Health, Beauty & Fitness

Best Bike Shop

Revolution Cycles

Revolution Cycles store clerk Alex Cook struck up a conversation with a customer one day, and before he knew it, he had two tickets to the National Symphony Orchestra. Turns out the customer was NSO violist James Francis Deighan. When Cook mentioned in passing that he had played oboe through college and then served in Afghanistan in the Navy, Deighan offered to hook him up.

“The staff show genuine interest in their clientele,” explains Deighan, who had popped into the shop for some tubes and was happy to reciprocate. The customer experience, he explains, tends to feel more like an exchange than a transaction.

It’s this kind of rapport that has earned the store—which maintains a repair shop and stocks about 600 bikes, ranging in price from $300 to $5,000—a Gold Star Retailer designation from the National Bicycle Dealers Association.

“Bike shops should be part of their community,” says store manager Mike Hwang—whether the customer is a cycling newbie or a hard-core racer. And in Arlington’s fast-growing bicycle culture, there are plenty of both. “If you come in and you haven’t bought a bike in 25 years and you don’t know how to shift gears, we say ‘Awesome!’” says chief operating officer Jakob Wolf-Barnett. “We want to put more butts on bikes. That’s part of our mission.” –L.C.R.

2731 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, 703-312-0007, www.revolutioncycles.com

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Freshbikes
Spokes Etc.
Papillon Cycles