos & dvds on cycling to rent, water to sip and generally a great ambience. If you commute east you ought or are just going that way check them out.

They also sell bike trailers that range from useful to incredibly huge. A friend of ours rented the largest one to haul all her artwork to a show at City Hall last summer. It held a large canopy, lots of easels over a dozen huge finished canvasses, a few chairs and a table and lots of odds and ends. Big trailer.

Yay ... another bike shop to check out!

yeah, i think i'll definitely check out cycle therapy. i needed my track fork drilled for a front brake and was shopping around. someone recommended bicycle specialties (st.clair area) to me but mike barry (owner) told me they were swamped with work on their own mariposa frames and recommended biseagal (carlaw area as well). milen munro at biseagal got back to me and was really helpful. i ultimately bought another fork from keith at cavern that was pre-drilled since my stock fork probably would not handle the stresses of braking.

anyways... lots of good bike options in toronto! the best places are often tucked away.

depends on how well they know you.
Ask for Mark at the counter, Hes the best.

Sounds like I have to check that out. Never seen that one. The guy on Queen east is cool too. Reasonable prices for fixie stuff, and friendly.

edit: nm
You need to come out for a ride. I wanna see your bike. Looks sweet

shiz, are you still at u of t? aren't you guys smack dab in the middle of exams?? how about a lunch ride today? i know this is short notice... but let me know if you can get back to me before 2pm. we can zip around, grab a bite.. then back to work for me. anyone else interested in a quickie?

no man, I'm super lucky and I don't have any exams at all. I'm done done done.

I'd love to go out a for a ride. I'm in the bathurst&bloor area. where are you at?

[QUOTE=darkmother][QUOTE=what are people's experiences with duke's? any problems? it seems like they're always getting some kinda publicity or other. now magazine award for best bike store, eye award for best bike store.. blah blah blah... .


I'm not a huge fan of Dukes. There are worse stores, to be sure, but I generally have to go in there and stand around for half an hour waiting for the resident crack head to help me. I prefer Urbane Cycles, it's in the same 'hood. Much better service, and more knoledgable staff.[/QUOTE]

i definately got that feeling when i first started going there too...once you get to know the guys that work there it's a great place to go. urbane cyclist though - they're great EXCEPT for Eugene. He is so f'n rude it's not funny, which is weird cause everyone else at the store is almost too friendly.

yeah eugene has said some pretty harsh stuff to me about my rides, my ideas for projects and pretty much everything else I've said to him. He could have cared less about my campy crank dustcaps that they lost. The other guys and girls at the store felt really bad about losing them though, so I guess it evens out.

i work close to king/bathurst. anyone else in the area want to meet up for a bite/ride? where should we meet? honest ed's? anyone have lunch yet? what's the name of that fleshy thing at the back of my throat????

hot diggity... i've talked with him a few times and never noticed any attitude.. or maybe i'm just too thick skinned. keith at cavern's got my "cool dude, and overall nice guy" vote.

I'm just eating some harvest crunch right now, but I could meet anywhere. I guess it depends on where we want to ride; north or south. I could just meet you outside the wheat sheaf or something (Toronto's oldest drinking etablishment)

the sheaf is good. i'm up for riding anywhere... mount pleasant? just kidding.. let's meet at the sheaf and decide from there. kensington is close by if you want to stop for a bite. is 145pm good?

yeah, I can be there at 1:45pm. just a few more mins to get ready and I'll be down there

in case anyone else in interested... the wheat sheaf is at the southwest corner of king/bathurst, across from the mcdonalds. i'm the one with the red bike!

This is what I get for living 30k from the start point.

I'm in for anymore afternoon quickie rides you want to do, just give me about 2 hours notice

good thing you didn't bike down. shiznaz snapped his chainring and it ended before it started (luckily no injuries) and we ended up sipping coffee and chatting with a homeless guy with a suitcase and a dude with a crazy-assed chopper bike. checked out urbane for some parts.. i had to get back to work and shiz decided to walk to cavern. damn.. probably did more walking than biking, but it's nice to put a face on some of the people on this board. better luck next time!

yeah, and I came home without luck. Nobody really stocks track cranks except urbane and they are all like $280+. Looks like I'll be going the ebay route! Anyways, it was nice meeting you and it turned out to be a beautiful day

cavern didn't have anything used? hmm.. maybe you could try calling up a bunch of stores before plonking down dough on ebay. it was funny though.. service at urbane was a bit icy. how was keith?

Keith was great. Definitely the most helpful so far. He spent like 15 minutes trying to figure out some solutions and options for me, but he didn't have anything in stock.

Last time I was in at Cavern, Keith said he's doing less used stuff, complete bikes/frames anyway. You could always try Parts Unknown in Kensington market. Unlikely you'll find a track crank, but you never know.

That used to be my primary LBS, and I've dropped a fair bit of money there, so I think I can contribute something. First, in terms of service, it totally depends on who's helping you, how busy they are, and how muc they think you're gonna spend. It's all on commission there, so they'll happily spend two hours showing the rich 250lber their range of $5k+ bikes (god, that Stock is so hot though) and ignore the guy who just wants a new helmet. If you go when it's quiet, they'll always be helpful, but will tend to push you towards their higher-profit stuff (Cannondale and Specalized bikes in particular) unless you're quite firm. However, once you develop a working realtionship with a certain person, they'll always drop whatever they're doing to help you.

Their maintence staff is similar - your experience will totally depend on who you get. Their head mechanic (Dave?) is great and will always gives great advice and good turnaround time. Better yet, he will actually push customers towards better value stuff, rather than trying to get you to spend as much as possible. Some of their newer, younger staff are total crap and only out to rip you off. One of them built me a wheel that lasted 500km, used the crappiest break pads on the planet after charging me for their most expensive ones, and lost/stole my old triple crankset all in one session. Worse yet, he refused to use the parts I asked for and acted as thought they were out of stock of everything I wanted. He basically refused to build a wheel with anything other than a Mavic rim and lied through his teeth about the quaility of my old hubs, and said that I needed "at least" Ultegra hubs. This on my beater bike. I haven't been back since and now do all my own wrenching.

Holy crap dude. This is why I do my own wrenching. That is rediculous.

Damn Shiznaz, your bike was perfectly fine last Sat. What'd you do!