The last bicycle shop in Soho apparently closed a few years ago. It was located at no.36 Great Pulteney Street and was owned and managed by Paulo Garbini. His shop had renderings of two miniature penny-farthing bicycles mounted on the facade and they are the only remaining trace of a fantastic cycling oasis.
When I was cycle courier I would regularly pop in to get new inner tubes, pumps, locks etc and admire the beautiful cycling shirts and wonderful bikes that seemed to hang from the ceiling as if by magic.
2 comments:
I remember this shop! I was a courier too! In early ‘90s. I wasn’t sure if I’d just imagined this place....dodgy memory...I think the Soho Cycling Club has some kind of affiliation with the place....I never joined the Club unfortunately as I ended up moving to Australia for a while. Happy days on the London courier circuit.
Paolo was a great guy and his daughter a lovely girl. I seem to remember he had his first shop in Tottenham Court Road, you had to let your bike down into the basement via a pulley, before he moved to Great Pultney Street. Shame that bike shops all went corporate. Pat Hanlon's in Palmers Green was another fantastic, friendly local bike shop, it closed in the early eighties.
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