ES Sports – Pedaling back down Mainstreet

Bike-O-Rama owner Jack Spiro restoring a treasured Schwinn Sting-Ray. Photos (CivicCouch.com)

Bike-O-Rama owner Jack Spiro restoring a treasured Schwinn Sting-Ray. Photos (CivicCouch.com)

          

Stroll down Main Street El Segundo and you’ll see a commercial hub undergoing a dynamic transition between the traditional and the trending.  On one block are pizza joints serving up slices at the counter. Nearby are upscale restaurants that cater to the high-end crowd with fusion cuisine and super-attentive service.

But nowhere is the generational contrast starker than in the block between Holly and Pine Streets. On the west side of Main Street is Electric Bike LA, featuring the latest in pedal-assisted e-transportation.  Walk just a of doors down and you’ll find a little hole-in-the-wall bicycle shop with the nostalgic name Bike-O-Rama. Remember Bowl-O-Rama and Spin-O-Rama and Skate-O-Rama? According to the Urban Dictionary, -O-Rama is a made-up word that started showing up in the 1950’s. It means “remarkable, extraordinary or extreme.”

Based on its endless 5-star Yelp reviews, Bike-O-Rama is exactly the right name for Jack Spiro’s old-school neighborhood bike shop..

It appears to be a Schwinn bike shop straight out of the 1950s, when a Schwinn for Christmas was a generational tradition.  In the 1980s, Schwinn began suffering a slow decline and finally declared bankruptcy in 1992. But that hasn’t stopped Spiro from using the enduring Schwinn mystique to pull customers in off the street.

There’s a neon Schwinn sign that lights up the front window, a dozen used bikes out front calling to passers-by with affordable prices, and plenty of Schwinn posters and signage displayed throughout the cozy, crowded store. The clincher is the row of lovingly restored classic Schwinn Stingrays and Apple Krates, the iconic bikes that made the Schwinn brand so popular back in the 1960’s through the early ‘80’s.

But look a little closer – or ask owner/operator Spiro a few of questions — and the reality quickly emerges: this is what he calls “a bootleg Schwinn shop.”

It’s not a real Schwinn bike shop, but a loving recreation of the kind of shop where several generations of kids – from Baby Boomers to Gen-Xers — got their first bike, and where he learned his mechanical chops and developed his passion for bicycle repair and restoration.

“Back in the day, every Main Street had a Schwinn shop,” Spiro says. “I think it fits well with El Segundo’s chill vibe and retro feel.”

When he first opened Bike-O-Rama one year ago, he admits, the shop’s presentation was very generic. That changed pretty quickly.

“Almost immediately some El Segundo old timers started coming in, and they kept saying you should dress this place up as a Schwinn shop,” he recalled. “Right away I thought that was a really cool idea.”

And Spiro was just the guy to turn such an audacious idea into a reality: he has had a love affair with Schwinns ever since his uncle bought him his first Stingray at age 5. And he used to work at a Schwinn shop.  

“I was part of the very last gasp of that era with Schwinn, so I called the old store and carried all their stuff over here,” he said. “I bought everything the old store had left. That neon Schwinn sign out front, the old Schwinn advertisements on the wall, a lot of original dealer promotion materials, all of it. Even the Schwinn tools and parts inventory.”

Today Bike-O-Rama is one of only three shops in SoCal that restore vintage Schwinns, especially the ones with the Stingrays with the banana seat and the Ape-hanger handlebars. So keeping a steady supply of Schwinns – and Schwinn parts — coming into the shop for repair and restoration is part of his daily job. Though he sells at least one bike a day, repairing and restoring bikes provides 75 percent of the shop’s income.

Vintage style bikes in front of Bike-O-Rama lure in passersby.

“I check Craigslist for old Schwinns and buy them whenever I see them,” he said.  “Then I either restore them or take them apart and use the parts to restore other Schwinns.”

Other bike shops in the area routinely turn down requests to work on old Schwinns – they don’t have the time, the parts or the tools — and instead refer the customer to Bike-O-Rama.

“I get at least six Schwinns a month sent over from Hermosa Cyclery,” he said.

Spiro has found another way to utilize his Schwinn knowledge and expertise: working with film and TV studios to provide bikes for their productions and to help with their stunts.

