Letter From Redbeard

In eight years of Redbeard Bikes, no two years have been identical. No two months even! The business is always evolving to reflect the needs of our clients and the talents of our staff.

We want to be upfront with y’all: at this time, we’re a very small crew, just 3 people! Ilya does all the new bike consults and bike fittings, and the bike builds themselves. Nastia works front of house, selling accessories, apparel, and Bromptons. She receives inventory, ships your web orders, and keeps the shop looking spiffy. Kasia handles marketing, scheduling, purchasing, customer communication, finance, vendor and community relations…

As such, we aren’t able to offer tune-ups and overhauls at this time. We’re focusing on bike fittings and new bike builds. When and if we have openings in the schedule, we’ll reach out to folks who requested tune-ups, and offer you a slot.

We know many of you rely on your bikes for transportation and health (physical AND mental), so we encourage you to check out NYC’s other awesome shops. If you decide to hold out for an appointment at Redbeard, you may not get one.

What can you do? If you know anyone in a leadership position – in local government, in education, or other industries – please talk to them about the rapidly growing need for quality bike service and other infrastructure (complete streets, secure bike parking) to support cyclists.

Most bike shops are family-run labors of love. Here in New York City, we need commercial rent control and vocational education for bicycle mechanics. We need a bike shop in every neighborhood – not a Duane Reade or Chase Bank.

We really need your help with this advocacy piece! We’ve got our hands full keeping this place going, and in 2020 we had a very close call with burnout. We took a sabbatical this winter to recharge our batteries; we had a wonderful time out west in the national parks. We’re ready to give this another go. But we have to manage expectations and our time carefully, lest we run ourselves into the ground.

Again, we know you have come to depend on us over the years, and we really wish we could help everyone! We hope that the steps we’re taking, will allow us to stick around for years to come, and one day, train and retain a team of top-notch mechanics so we can be a full-service shop once more.