Best of the Beach 2022: Electric Bikes
Electric Bike Shop Strand Electric Bikes It started with a cancer diagnosis. After Geoffrey VanSickle had his prostate removed at age 51, amidst a couple other health issues during the same six months, he found he could not handle the exertion of riding a bike. So the former stock car and dirt-bike motorcycle racer converted his old Schwinn to an electric bike. This was 2015. “Then my wife wanted one, my neighbor wanted one,” said VanSickle. A year later it was a business, first in Redondo Beach, now in Hermosa Beach. He converted conventional bikes to e-bikes – which is still 40 percent of his business. “If it’s a coaster-brake bike it’s a little harder,” said VanSickle. “But there are very few we can’t do.” He also designs, builds, and sells his own Strand Electric Bikes. The shop’s four employees, including VanSickle, assemble and repair e-bikes bought elsewhere, too. “There’s a lot of places that sell them but they don’t know how to work on them,” VanSickle said. When he started, e-bikes were still in their infancy, but he saw things at conventions that bode well for the future. “Because I had been to Europe I knew it was gonna grow a lot, “ he said. “Then Covid accelerated…
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