Although the 35-year-old Spiro dresses like an overgrown skate kid – on a recent Friday he was rocking black Vans, tan Dickie shorts with a silver wallet chain, a black T-shirt and a baseball cap with a Premium BMX logo – he’s perfectly positioned to deal with the studios.

He grew up in Santa Monica, which has a heavy Hollywood influence, and has a film degree from Cal State Northridge. He actually worked as a film editor for several years for a production company.

Eventually, he realized he would rather follow his passion for bikes and he opened the original Bike-O-Rama in Lomita in 2011. When his lease ran out last year he set out to find a more up-scale area whose residents could afford the kind of bikes he would be selling. That Schwinn Stingray that went for $86 when Captain Kangaroo was urging kids to get their parents to buy them one? It now goes for $1,300 – or more, depending on the year, the condition and the amount of restoration needed.

“I think this area is becoming the Abbott-Kinney of the South Bay,” he said, referring to the famed Venice hipster hangout. “I love my two employees, Francisco and Chad. We have a good time here every day.”

His customers say he’s a straight shooter who will always try to save them a few bucks. On this day he convinced a customer to spend $125 on a used bike rather than $400 for the new mountain bike he intended to buy when he came into the store.

“I’ve known Jack since he was 15, and he has always been like that,” says Brandon Williams of West Los Angeles. “Not only is he more passionate about bikes than anyone I’ve ever known, but he will always tell you the truth about bikes, and always try to do what’s best for you.”

Spiro puts it more succinctly.

“I don’t do one-time burns,” he says. “I want people to come back. I want repeat customers.”

One repeat customer, Frank Veltry, told about a sale and a buy-back of a blue Stingray with butterfly handlebars and a white banana seat.

Veltry, 58, has lived in El Segundo for the past year. But he lived in Santa Monica 20 years ago, near Spiro, who at the time was a teen-ager working part time at Palm cycles.

“One day I was driving up the street and I see some kid unloading all these old Schwinns,” Veltry recalled. “I stopped and we got to talking about how much we both loved vintage Schwinns. Suddenly he says I’ve got just the bike for you.”

Spiro took a bike out of a box and Veltry was immediately impressed.

“It was in really nice shape, a blue Stingray with butterfly handlebars and a white banana seat. I asked if I could buy it from him,” he said. “Jack got really excited and starts telling me about his collection. Then he took me upstairs and showed me the Apple Krate bikes he had. They were brand new, in perfect condition. Some still had the tags hanging on them.”

Apple Krates are the high-end version of the Stingray.

The whole exchange took maybe 10 minutes, and 20 years later Veltry couldn’t recall the exact price he paid. But he did remember that it felt more than fair, that their shared passion had inspired Spiro – who wasn’t even trying to sell the bike – to give him a good deal.

Veltry left with the Stingray and treasured it for the next 20 years. “That Stingray was kind of my mid-life crisis – my friends would gawk at the bike and ask where I got it, just like some other mid-life crisis guy might have bought a little red Corvette,” he said.

Then Veltry met the woman who would become his wife. She urged him to store the Stingray in their garage and forget about it. When he got divorced out came the bike, which he had kept in great condition all those married years.     

Last year he moved to El Segundo, and a few months later he was riding a banged up old cruiser down Main Street looking for a place that could fix a broken spoke and wobbly rear wheel. He spotted Bike-O-Rama and went in.

“Jack saw my Dogtown sticker on the bike and said he had grown up in Santa Monica and knew it well,” Veltry recalled. “I told him I had bought a Stingray in Santa Monica, and he asked where? I said on 18th St., just south of Montana.”

They quickly realized they had done business 20 years earlier.

“I didn’t really want to sell that bike,” Spiro told him.

Veltry offered to get the Stingray out of his garage and sell it back to him. Spiro paid the same price he had sold it for 20 years ago: $250. “Jack was so happy to get that bike back,” Veltry said.

So happy that he agreed on a bonus for Veltry.

“Since then Jack has tuned up my bike for free, tuned up my girlfriend’s bike for free, and has helped me in so many different ways I can’t count them all,” Veltry said. “He’s been really kind to me. I love coming into his shop and talking bikes with him.”

Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.comFollow: @paulteetor

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