Oregon Bike Shop #5 - Bend Bike and Sport, Bend

Last stop!
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Bend Bike and Sport. A slick little operation located in an old house-ish setting similar to Chain Reaction in Gainesville, although here in Bend the exterior gets a much more tasteful paint color to distinguish the theme. Bonus Points for the slick rack out front...Where have I seen these before?...hmmmm.

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Oh Yeah!

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Inside...hardwood floors, high ceilings, split levels from one side of the shop to the other. Very nice environment makes customers want to kick the hemp and get in touch with their inner athlete. There were a few too many shaved leggers here, though. Working too. Never a good sign.... As a general rule of thumb, shaved leggers suck at selling stuff.
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Rack it up and space em out, boys!

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Persons!

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- 2 Crisped "smooth as a baby's ass" shaved leggers! Need I say more. Something about these hard core roadies just leaves me clammy. I'm an arrogant prick, mind you, but even I'm put off by the Lycra attitude. One of my local stores suffers the same disease. Here's a tip, fellas...there's no room for a Peloton IN the store. Take it outside.
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Stuff!

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- 3 Smoking Time-suckers! There were the usual assortment of geegaws sprinkled around in an inviting if not terribly organized fashion. You could build a bike here if, say...your rig got crunched by FedEx on its way from Florida to the west coast....not that I needed to worry about that! The inventory did lack that 'gotta have it' goodness that makes the drooling tourist drop loads of debt markers around the store and leave with arms packed with unnecessary but arguably uber-cool goodies.
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Bikes!
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- 4 Torched Tots! They had it covered. High dollar, low dollar, full suspension and road. lots to choose from and well stocked. Both the fury of legs and the shaver set could be happy with the selection here. Thumbs up!
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Merchandising!

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- 4 Torched Tots! Well set up and fun to peruse. I walked around the place and looked for a while...long enough for the sales dude to finally notice me, but not long enough for him to break off his conversation about his swim time in his last Tri event. Where the hell do you swim in Oregon anyway? Mosquito Reservoir?

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Fuzzy!

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- 5 Fully Involved Fledgelings! With the high ceilings and wood floors, the place was great to be in...made me want to parade around and investigate, and yet seemed inviting enough to make me want to just cuddle in and lounge with a good suspension fork recall notice and read. There was no couch, however...but that's ticky tacky on my part. Rude little roadies be darned, it was a slick little shop. Bitches.

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Tally!

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- 4 Torched Tots! From the selection of bikes, to the parts and merchandising, to the warm and inviting layout, this place had a lot going for it, and if the arrogance level could have been controlled then they probably would have squeaked out a 5...maybe. I'll never understand why roadies who work in shops are as obnoxiously competitive as they are, even with customers. I get that the arrogance helps in a competitive event...clearly Lance is successful in no small part because he's a jerk, but stop there kids. You are working in a bike shop...or owning said shop...because you are NOT Lance. If keeping the hair on your legs makes you act just a little bit sweeter to your customers, then I'd suggest you put down the Nair. This is the highest rated shop I visited in Bend, and yet the stiff-lipped attitude kept me from reaching for my cash, inventory selection and merchandising be damned.