Wheel Strong
The First All-in-One Bike/Coffee Shop

You keep life simple, clean, elegant, to the point.

Your coffee order: hot.

Your bike: fast.

Your all-in-one bicycle/coffee shop: exists.

Yes, Heritage Bicycles General Store, where the pleasure of sipping espresso and eating cupcakes can be rewarded with a brand-new custom bicycle, is now open.

The co-owner is a North Side native who cofounded Bowery Lane Bicycles in New York, sort of a bike tailor for the Lower East Side cycling set. He and his wife have returned to dedicate themselves to made-in-America bikes (frames welded in Chicago), roasted-in-Portland coffee (Stumptown, Portland’s answer to Intelligentsia) and baked-on-Southport pastries. (You’ve long admired Southport Grocery’s work in the field of vanilla frosting.)

Your barista has been rigorously trained in the macchiato arts, but for the most part this is really just a regular neighborhood coffee shop where you might take a seat at that black-lacquered communal table and strike up a conversation with a friendly stranger with really well-developed quadriceps and a thing for sprocket wrenches.

Then, we come to the bikes, which can be assembled in as little as a single afternoon: choose your frame style, speed and color from the on-site inventory. Spend the next few hours relaxing, sipping or browsing the boutique lines of biking pants and plaid riding helmets.

Before you ask: yes, you would look great in a plaid helmet.