Steve Donahue started Recycled Cycles 32 years ago, when he was a bike mechanic, and he still is. Donahue is the owner of the shop, but he keeps a workbench outside the office, where he repairs bikes every day. “That's really what I love to do,” he says. “And it sets a good example for younger staff members to see me at 58 still turning wrenches and having a good time with it.”
The shop began in 1994 as a single room in a building where the Burke-Gilman Trail meets Boat Street near the University District, within a helmet’s throw of Portage Bay. As the years have gone on, the shop has expanded into two floors — an upstairs where customers can buy bikes, biking gear, and a dizzying array of bike parts, and a downstairs where Donahue and his team repair and refurbish bikes. At any given time, he says, there are 100 bikes being repaired and 200 used bikes waiting to be fixed. The shop is a bustle of activity between customers coming in to ask all manner of bike-related questions, employees working on bikes, and people dropping off or picking up rental bikes — a lot of vacationing families will rent bikes to tour the Burke, Donahue says.
A lot has changed since Recycled Cycles started. Donahue has seen the rise in popularity of road biking brought on by Lance Armstrong “winning” the Tour de France — “Air quotes around that,” Donahue says — as well as the more recent spike in interest in electric bikes. (The shop sells a single type of e-bike frame that Donahue says is popular among people trading in their old bikes for store credit.) You can get a real sense of history from browsing around the shop — there’s a glass case labeled “museum” where there’s a collection of rare or notable bike parts. The shop even has a big-wheeled penny farthing. A customer sold it to the shop way back around 1995, Donahue says, and the staff used to put it outside to draw people in. These days, it’s hanging from the shop, a reminder of the cycling history Recycled Cycles is a part of.
“We're still down here going strong,” Donahue says, “and we'll be here for as long as as long as we can.”
