Most businesses hurry down paths of unbridled growth. Scenic Routes seeks, well, a more scenic route.
The Scenic Routes Community Bicycle Center at 521 Balboa St. was born out of a pandemic-era, quarantine-addled Twitter joke. Furloughed from his restaurant job, bike enthusiast Jay Beaman took to social media with hot-headed contributions to the supply-chain discourse of 2020, when bicycles were in high demand across the country.
“I said that there was no bike shortage,” Beaman said, hunched over a picnic table in the shop’s backyard on a recent Thursday, surrounded by bikes waiting to be repaired. There were, he said, “hundreds and hundreds of thousands of bikes languishing in garages all over the city that just needed a little bit of attention and time.”
So he gave it to them. Beaman started fixing up bikes for free out of his North of Panhandle apartment.
As the project grew, Beaman enlisted longtime friend and riding buddy Michael Connolly, and the duo was soon after joined by wheel builder Kat Siegal and transportation advocate Emily Horsman, friends from “bike Twitter, and transportation-equity Twitter.” Connolly, a full-time nurse, co-founded the shop with Beaman and helped build the storefront on Balboa. Beaman also credits Horsman and Siegal, the shop’s first employees, as unofficial co-founders.
Five years and one brick-and-mortar later, Beaman fantasizes about a rich benefactor coming along, so he can lose money year over year. Last year, the bike shop made just 1 percent net, a business model he calls “anti-profit.”
“How cool would it be if some rich person was just like, ‘Look, I’m going to put a million dollars into an account, that’s your endowment,’” Beaman said. “Then we could just lose 30 or 40 thousand dollars a year, and it would be fine.”
On Thursday nights when it opens for free classes, the shop resembles something like a school with an endowment (or, at least, a university club). The classes range from fixing flat tires to roadside first aid to bike “yassification,” replete with beads, paint, and shellac.
“Our primary goal is to create a space that is centered around the community. And, in our case, the community is the Inner Richmond, is the park, is transit people, is bike people, is urbanists. It’s people that believe in cities,” said Beaman.
That community-mindedness has guided Scenic Routes since its inception.
“Michael came into a bar that I was bartending at on his 21st birthday,” Beaman said, recalling the friendship that became the bike shop. The two shared an interest in riding and working on bikes. When Beaman bought a new frame in 2017, Connolly helped him build the bike he still rides today.
“We built it together, and then we rode,” Beaman said. “We rode like crazy.”
The duo set out on bike tours across the world, including one across Ireland and another the length of Oregon.
Beaman calls those the “pre-pandemic days,” though. By the time pandemic restrictions began to lift and restaurants began to reopen, Beaman had envisioned a space for Scenic Routes beyond his Hayes Street apartment; not just a bike shop, but a third space for people to hang out, drink coffee, talk shop and participate in free events like classes and group rides. For Beaman, the extra labor of maintaining this “community center” on top of running a business comes with a simple explanation.
“People running bike shops aren’t getting rich,” Beaman said. “So you might as well feel good about yourself and not get rich.”
The shop is buoyed, in part, by a group of more than 200 committed members, who contribute monthly in exchange for benefits like discounts and free repairs. That revenue for the store — around 10 percent of its total, with the rest coming from repairs and retail — “is our form of an endowment,” Beaman said. “I just wish it was a bigger one.” It’s a far cry from his seven-figure dreams.
This is what community looks like ❤️
Transplant community ❤️ yuppies, is subsidized on the backs of locals
These types of operations are becoming more common. Bike Church / Kitchen are typical names around the country. Lots of issues to deal with when you do something for “free” and “hire” volunteers. Then there is the never ending influx of old stuff that gets donated.
Anybody got rich running a bike shop, raise their hands. Thought so.
Interestingly, in light of the age of online sales (e.g. Canyon teaming up with REI), inventory/supply chain/capital allocation nightmares, constant break-ins and so forth, there’s ppl in the industry championing “shop” models very much like Scenic Routes. Low inventory, focus on service/repair and building community around riding. Selling lattes, bike fitting, fitness/riding classes and the like. Just, well, of course not stylized like this.
It’s not North of the Pandhandle dammit it’s Hayes Valley. SF Natives not transplants!!!!!!!! Techies, yuppies, hipsters- LEAVE!!
@AMOE I bet you say the same thing about ppl who use “Frisco”? Remember; “change is the only constant”, and “those who live in the past are bound to repeat it”.
“All change is good change.” – SF Yuppie Yimby invader destroying SF
LARPing as a nonprofit or worker co-op, complete with a full complement of radical chic wardrobe and accessories.
I say fish or cut bait. You get to beg for money *after* you get the 501c3
Mission has the bike kitchen but maybe we need more such organizations in San Francisco, real ones.
They are not easy to sustain but this doesn’t sound much healthier as far as finances.
PS Everyone delete your twitter right now!
What a weird take. SR has spent a few years building a healthy community through mutual support and shared goals – building community is about being committed, consistent, and aspirational! They’ve come so far through that effort and sweat – Jay and the whole crew are the sweetest most considerate folks. They’re running the shop in the way they know that can keep it sustainable and open for the community, and just trying to get people on bikes.
I’d recommend swinging by! You don’t know what you’re missing. Who knows, maybe you’ll ride away on a new bike.
“transit people, bike people, influencers, gentrifiers, yuppies with no job but tiktok”
“So you might as well feel good about yourself…”
Transplants always thinking they’re the first to do everything.