Episode 1: WTF is this(a history and introduction)?

This is a fairy tale of Campus WheelWorks & Ethan Johnson and how the two came upon their life long relationship together. This is my first podcast episode ever. It may not be perfect but it will give you a glimpse into what I hope to cover in the following episodes. Sit back and take in a bit of the history of my shop and my bike shop life.

Intro/Outro: Original music by Do your F*cking Dishes! a band I played in a million years ago. The song is Cruster General off our Demo that was a cassette tape painted like a dish sponge. Commercial audio by Jack Toft from an original Campus commercial from 2012.

Transcript

Ethan 0:   0:00
Welcome to Bike Shop Life, a podcast about the life and times of an independent bike shop in Buffalo, New York. I'm your host Ethan Johnson, co owner of Campus WheelWorks and co-founder of the Campus Cycling Collective Incorporated. I'm a 24 year veteran of this industry, and this podcast will cover many of the adventures I have faced and continue to face as a bike shop owner in our ever changing retail environment. I decided to create this podcast to better tell our story by actually telling our story rather than just hoping the point comes across through short Social Media Posts. We will cover our history, my history, history in general, events we promote and events we dislike to participate in. Race reports, tech talk, tech tips, staff interviews, local legend interviews, shop shenanigans and Campus culture and anything else bike related that suits my fancy... 

