An appeal to the old-world enthusiasm of New York cyclists
Shirts. Sam Schube
11:56 am Jul. 20, 2010
On a recent early Sunday morning in the still-slumbering East Village, there was a flurry of activity at 352 Bowery, where a chalkboard marked with a fine script "R" sat outside the glass storefront of the Rapha Cycle Club, a pop-up café-cum-cycling boutique set to run through September. Be-Spandexed riders fresh from 6:00 a.m. races in Central Park, along with those in more forgiving civilian dress, strolled into the roomy space, parked their bikes, and took a seat at a large communal table to watch the race’s 14th stage.
Race favorites Andy Schleck, a whippetish Luxembourger, and Alberto Contador, a standoffish Spaniard, engaged in psychological warfare on two massive flatscreens hanging from an exposed-brick wall. The Club’s espresso bar, staffed by Sullivan Street’s Third Rail Coffee, pumped out tiny cup after tiny cup as the riders recharged.
Le Tour is currently flying through the Pyrenees, and will wrap up Sunday, July 25th in Paris. New York, with its massive amateur cycling scene, should be aflutter with names like Schleck and Contador. (Mr. Livestrong wrecked himself out of contention for an eighth victory in the early going.) And yet until recently there was nowhere in the city to enjoy the Tour as it ought to be enjoyed: in a buzzy haze of high-quality espresso, just like our friends in the Europe of our imagination.
The Club opened in time to screen the Tour’s first stage, and has shown each of the following stages, opening at 7:30 most mornings to do so. By all accounts, it has been a riotous success.
“The response has been great,” said Mike Spriggs, the store’s manager. “It seems to be a mix of cyclists, tourists, and neighborhood folks.”
Spriggs, with a pink Rapha t-shirt draped on his wiry frame and a black-and-white cycling cap perched jauntily on his head, sipped an espresso marked with a delicate foam heart as he spoke. He is a neighborhood local, a longtime rider, and a Rapha devotee—an amalgamation of the Club’s target audience.
The Cycle Club is a sort of Grand Retail Experiment, a real-world extension of a multifaceted brand. It is the brainchild of a London-based purveyor of ultra-high-end cycling goods, and one of the company’s first forays into the brick-and-mortar retail world—Spriggs estimated that 80 percent of Rapha’s sales are online purchases; some items are also sold at Paragon. In 2004, the gents at Rapha attempted to solve an age-old problem: how not to look like an utter buffoon while riding a bike. Even the discerning cyclist is forced to choose between shades of peacockish neon.
Rapha presents a new option, making technically exquisite gear that simply looks good—or at least doesn’t make the wearer resemble a radioactive sausage. Bold colors and clean lines dominate, and a special blend of wool makes the rider feel like Eddy Mercx while wicking sweat efficiently. A simple black jersey hangs next to lightweight vests and a baby blue jersey with the flag of Belgium wrapped around the arm. Across the room is the company’s famed grey-and-pink blazer, a tech-style mashup straight from Savile Row. Needless to say, it’s equal parts well-designed, expensive, and popular.
Rapha, though, considers itself more than a peddler of goods, and that’s where the Cycle Club comes in. Rapha considers itself a lifestyle brand. The gear combines retro simplicity and high performance, and grounds it in a celebration of the sport’s history. This approach to cycling gear, a proxy for the brand’s approach to cycling—let’s ride very quickly, let’s look good while doing it, and let’s appreciate the tradition—is just the sort of thing (some) New York riders have been looking for. The Club found a happy devotee Sunday in Joe Muller, a 25-year-old amateur racer fresh from the morning’s Prospect Park races.
“I love the aesthetic,” he said, and everything about the Cycle Club is curated to match. The centerpiece is a squat, square, flat grey Citroen H Van from the 1960s glaring from the back of the space. The H Van is a relic of Grand Tour history: it was the Tour’s longtime “Broom Wagon,” crawling along at the back of the peloton and picking up beaten riders. The pink Italian Gazzetta dello Sport, where the Tour is front page news, is splayed on the tables, which display stage maps for the Tour, the riders’ routes delicately traced in yellow paint.
Classic jerseys line the walls. Some are done up in bold colors and printed with the names of famous Alpine cols, while others are historical replicas, both serious and whimsical. A pink Team 7-11 jersey, celebrating the first American team to ride the Tour, hangs next to an ancient wool jersey printed only with the rainbow stripes worn by the world champion.
“We like to think that maybe we’re creating a market,” said Spriggs. The Tour-watcher may ride, but he might not own any Rapha gear; the Rapha-wearer might be looking for deeper insight into cycling history, or may discover that he loves artisan coffee. The Cycle Club, then, is about more than selling expensive jerseys and glossy coffee table books.
“It’s kind of a space to show off the essence of what Rapha considers itself to be,” said Spriggs, as well as a gathering spot to watch the Tour. He pointed out that “watching bike racing, celebrating the sport through the competition you watch on TV is a big part of what Rapha’s about.”
It’s a funny scene: fans sip lattes as they watch skeletal riders struggle through the Alps. They peruse racks of $150 jerseys while they celebrate the on-screen cyclists’ willingness to suffer, or, in the parlance of famed Tour commentator Phil Liggett, to dig deep into their suitcases of courage. It’s not totally detached and ironic, though. “When I watch the Tour, I connect to it in a different way,” Spriggs pointed out. “I love watching baseball, but I don’t know what it’s like to face a pitcher throwing 100mph. I do have a point of reference for climbing up a 12 percent grade, for descending and scaring the crap out of myself.”
Michael Nathanson, a drummer and marketing director in town from Vancouver, agreed. “It’s killer gear of exceptional quality,” he said. “And our hotel doesn’t have Versus [the channel carrying the Tour].”
Nathanson, a skinny man with a shaved head, wearing a black tank top and Lennon-esque round tortoiseshell frames, was also happy to find a bike spot where “they don’t talk about Lance all day.” Both his thin frame and distaste for Armstrong were common at the Cycle Club.
At times, it can all feel a bit much, the Paul Smith collaborations achingly curated, the Piet Mondrian jersey hanging from the wall perhaps a little too De Stijl. “Yeah, it’s a romanticized vision” of the sport, said Doug Wolfe, owner of SoHo’s La Colombe. sitting at the communal table. “But in a normal dose, it’s great.” Spriggs agreed, insisting that Rapha is aware of the “potential pitfalls” of such an art-directed enterprise. It’s a self-selecting crowd, for sure, and many of those who’d like to ride stylishly may not be able to afford it.
The Cycle Club, though, doesn’t exist to draw a line between the haves and the have-nots, nor to glorify simply looking good. “We get Wall Streeters, of course,” Spriggs conceded, “but also people saving up.”
They run a Wednesday morning ride that takes a pair of strong legs, not just a nice jersey, to complete, and they’re planning events, including what Spriggs described as an “Iron Chef for mechanics,” after the Tour ends. Most impressively, the Rapha vibe transcends even the hypercompetitive New York cycling scene. Racers in New York are famously aggressive—“It’s like neighborhood competition writ large,” said Spriggs—but enemy jerseys shared pastries Sunday as they watched the riders lock horns through the Pyrenees. The only angry looks came from the patrons frustrated to be in neon.
