BEVERLY — At Beverly Bike and Ski, it’s hard to distinguish between a long-time customer and someone walking in for the first time. Shop owner Paul Weise and manager Brian Vargas greet everyone who walks through the door as if they had been expecting them.
Sometimes, they are.
For example: When 63-year-old customer Tony, who introduces himself as “Tone Bone, professional cyclist,” stops in for his weekly visit from suburban Matteson, he falls easily into the ongoing conversation while Vargas automatically grabs Tony’s bike and fills up the tires.
“I’ve been coming in here as long as he’s been here,” said Tony, pointing to Weise, who bought the shop in 1996. “And before that, too.”
The 103-year-old shop holds so many stories – of loyal customers like Tony, of people who bought their first bikes there as children and returned decades later to buy their children their first bikes, and even a romance or two.
The bike shop is gearing up for another chapter of stories — if things go well.
After 28 years of owning Beverly Bike and Ski, Weise will be retiring later this year. The 68-year-old Weise is selling the business and the building at 9121 S. Western Ave. with an asking price of $600,000, contingent on inventory levels.
The “for sale” sign in the shop window has brought in a few concerned community members worried that the shop is closing down, Weise said. He hopes to find the new Beverly Bike and Ski owner by September, and all of the staff and mechanics intend to stay on.
Weise is fairly confident that the shop won’t be closing down anytime soon, even under new ownership. Not after the shop has stood its ground since 1921 and through three different owners, he said.
While he’s ready for retirement, Weise said what he’ll miss the most about the shop is the people and the stories.
Born To Bike
Weise’s love for bikes goes back to when he was eight years old, when he would put bikes together from junk parts and whatever he could find in the garbage. His father was a machinist, so he had access to the tools needed and he had a vested interest in bikes because of the freedom they could offer.
“I grew up in the 60s and you left in the morning and you came home at night,” Weise said. “There were no restraints. You just had to be home for dinner. So a bicycle is something that transports you out of your day-to-day life. Bicycles have always been that for me.”
After two decades in the restaurant industry, another decade at now-closed Erehwon Bikes Downtown and an associate’s degree in auto and diesel technology, Weise conjured up a dream of owning his own bike shop.
When he saw an ad in the Chicago Area Bicycle Dealers Association newsletter for what was then called Beverly Cyclery – originally opened in 1921 as Jim’s Beverly Bicycle Shop – he was enamored.
Growing up in Ashburn, Weise knew he wanted his shop to be on the South Side, and “Beverly just seemed a little magical,” he said.
And it’s proven to be just that.
Since taking over the shop in 1996, Weise has co-founded the Beverly Bike/Veepack racing team, he’s hosted neighborhood rides and co-sponsored the Beverly Hills Cycling Classic from its inaugural run in 2003 until it fizzled out during the pandemic. He added the “ski” part of Beverly Bike and Ski – offering snowshoes, sleds and skis – and later liquidated it, donating much of the rentals to a nearby park’s Special Olympics program.
“I wanted it to be more than just running a bike shop. I wanted to get enthusiasm for riding bikes,” he said.
Although Weise is proud to point out that the racing team won four state championships, he is visibly moved when he talks about customers telling him how excited they were to catch sight of the team training around town with “Beverly Bike” blazoned on their jerseys.
That was where the real successes are, he said, in the community’s enthusiasm and pride for their neighborhood shop.
That’s what mechanic Dave Krutulis loves about working at Beverly Bike, too. It’s not just a business in the community, it’s part of the community.
Krutulis, who began working at the shop straight out of high school seven years ago, met his girlfriend of seven years through the shop. When he expressed interest in moving from sales to mechanic, Weise told him to find his own replacement. He suggested the job to a young woman he knew through some friends and she came by that same week before they struck up a relationship.
Now, Krutulis counts the years they’ve been together by the years he’s spent as a mechanic at the shop.
It will be strange to adapt to new ownership, but Krutulis doesn’t begrudge Weise his retirement. He’s earned it, Krutulis said.
Still, “it’s going to be a weird shift,” Krutulis said.
“Change Isn’t Always Bad”
In his 28 years at Beverly Bike, Weise has seen a good deal of changes in Beverly and the bike industry.
In recent years he’s noticed that more bike shops are closing down, mostly on the North Side where such shops are more ubiquitous.
At Beverly Bike in particular, he’s noticed that there is no longer much interest from teens in apprenticing as mechanics at the shop.
“We’ve always had teenagers as apprentices. We were always teaching somebody,” he said. “We don’t have that anymore. There are no 16 year olds coming to apply to learn this.”
On the other hand, he said, since the pandemic, there’s been an increase in biking in general and particularly among families. The shop carries several options for parents looking to ride with their young children and they began carrying smaller bikes with gears because more and more families have come in looking for bikes for their kids to join them on family rides.
“Change isn’t always bad,” Weise said.
Weise has a talent for taking the good with the bad.
His decision to retire came shortly after he began experiencing intense chest pain and found that he had an abnormality in his heart that causes pain when his blood pressure gets too high.
Retirement is part of the plan to keep his blood pressure in check, but mostly it’s a chance to get off his feet and back on his bike. His knees gave out a few years ago, making standing and walking a challenge, but he can still bike with ease. Without the shop taking up so much of his time, he plans to do a lot more riding.
He’s wistful when he thinks about what his retirement days might look like – a four-hour ride to nowhere in particular in the morning, then maybe volunteering with veterans in the afternoon.
“That would be just a really great day,” he said.
He’s excited too to watch from afar as the people he’s trained and worked with over the years grow and change with the shop.
“I’ve learned a lot from him,” said Vargas, who’s been at the shop for five years. “He’s definitely a great teacher.”
Whatever else changes after he retires, Weise is hopeful that Beverly Bike will remain a neighborhood store, the kind of shop where regulars ostensibly stop in for a bit of air in their tires but really just came to say “hi,” or where neighborhood kids might wander by after stopping at Rainbow Cone to peer in the windows and daydream about a new bike, just as he’s told they did 100 years ago.
“It doesn’t bother me that people change the models or remodel the store or do whatever,” said Weise. “As long as it just remains the same heart, you know?”
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