Ethan 0:   1:12
This being the very first episode of bike shop life, we're going to talk a little bit about the bike shop that I own, Campus WheelWorks and what it's history is, what kind of shop it is and where it lies in our local cycling community. I'm also going to talk a little bit about our new venture in opening a second location for the first time ever.   And the adventures and challenges we've faced so far and also the kind of excitement and potential for what that's gonna bring in the future for us  as  a shop and hopefully for our local cycling community. So to get into a little bit of my history,  I'll start there so we can get to know each other better. Uh, I would take us all the way back to April 13th 1978. A cold day if I remember... That was the day I was brought into this earth. Thank you, Mom and Dad. I'm roughly the same age as punk rock and mountain biking. Two of my other favorite things. My bike story starts on a stolen silver spray painted generic Schwinn with a banana seat and a girl's step through frame. That   was my first bicycle that, Ibelieve,     my dad brought home from probably a garage sale somewhere. Um, it was the first thing I started pedaling on, and I eventually got a huffy thunder 30 awesome red little BMX bike. Probably when I was  five to six years old or something. Um, from there, I've eventually graduated to the Huffy Stalker, which would be the bike that , I would begin my mountain biking adventure on as well as riding to school. And using that bike for transportation  long after I had hoped that it were a car that would have been more socially acceptable by my peers to be the thing that got me around. But I will always love the Huffy Stalker for that reason. Cycling has been many different things to me over the years. But people often ask, you know, when did you start riding or when you know what got you into cycling and what I usually respond with this: It's more so that I just never got out of it. Most people find a way to get distracted from cycling or, you know, hang up the bike once they get a car and you know, it just becomes something that maybe they get back to later, after their in college or after college or, you know, whatever the situation. But for me, I had really bad knees, chronic kneecap dislocations that started when I was in, like, ninth grade in high school. And the bicycle has always a really good form of rehabilitation. So, you know, as much as you know, enjoyed riding my bike myself. But I was heavily encouraged by  my father and my stepmother to keep riding my bike because they, of course, didn't wanna spend any more time at the physical therapy office than I did. And ah, so I just kept riding and just out of a necessity and, ah, you know, to avoid  boredom, I started looking for other places to ride. And I would, you know, ride random ATV trails and, you know, anything I could find. A new development with a dirt road. I'd go explore it. It's always been my favorite kind of riding is just trying to ride somewhere new, you know, as often as possible, going off the beaten path. That's still something that I absolutely love. But ah, so you know, me and my Huffy Stalker were, you know, thrashing the landscape and I was a shop rat at, all the local bike shops pining for the day. I could afford a bike shop quality bike, Which, of course, back then it was the early nineties. Mountain biking was king. Um, that was most of what you saw in every shop that I went into, and that's was my interest. But, just working at McDonald's, I didn't have, you know, a lot of disposable income. So it was kind of a "pie in the sky" idea. Someday have awesome bike shop quality bike where I could finally retire the Stalker from its years of service. So in '96 I was fired from McDonald's and went down the street to Holly Loft, Ski and Bike. One of the bike shops that I would frequent and, you know, waste the helps time, uh, test riding bikes and dreaming and drooling on all the early nineties mountain bikes. Ah, but they were gracious enough to give me a shot as, a brand new mechanic with nothing but "in my garage" experience. And that was my kind of trial by fire and introduction to being a bike mechanic. I also worked on the sales floor some, sold skis, was a ski mechanic, did a little bit of everything and, ah, about a year later, I got a job offer down the street at T&L Cycles, which was another bike shop that did a little more, kind of, performance stuff. And the guys there raced, and it was just a little bit more in my interest pool at the time. And so I made the move , I worked at T&L for several years. That was really kind of where my passion, kind of, came to a head. We had a ton of fun... It was a super active shop. We did group rides. We all raced. Everybody mountain biked. Um, And somewhere along there is when ah, Alex came into the bike industry. Um, I had had a car accident and missed. Had to miss a bunch of work, and they were like, Well, who's going to run the bike shop? You know, who's gonna work here If you're, I was injured and another guy that worked there. This guy, John Ladd, had crashed at the Raccoon Rally and broke his shoulder blade. So we were all on injured reserve and, uh, brought up this guy Alex, who was very mechanically inclined because he worked at Kev's Automotive, who was a auto body shop out in Busti.  that had a relationship with our shop from Jim Young being the the owner of that place. He was an avid mountain biker and wrote a lot with my boss at the time. Ray Waxham, and ah, Jim would did a bunch of custom paint jobs for our shop like really crazy stuff, like painting. Ah, old school Cannondale Super V like a grasshopper and it's pretty wild stuff. But ah, so Alex came on to, you know, help us get over the hump. And ah, you know, he probably didn't think that would be something he would end up doing for a long time, but it's around that time I had moved to Buffalo for most of the off season. To  go to UB, um, I was going to school there, but then I would take a leave of absence in the summer from my job, I had in Buffalo to come back and work a T&L cycles because I  just absolutely loved working in bike shops, you know, and ah, eventually T&L cycles managed to put itself out of business and uh, Alex called me one weekend and was like, I just got a call from this auction company, and you know, this place that we love and dedicated all our summers to and we're basically, like, the center of our of everything we did was gonna be gone. And we were like, What do we do!? And being, I think, Alex's 20, I was 21. We, of course, you know, having worked in a bike shop for a few years. Figure we probably know all there is to know about running a business. Let's just start our own! So we started Revolution Cycles in his parents two car garage out in Busti, New York, which is a very small town with basicly, like a blinking light in the middle of it. But we we made it work. We put together all our money, which totaled up to around $1000 bucks, and Alex went and bought as many tools as he could from the auction as T&L Cycles was going out of business. And, you know, I came back from school shortly thereafter, and we made a go of it. We ran Revolution Cycles for a few years and we would travel to BMX races all over the all over the Western PA Circuit. So that was all the way from Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania, to Hamburg, New York, and a bunch of places in between. We pack up our trailer and drive to these races. Help fix kids bikes. That were racing and whatever, basically hustling our way to just afford enough for, like, beer , Top Pop, and cigarettes. Ha Ha.. So, it was an adventure, but we were the right age to have that adventure.

