As long as the beer thing isn't bad intel...

So there's crazy bike shop goings on...

The epicenter appears to be Slick Rock Burrito, which makes damn good sense to me, because 1) those are my favorite burritos in town. Only beating out Tim and Patti's cause Jeff makes that killer Ghost Salsa. To be clear -- I'm a Neato Fan too. And 2) because both of these burrito places were started by Mark, who is a rad guy, a cyclist (owner of a Hairy Gary bike in fact), and the first person ever to mention my blog to me so long ago -- "hey, have you seen this bike blog about Spokane....?"

Spycam shot #1 -- This Bike Life will go into that building on the right.
Notes from my hired spy (not Pat): "There's construction going on inside, and a dividing wall has been installed between the two doors, so it looks like there will now be two separate spots, one small one and one larger one."

It seems like about a month ago, someone (am I'm pretty sure it's Liza), told me that This Bike Life was opening a place up in the space that used to be a hair salon. Liza worked with the owner (Kevin) of This Bike Life at REI before he went off and opened his first shop out north. She vouches for Kevin, which is good enough for me. Then Gaz (here's a picture that isn't Gaz), who is guy I *do* sort of know and I *do* know he's a super good egg and excellent mechanic/problem solver, went to work at This Bike Life. So did Josh - another friend of Liza's from REI.

Anyway -- somewhere along the line I heard that This Bike Life was going to include a beer thing in their shop. I'm thinking that Liza told me that, but she's saying she didn't. So maybe it's wishful thinking? I really hope not, because we NEED another solid beer place in that neighborhood. And I've been telling everyone that I know that "there's gonna be a bike shop behind Slick Rock and it's gonna have beer..."

Manito Tap House has jumped the shark -- buddy Bill put it perfectly yesterday as he quoted Yogi: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." True dat.

Benidittos, of course is the perfect place. He's only got a handful of handles, but there is always good stuff there (including some of the coveted Hood River beers from Every Body's and Double Mountain. Hello). And by "perfect" I'm not talking about all other stuff some of my friends (ahemPatcough) look for in a boozer, such as meeting the basic expectation of actually *getting* a beer delivered to you by a server. Whatevs!

So the point here, is that if we could get a bike shop in the Slick Rock hood that had the Beniditto's beer model, that would be great. K?

So this gets better. And by better, I mean more complicated.

Turns out the guys at Wheel Sport South are looking to move over to the strip mall at Sterling Savings in space formerly occupied by a physical therapy place. Yeah: the one on 30th and Grand.

And yes. That is directly across the street from the new This Bike Life location. According to the window dressing on the former PT space, this will become the new South Hill location for Wheelsport.

Bikes are great, but hanging out and drinking beers around bikes in a bike shop is greater. Clearly -- only the one with the best beers will survive.