The shop has migrated to the other side of the tracks

 This picture was taken yesterday just before I closed the door for the last time at 2533-D Mission st. ext. Since the fall of 1996 this has been the place I spent countless hours welding bicycle frames together. I might have built nearly 2,000 frames in the space , created a cyclocross team with some help from a few folks , had the good fortune of getting some great racers on my bikes in national and world class events , even won a few local races myself. Now it is time to go.

Although I am crammed into the very back of a commercial space that I share with a talented woodworker , the place really has a bike shop feel- more so than the last shop. There are almost 40 bikes up on hooks and room for nearly 30 frames. I'm still getting things put away and organized- things will be a bit different from now on- the place is much cleaner and will have an open floor plan. The frame building area will be much more efficient and I hope to waste fewer moves. The bike assembly area will have an organized tool board and a nice wheel building station. All of these improvements are out of character for me as I used to thrive in chaos. Now I'm going to attempt to thrive in orderly surroundings. Even on the last day of moving there were two complete truckloads to the dump and recycling......I got rid of so much stuff as I was really worried that I would never fit it all into the new space. I'm still not sure that it will but at least now there's a bit of hope that I can be up and running by Monday.
I started moving about two weeks ago while still prepping frames here and there. I fell off a ladder last week, hit my head and got a concussion, twisted my ankle and got scraped up pretty well. I am still having issues with dizziness and walking- that said, the move went surprisingly well, mostly thanks to the community of friends and associates I have built up over the last couple of decades. Without these people I would not have been able to pull off this move. Now all I have to do is pull off working in a new shop with high ceilings, high rent , freshly painted walls and plenty of three-phase power. It could be way worse.
From now on it will be Rock Lobster cycles  719 Swift st. # 10  Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060. This could almost be considered a 'destination' shop'.....not because of me but more because of the work of many people that went into the creation of this place. I walked in there yesterday afternoon right after sweeping out the old shop and looked at the new place- I liked what I saw. Hope that you do too.