Eventually, I was drawn back to Buffalo, and you know, all the kind of new culture new friends I had there, um, coming from Lakewood, New York, where I grew up. It was drastically different, and, you know, it's like a whole new world was open to me and spending a lot of time in Busti wasn't exactly what I wanted to do.  As much as I loved working in, you know, the bike shop and having Revolution Cycles.  I think  Alex ran it for another year on his own. And then he had had enough too,  you know, basically, we dissolved revolution cycles and kind of went on with our lives. Ah, he ended up working in and around Ellicottville, New York in a ski resort. Doing a bunch of stuff there, he ended up heading out to Breckenridge, Colorado, where he also worked in ski shops and rental shops out there. Well, I went back to Buffalo, and after deciding to no longer work at Comp USA, "your nation's number one computer superstore" I put in an application at Campus WheelWorks. I was aware of campus from having them process a warranty on a suspension fork I had years before, and as I came in there with about six years experience, in Luckily, this time, the right time of the year, Um, I got hired and they were glad to get somebody with a little bit of experience to help them run the shop and do whatever. I guess I jump to around 2005 or so. Um, after working a bunch of different roles, kind of starting as a, bike mechanic than service manager and kind of working into, ah, a store manager role as my my mentor and boss. Seaghan was kind of working his way out of the shop. He was trying to work my way into the shop. And, ah, so he had helped me with health insurance as one of my raises. And I could finally get knee surgery to repair my knees that have been plaguing me since I was 15. I think at this point, it was like 2005 or 2006, you know,  at that point, you know, riding was pretty much the only thing I could do other than walking. And I would still manage to hurt my knees all the time(falling on my face). So when I finally got knee Purgery, I got a phone call from Alex and he had pretty much , ran his course in Breckenridge and felt like it was time to come back to Western New York and kind of reassess things and see what his next adventure would be. So I said, Well, ah, if you want to work at the shop for six weeks, I've got a job for you, and then you can, you know, go back to Busti and stay with your parents and figure out what your next game plan is. So Alex did that. He drove across the country and moved into the attic at the crazy house we lived in which had, like, 15 people in it. That's a  story for another time... But, ah, he was going to stay for six weeks and still hasn't left. So, for better or worse, Hee Hee...  

(commercial break)  At Campus, we sell, service, rent and host events for literally everything we sell! All the genres of bikes, cross country skis and snow shoes. That's something that sets us apart. We're not just selling you stuff to take home, and potentially use. We will give you all the tools necessary to make the most out of your purchase from Campus. (commercial break)

So, like I said, uh, you know I'm gonna jump back to the history of Campus WheelWorks the bike shop that is kind of the center, subject of what this podcast is going to be about. Um, so our shop is located and kind of the middle of urban center, called the Elmwood Village,   it's one of the neighborhoods of Buffalo and, ah, there's been a bike shop in our location since the early seventies since 1971 or 72. Some of that history is a little hard to track down, but  I love every time I find somebody who can add a little piece to the puzzle. our shop history, which you can find on our website at campus wheel works dot com. Ah, so our  shop was bought from a previous owner in '96, 3 guys came together, two of which  worked at GT riteway. That was GT's headquarters and distributorship, which was in Buffalo at the time. They were slowly going out of business, and these two guys got together with another guy named Seaghan, and he was managing another shop in town and they were like way you know, campus is for sale. And they ah, I thought that the stars were aligned and this was going to be their, You know, their ticket out of here or into there, whichever, and they bought campus bike shop in '96 changed the name to Campus WheelWorks. Then, in 2002 I came along. 2004  or 2005 is when Alex came to cover for me for knee surgery and I never left. 2010: We put on our very first competitive event, which was called Cross in the Park. This past year was our 10th Cross in the park, So it's been a, uh, awesome cyclocross race that we've been doing for 10 years. 2011: We did our very first winter race. It was kind of Ah, just for fun Race called Flurrious fest as part of the various Buffalo winter fests that we've been a part of over the years. And let's see 2012 which started the Tuesday night group rides and 2013 we dreamt up the Campus Cycling Collective, which it was basically an idea that was born out of our Tele Tuesday Ski club. We had a ski club for years in our 10 years of trying to also be a ski shop to round out our year to, help keep employees year-round and keep cash flow, an adventure for every bike shop that is, you know, in a snowy snow belt, environment. But we were sitting around one of the last nights of our ski club, and we're just kind of lamenting the fact that we weren't going to see each other every week anymore.  And, you know, waiting all the way until next ski season. To have to, you know, get the band back together, so to speak. And ah, Cyd Cox and Mark Graham and Alex myself, Justin Plinz. A few others were all sitting around the table that night over some beers, and we, you know, we're like, Why don't we, you know, kind of get this going as quick as we can and start getting together and doing group rides as soon as the weather is nice and just kind of explore the other things that we could do year round? Just to, stick together. You know, to make this not just, a rare seasonal thing, but more of a community. And so the concept for the Campus Cycling Collective was born. Our Tuesday night group rides.  have  kind of has been the cornerstone of Ah, what the Campus Cycling Collective has brought to the Greater Buffalo cycling community, but it's only a small part of the 150 or so events were up to at this point, um, both competitive in non competitive events. 

