At city bike shop, students look to get careers in gear

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

BY CHARU GUPTA
Special to the Journal

Editor's note: Students in an advanced feature writing class at Brown University were assigned to write a feature story about a street that conveys a sense of place. The project, now in its seventh year, presents aspects of city life from the perspective of college journalism students.

PROVIDENCE -- High school students Kevin Leo and Dave Fonseca sit on the bright orange church pew in the center of The HUB as they wait for customers to arrive. The door to the small bicycle shop opens and a young woman walks in. She needs her tire changed.

Leo and Fonseca immediately jump up and begin to help. The customer, a Brown University sophomore, is apprehensive until store owner Jesse Bushnell reassures her, "Kevin's done at least 50 tires since he's been here."

As Leo works on removing the front tire of the old gray bike, Fonseca checks the pressure of the back one. Leo, 17, and Fonseca, 16, are students at The Met School, doing an internship at The HUB, a bicycle shop on Brook Street in Providence.

Under the guidance of Bushnell, one of the two proprietors, the students spend two days a week at The HUB, learning the fundamentals of bike mechanics and of owning a small business.

Leo, an enthusiastic junior with a bright smile, explains, "On Tuesdays, we do repairs because we're usually closed. Thursdays is when we really interact with customers."
The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center, which opened in 1996, is a state-financed public high school that focuses on workplace internships and independent projects designed to meet each student's interests. There are 580 students enrolled at the school, which centers around LTIs, Learning Through Internships.

Each student chooses where to perform the internship. Fonseca says the philosophy of the program allows students "to learn what you want to learn."

Leo and Fonseca chose The HUB because they hope to start their own businesses someday. Fonseca, who wants to be an auto or bike mechanic, says he is excited to be working at The HUB because "I'll learn how to start my own business and how to fix bikes."

Leo, who has been interning at The HUB for six months, lists what he has learned. "The first thing I learned was the proper way to change a flat. I've learned the way to change the parts of a bike, and I've learned the business aspect and combining business to the use of a computer."

Bushnell, 32, an athletic man with dark brown hair and a gold earring in each ear, chimes in, "He'll be teaching me that as well."

For his independent project, Leo is developing a computer inventory system for the shop. As part of their internships, students must give a final presentation to their class on what they have learned. Leo explains his choice of project: "I think I've learned everything I can through this shop, and now I want to give back to my mentor. He's never actually turned on a computer, so he's hoping to learn through my project. I think a computer is necessary in owning a business."

Leo chose to work at a bicycle shop so he could learn about the workings of a small business. His interests vary from art to music to cooking, and he hopes to attend either Johnson & Wales University or the Culinary Institute of America and one day open his own restaurant.

Bushnell explains that while Leo was not the typical internship applicant -- one interested in bike mechanics -- he was the most personable.

"My shop is an open service area and Kevin was really comfortable with the environment," says Bushnell. "I'd have no problem leaving the store and leaving him in charge."

Leo and Fonseca say Bushnell has allowed them to become involved with the shop and to interact with customers. Leo says, "This place is just a real good atmosphere. Every time I come in here, I feel like I actually work here. I feel like an employee, even though I'm an intern."

The HUB is not your typical bike shop. Furniture is cluttered in front: antique wooden chairs, hot pink soda fountain stools, tables and bookshelves. Hanging from the roof are chairs, plastic yellow ones and durable wooden ones. Army memorabilia sits on one shelf, a horse skull and red vases on another.

Only after wandering through the retro furniture does one see the back of the store, devoted to bikes. There is a service area cluttered with tools and bikes, many hanging from the ceiling. A staircase leads to another level crammed with bikes -- some new, some used, and the rest part of the owners' personal collection.

The shop is owned by Bushnell and Jack Madden, who met more than 10 years ago working in the research and development department of Woonsocket-based Pro-Flex bicycles.

Concerned not with making money but with establishing a home for Providence's cycling community, Bushnell explains their vision.

"Jack and I always wanted to build a bike shop that had a different philosophy to it in Providence. We feel that most bike shops are too retail-oriented. Part of the construction of the bike shop would be that our service area is always the first thing exposed to everyone. The retail is sort of the necessary evil."

