WHO WE ARE

OUR PHILOSOPHY

Why we do what we do

Sometimes, the work we do in a bike shop isn't very romantic. We clean gritty chains, change dirty tires, and loosen stuck parts. Our benches are littered with tools and debris, and covered with a fine sheen of oily residue. Our aprons bear the signs of repeated wiping of greasy hands, etched with black lines that ordinary soap can't remove.

Sure, there's romance to working with one's hands. We don't sit in cubicles, facing pie-charts on computer screens, overflowing in-boxes, or mind-numbing office bureaucracies. We are never at a loss when asked to describe what we do. The handiwork is immediate, clear, obvious. But the romance of working with one's hands can wear off pretty quickly after ten hours on our feet, with barely enough time to down a slice of cold pizza, with cuts and bruises on our knuckles bearing witness to the many battles fought with those stuck parts. So if that's all there was to our job, life wouldn't be very exciting for us, and you'd receive indifferent service.

Instead, our work is infused with romance, because when the bike shop doors open, you bring in your dreams.

Each dream unfolds slowly, because at first you are not sure if you can trust us. Perhaps you have mentioned your dream to someone previously, and you were met with skepticism. So, to start with, we may chat a little about bikes, and parts, and we ask you some questions, and tell you a bit about ourselves. And as we talk, you may find a light of understanding in our eyes, your passion reflected back at you, and you pull us into your dream. And, next thing we know, we find ourselves on a wild adventure of helping you make your dream come true.

Over the many years we have spent talking to you all about bikes, we noticed that when you came in to look for a bike, to restore or repair a bike, to get back on a bike, to find a different, more appropriate type of bike, you were looking, in some measure, for freedom, autonomy, independence. For some of you, it was freedom from traffic, from stress, from the city, from the car, from gas, for others, from creeping weight, illness, injury or disability, and even from convention and routine. You expressed a desire to escape, in bigger or smaller ways, from something that was limiting or holding you back.

A bike, of course, is a humble vehicle, and a great alternative to a car, train, bus, or traveling on foot. But it is also so much more: it is the FREEDOM MACHINE! The bike industry tries to define the cyclist based on the type of bike they ride: hybrid, fixie, mountain, road, recumbent. In fact, each bike rider in his or her own way, defines what a bicycle is. And so it becomes a vehicle for expressing an alternative world view, living an alternative lifestyle, moving at one's own speed, and reformulating one's priorities in the context of one's community. We never want to define what a cyclist should be. Instead, we want to open up the possibilities of what you could be.

We have the privilege to promote the most virtuous machine on earth. We believe no tool is more effective for getting places, getting lost, finding yourself, and for doing good.

And the true romance of what we do is helping you realize your dreams of independent travel.

We’ve been around the block a few times

Cosmic Bikes is home to some of the most senior, continually working bicycle professionals in the city, with literally decades of experience under their belts. The people who work here were instrumental in helping to create and cultivate Chicago’s bike culture, and you can count on them to give you solid, time-tested advice, guidance and top of the line service.

Our roots in Chicago's bike history are strong: back in the prehistoric era, 1994 to be exact, we opened the first bicycle shop in the region focused on transportation, long before it was the fashionable thing to do. It was also Chicago's first shop to carry recumbents, and --a bit later-- Brompton folding bikes. Many of Chicago's finest bike mechanics cut their teeth with us, and several went on to open their own independent bike shops throughout the city (and other places in the US). 

Our history is colorful and long, perhaps too long to be summarized here. But if you are curious about where we came from, what our values are, and how we came to devote our lives to this project (or if you just can't sleep at night), here are some more things about us:

Here. Now. What it means to be local.

Our previous shop.

More here.