There was previously a Winter Mountain bike race called The Frost Bike over in Port Colburn(Canada) in the hood Trails put on by Short Hills Cycling Club. And it was super fun, you know, designed as a fun race before fat bikes even existed. But eventually, of course, fat bikes kind of became a popular thing for it. But they eventually quit putting that on due to, having really unpredictable conditions year over year. So, I thought it might be nice to have something in Buffalo to kind of give us winter cyclists something to look forward to since we no longer had that and tried to develop a relationship with our local Nordic Centre with the goal of getting winter groomed trail fat biking being a thing that we could actually do in Buffalo. And ah, so we did our first fat bike race in 2015. And that was called You Wheelie Make My Heart Race ! It  was a Valentine's Day themed fat bike race, so we made it kind of as Dumb and cliche as possible. I believe the first year we forced everybody as we had them at the starting line to come back inside. So everybody's like in their race gear, ready to go, and we're like, Alex was starting(the race). He is like "on your mark, gets set, to make a Valentine!" He's like "everybody put down your bikes and follow me back inside and we had set up basically like hunger games in every corner, different tables with all the fixings to make Valentine's on them. And everybody had to start in a seat. And before you could start the race, you had to complete a valentine, which, after the race would also be scored for its ah, you know, Valentine Prowess...  And we gave the best prize of the day to the Valentine's winner and not the bike race winner. So, we've tried to do something silly every year with that. Just kind of have fun. You know, even though it's a race, we try to remind people like why we're really out there. All the racing we do is basically  glorified bar league softball on really expensive bikes. So everyone, People need to be reminded that Ah, it's more about fun than anything else. Fun, bragging rights, staying healthy, whatever... 

So, somewhere around back when ah, I mentioned we had the very first cross in the park in 2009 we did our very first cyclocross race ever. Um, that was at, ah, Kissing Bridge. Uh, the  KB Cyclocross Race, which we were kind of brought in as a potential sponsor due to our Tele Tuesday Ski Club group, which had been happening at KB at that time for quite a while. And, you know, we're like, Well, what the hell, this  cyclocross thing looks kind of crazy. Let's ah, put some bikes together and give it a try, and we had a great time and kind of were instantly hooked. And by the next year, we put on our very first cyclocross race, and so on and it was  getting us into the competitive cycling community of buffalo, which was something that we hadn't really been a part of before. We were more the commuters and, you know,we worked at the bike shop, rode our bikes for transportation, went to the pub after work, you know, smoked some cigarettes, lol,  whatever. And I think we we saw that, you know, Alex and I both had a mountain bike racing history from about 10 years before and saw that this was kind of, you know, kind of rekindling that fire. And this path looked a little more sustainable than our current trajectory.  So we kind of decided to divide and conquer. Alex  started doing more of the road events. I started doing more mountain bike events. Um, and in going and participating in all these mountain bike races that slowly lead to us in 2015 back to our timeline of us adding 10 mountain bike races to our calendar. So that's right. We went from 0 to 10 not 11 but, ah, WNYMBA had originally put on most of these races and then they were taken over by a group called Single Track Racing, which is ah, Greg Culver and a couple other guys and Greg's bike shop called Sliders had just gone out of business. And they had carried the insurance rider for the Series, which I had been participating in and kind of, you know, as we tend to do, making ourselves known when were present in the Campus way. And hopefully that's a good thing...  And, ah, you know, they kind of approached me and were like, Hey, would you guys like to take this over and make sure this continues to happen for everybody? And I, of course, was like Yeah, awesome! But as is usually the case, Iused Alex as my kind of governor and ah,  to balance out my enthusiasm and lack of thinking things through. But we decided to, take it on and we took over what was a six race series. I think we turned it into an eight race series. And then there were two standalone races. The Single Track Stampede and the Harris Hill Hustle, being a benefit for the trails at the Harris Hill Extension Trails. So  began that adventure and, ah, we're still putting all those events on to this day. Um, so I believe the Harris Hill Hustle is on hold, thanks to a logging project, but otherwise  the other nine races will be taking place this year. So in 2016, after running all those races for a year and kind of opening ourselves up to some kind of crazy liability, we decided to incorporate The Campus Cycling Collective into a 501c3. I think it was June 2016, It was official. The Campus Cycling Collective was now more than just an idea thought up by a bunch of drunk people after a ski night as a way to continue to hang out and enjoy each other's company it now was a real thing. An official non for profit. 501c3! I think at this count we're up to about 150 events a year. Ah, probably the latest addition to our calendar is all the F T W events. These are a bunch of Femme, trans, women and non binary identifying folk ah, group rides of varying kinds and clinics kind of covering all genres of cycling. It's giving a platform and a arena for people that might not have been represented before in our, you know, previous attempts to get everybody together. So, Jenn's done an awesome job with that now full year round calendar of events. Uh, it just kind of enhances what I think the Campus Cycling Collective has brought to Buffalo cycling. 