Known to cyclists as The HUB, and to furniture connoisseurs as The Zoo, even the store's name is a reflection of Bushnell and Madden's unusual philosophy.

"We wanted to be called The HUB because we wanted to be the hub of cycling in the city, not necessarily related to a store or shopping, but a place where cycling events could meet," says Bushnell.

In their effort to become the center of bike culture, Bushnell and Madden installed digital cable and a large television when the shop opened last June, so people could watch the Tour de France.

Bike couriers who ride downtown, eager to escape the cold, stop in daily to have coffee and eat lunch during the winter; Critical Mass riders -- who participate in monthly bicycle rides to celebrate cycling and to demand rights to the road -- hold fundraisers there.

More than just bike shop owners, Madden and Bushnell are bike lovers. Bushnell says working on bikes has been his only job. Madden, 37, whose fingers are often stained with black grease, works full-time as a civil engineer and works at The HUB on weekends. He has been riding bikes since he attended college at the University of Vermont, where he used a bike to get around Burlington.

Along with an array of new, used, and rental bikes, the store houses Madden's and Bushnell's bike collection.

"We wanted to have every aspect of bike," says Bushnell. "We have bicycles all the way up through the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and they're going to go up towards the ceiling to just show the development of the bicycle and how the styles change from year to year. And that's just because we're dorky bike geeks."

Their hodge-podge of bikes includes a blue Western Flyer from the 50s, a black Columbia Cruiser with a springer fork, three tandem bikes, and a red Schwinn Apple Krate from the 1970s -- the most popular of the Krates and Bushnell's favorite.

They have a replica of a high wheeler, the oldest form of bike, consisting of one giant wheel and one little wheel. The rider sits atop the giant wheel, which is four to six feet tall. Madden says, "Sometimes you'll see Jesse riding it around. The legend goes that Jesse rode it up College Hill. I'd like to see that."

Rounding out the collection is their oldest bike, an 1896 bike with wooden rims, one of the first bikes with a chain. It has a ladies-style frame with a sloping top-tube, which allowed women to ride bikes while wearing dresses. Madden says that nowadays, the rage is to have a fixed-gear, one-speed bicycle, similar to this one.

"It's considered a difficult bicycle to ride," says Madden, "but the truth of the matter is, back in the 1890s, there were women in bloomers and skirts riding these same types of bicycles that the messengers ride today, so I laugh when I see a messenger who has a tough attitude and he's riding a fixed gear. Somewhere a hundred years ago, there was a lady doing that in a skirt."

In addition to the bicycle shop, Madden and Bushnell run The Zoo, the furniture store. The place now attracts two types of customers.

"Actually this furniture thing is a nice complement because people that wouldn't normally come in for bicycles come in and look at the furniture and then realize that we're a bike shop. It's kind of a nice chemistry," says Madden.

In one window of the shop is a coffee table Jesse's friend Pat McNichol constructed out of 8,000 toothpicks. The table, based on the design of the Eiffel Tower, has been bought; McNichol is working on another. The shop also has a red leather lounge chair from the 1968 World's Fair; punk rock posters; and a mirror, 9-feet tall and 8-feet wide from a mansion in Newport. "I bought it more for me than for sale," says Bushnell.

As The HUB is only in its first year of operation, Madden and Bushnell are still developing the shop. As they attempt to run a small business, Bushnell says the big hurdle is procuring brands of bicycles. But as Bushnell reiterates, the Hub is not about selling bikes and making its owners rich; its purpose is to become a haven for bicycle lovers.

Part of the cycling world that he's built includes mentoring Leo and Fonseca. "It goes along with the philosophy of the shop. We want to promote cycling and teach people how to be bike mechanics," Bushnell says.

He says one problem of the modern-day bike shop is that apprenticeships no longer exist. There used to be a bike shop on every street corner, says Bushnell, and the owner would take neighborhood kids under his wing to teach them about bike mechanics. That's a tradition he's trying to continue.

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