Left:
Sid’s Bikes owner Allen Schulman stands outside his store at 151 W.
19th St. in Chelsea, which opened last May to specifically cater to the
West Side. His business is up for a $100,000 grant being offered by
Microsoft for small businesses to advance their tech operations. Right:
The store, near Seventh Ave., is the largest bike shop in the city in
terms of space, offering some of the highest-quality products on the
market.
Chelsea bike shop pedaling wares to West Side riders
By Charlotte Cowles
Sid’s
Bikes on W. 19th St. in Chelsea is an airy, well-lit space with
gleaming storefront windows and countertops so clean you could eat
Powerbars off of them. “It’s the prettiest bike store in New York City,
not just the largest,” said Allen Schulman, the store’s owner,
gesturing towards the carefully racked bicycles and polished glass
cases filled with sunglasses, tools and other cycling equipment.
“I
always knew that Chelsea was underserved in terms of high-caliber bike
shops,” said Schulman, who opened his store near Seventh Ave. last May.
“The bike shops here were grimy, dark, and cluttered. For people who
are enthusiastic and passionate about the sport, I feel like I owe it
to them to give them a good experience shopping for their stuff.”
With
the new bike lane on Ninth Ave. and the ever-expanding park along the
West Side Highway, Chelsea has become one of the most bike-friendly
neighborhoods in Manhattan, Schulman noted. He opened up shop in
Chelsea last May, adding the larger sister store to complement his
15-year-old Kips Bay location. In comparison to his East Side store,
the West Side location “has got to be bigger and better,” Schulman
said, because of its proximity to an influx of bike-friendly
development in the neighborhood.
“It’s
become so fashionable to be environmentally conscious,” he added. “It’s
not weird anymore to be that guy who rides to work and changes when he
gets there.” He said that his staff all rides to work. “They’re all
really into it. It’s one of our criteria for hiring.”
But
even with Sid’s newfound growth in Chelsea, Schulman wants to expand
further and is currently vying for a grant to peddle his wares on a
worldwide platform.
Sid’s is
currently a top three finalist in a contest held by the
Microsoft-sponsored Small Business Summit, with the winner receiving
$100,000 for a “tech makeover.” Schulman wrote a 3,000-word essay and
made a short video to enter, and plans to expand his business’s Web
presence with the funds. He has the product, but currently lacks the
resources to successfully sell in the online market.
“I’d
rather not do an e-commerce site unless I could do it right,” he said.
Microsoft will announce the winner on March 24, and if Schulman wins,
the pristine products on display in his Chelsea store could be
available to bikers the world over.
The
current Chelsea location already caters to all kinds of cyclists, and
the sales floor has the selection to show for it. Shiny rows of snappy
neon racing bicycles stand next to candy-colored kids’ bikes with
tassels on the handlebars and training wheels fixed to the sides. The
apparel choices fit those who are comfortable in full-body spandex—as
well as those who aren’t.
Schulman
said he has noticed a difference in Chelsea from his East Side
clientele. “Over here it’s more people in their 30s and 40s, as well as
families,” he said. “It’s a higher-income demographic than in Kips Bay.
People coming to this neighborhood have expendable capital.”
Sid’s
Bikes began as an auto shop in upper Manhattan, owned by Schulman’s
father and the store’s namesake, Sid. The shop was then called Chain
Auto and sold a few bikes as well as auto parts and locksmithing
services in 1969. During the 1973 oil embargo, bikes became a bigger
part of the store’s sales, and in 1979, the store officially changed
its name to Sid’s Bike Corp. and moved to Riverdale in the Bronx, where
they sold bikes exclusively.
Schulman
worked at his father’s shop throughout his childhood. “I remember, as a
kid, helping my dad work on bikes, learning about it, literally selling
bikes,” he said. In 1993 Schulman opened Sid’s Bikes in Kips Bay, and
in 2005, Sid retired, closing the original Bronx location.
“It’s
been great to take on that legacy,” he said. Sid, who is 79 now,
recently saw the video for the Small Business Summit contest. “He liked
it,” Schulman added.
While Schulman is
above all a businessman, he choose this moment to expand his realm in
the Manhattan bike business as cycling presents a fun and healthy
solution for trendy environmental living. He is an avid cyclist himself
and earnestly rattles off the benefits of bike-friendly city living.
When
it comes to the bikes versus cars, Schulman takes a modest stance,
applauding the city’s efforts to become more bike-friendly instead of
ranting against congestion. “I give a lot of credit to this
administration,” he said, citing city officials’ recent trip to
Copenhagen to study urban planning tactics in a city where cycling
commuters outnumber drivers.
“Amanda
Burden [chairperson of the City Planning Commission] flew to Copenhagen
to find out, ‘Why do more people bike to work here than anywhere else
in the world?’” recounts Schulman, who extols the virtues of pro-bike
urban planning, including bike racks on city buses and trains. “A week
or two after she came back, they put up the Ninth Ave. bike lane.” The
lane, which was planned in September and constructed in October as the
city’s first-ever “physically separated” bike lane, runs from 14th St.
to W. 23rd St.
While Schulman is the
first to believe that this administration is “doing a good job” to
encourage more cycling and less car travel, he does have one criticism
of the lane: There needs to be more of it. “I understand that it’s an
experiment,” he said. “But in order for bike lanes to be effective,
there needs to be a network of them around the city. This one is really
only useful for people going between 23rd Street and 14th Street”
Schulman
believes, simply, that cars are “unfriendly.” When people are on bikes,
he said, they interact with passersby. “You can ring your bell at a
neighbor or a friend, or talk to someone. People in cars—they don’t
interact with each other,” he said. “Putting more cars into a city
makes for a less-friendly city.”
As for
more radical actions against cars, Schulman was cautious. He believes
in working with the city to reduce traffic rather than rebelling
against it. “Congestion pricing—we support that,” he said. As for
Critical Mass, an organized event where bikers take to city streets en
masse and block cars as a pro-cycling, anti-driving statement, Shulman
was less enthusiastic. “They raise a good point—take the streets away
from cars—but they need to bring up the point in a less controversial
way, so the city can hear their message.”
He
was also full of ideas when it came to structured ways to improve the
city streets for bicycles. “In Portland, there are bike racks on buses
so that you can easily just lock your bike onto the outside of bus when
you get on—you don’t have to worry about carrying it on,” he said.
“There are lots of things that a city can do, to be more bike-friendly.
They’re working on it.”
Schulman hopes
to expand into two more stores down the road, with another possibly
planned for the West Side if all goes as planned. Securing a $100,000
grant would certainly help his cause.
“Normally I don’t fill out these contests,” Schulman acknowledged, “but I feel like we deserve to win.”