Ah, let's see so back, to our timeline ah brings us to 2017 where Alex had already been acting the role of owner for a long time, finally buys in and buys out Scotty Mo . He was able to finally make it official and finally become my legal partner, much like people had thought we already were, probably for years and years. LOL And I guess that brings us to our latest adventure, which  we'll refer to as Campus Niagara. So we had been in ah, many year process of trying to buy our building or by a building mostly for the purpose of solidifying our future. Any business that owns their building has a much greater chance of staying in business because being your own landlord is probably the best person to deal with. Being unable to purchase 7 44 Elmwood for a couple attempts. We started looking elsewhere and found some angel investors who were interested in helping us with this project. And now we have a building that's in the process, and has been for almost two years. But, we're closing in on the final months of construction and are really close to opening a second location, which is incredibly exciting. This new store is going to be a Campus and Giant. Giant Bicycles, the bicycle brand kind of joint venture. Um, it's gonna be a Giant Store. And ah, we kind of chose that for a number of reasons. One, It will make it very easy to differentiate between our two stores, which are likely almost too close to one another for a perfect world. But we're going to try to use that to our benefit, and you know our advantage more so than our disadvantage. But  you,  in the future will find, you know, a different product selection to some degree at both stores. But hopefully the same service, the same services, the same policies, some of the same staff, at both stores and so it'll be, you know, both locations will be more ah, more convenient and more accommodating for certain people, depending where they live. ah, they also will have different demographics of cycling represented. So, you know, at the Campus Niagara Store We're probably gonna have more of your like straightforward performance stuff like road bikes and mountain bikes. And some more kind-of-adventure, commuter and urban related things at the Elmwood store.  So these are kind of mostly concepts at this point until we have stuff in these stores and, you know, at the end of the day, the stuff is stuff, it's what we sell. But it's not the most important thing we do. What the most important thing we do is the people. It's our staff. It's our customers. It's the group rides we go on. It's the experiences  we have on our bicycles. You know, a new bike is super exciting, but it's mostly exciting because of the adventures that it encourages you to take. You know, it's it's just a vehicle. I am a strong believer in the love of riding more so than the love of the individual, you know, bicycles that we have, not that that's going to stop me from having six bikes. But, that's because they all take me on separate adventures. So we still have a few. Ah, a few months left, probably before we are totally live at Campus Niagara. But, you know, we're to the point now where we're planning out our back stock and how we're going to fit customer bikes and where we're gonna write up repairs and all the little details. And it's been a fun project because neither Alex nor I have I had the opportunity to really kind of design something, you know. So throughout this product process, we've basically been, like, you know, answering questions like "So, where would you guys want this or how would you want that?" And mostly all we can say is "not like Elmwood". Oh, how would you like the back stock? Not like Elmwood. How would you like the store laid out? Not like Elmwood. Ah, you know, mostly we've are only experiences negative experience from many places we've worked, we've never had, like a you know, a blank slate. So, it's gonna be really cool, to see how this comes out and, uh, have have that luxury of really building something from scratch to you know, make every day a little bit easier at that store. 

All right, so I guess I'm gonna wrap it up for today. Hopefully, it wasn't too boring. Just wanted to really lay down a little bit of, ah, foundation of you know who we are, where we came from, a little bit of where we're going and just kind of lay a little bit of groundwork for who it is you're listening to here. You know what we're up to What I'm up to, who I am. Um, you know, I've skipped a lot of stuff. I've left out a lot of important supporting actors, but we'll be introducing them over time in staff interviews. I really want to turn this into, uh, you know, podcast with interviews that would be more than just me droning on, but we gotta get started somewhere. And I appreciate you taking the time to listen(or read). And I will be bringing you some more content as soon as I have it. And this has been the Bike Shop Life Podcast again, I'm Ethan Johnson. Thanks for joining me. We'll talk to you soon.