[flickr]photo:7209687088[/flickr]
Johnny and John Stallworth at John’s Hardware & Bicycle Shop.
[This piece also runs in Urban Velo magazine.]
Pedaling down Halsted Street into Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, I smell the unmistakable aroma of Harold’s Chicken as I pass an outpost of the South Side chain whose logo features a chef chasing a rooster with a hatchet. After an SUV speeds by me booming hip-hop, I pull up to John’s Hardware & Bicycle Shop, 7350 S. Halsted, and admire the old-fashioned, hand-painted sign, featuring John Stallworth’s smiling, bearded face and his no-nonsense slogan, “If we don’t have it you don’t need it.”
Continue reading Can bike shop deserts be eradicated on Chicago’s South Side?