Sunday, March 1, 2015

Iowa Bike Expo: Beaverdale, Baby!

Returning to the theme of "neat local shops at the Expo", here's a look at another unique-to-Des Moines purveyor of bikes (and in this never-humble blogger's opinion, owner of the best logo in town), Beaverdale Bicycles:


BB's been closely affiliated with a t-shirt shop from the get-go (they used to share a building), so they always have an array of unique and funny bike-themed Ts. I believe that's proprietor Ed Veak manning the booth and the Wall of Shirts.


They also carry a pretty eclectic family of bike brands and accessories, catering to the everyday cyclist/oddball. That's a Soma Wolverine in drool-inducing orange, fully fendered and lighted for commuting with a belt drive to boot.


Further proof that this is not your everyday yawn-inducing Trek megastore: That's a Tout Terrain Silkroad expedition touring rig from Germany. Check the integration in that insanely beefy welded-on rear rack. Das ist gut, nein?


Velo Orange calls their Carmague a touring frame for unpaved roads, but this one looks to be built up nuovo-retro-mountain-bike style akin to my mental project around a Long Haul Trucker. (Notice that all the bikes have uncut steerer tubes with massive spacer stacks, which looks kinda weird from a "show bike" perspective but is a lot more sensible than cutting them down and limiting the customer's choices later.)

Hard to tell from my always-lousy photos, but the telltale fat front hubs on all these bikes point out another of Beaverdale's specialties/niches: Dynamo hub-powered lighting. Not something your humble narrator is really into, but I'm glad we have a shop in town that is. In fact, Beaverdale Bikes (and Ichi Bikes, detailed in a previous Expo post) are two of my favorite places in all of Des Moines bikery for that very reason: Both are different. A Trek store? That's the Wal-Mart of cycling: There's one in every town, selling the same stuff. But Ichi and Beaverdale (and the Des Moines Bike Collective, which I need to detail in a post someday) are uniquely ours, actual local bike shops.

Huh, how did that soapbox get under there? Guess I should step off it...

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