Fixie Bicycle Gallery

I recently came across a 2013 interview on blackenterprise.com with Mikel Madison, the Atlanta-based owner of Fixie Bicycle Gallery.  Madison was born and raised on the west coast and moved to Georgia looking for freelance design work.  He noticed how many bicyclists lived and worked in the Edgewood neighborhood of Atlanta, and, decided to open a bicycle repair shop out of his loft as a sort of “side hustle”.  Using skills learned from his father, an electrician, Madison gradually widened the scope of his small business, expanding to a brick and mortar location in 2010.  He considers himself a “bike enthusiast” who caters to Atlanta’s growing “hip” population, a market that is growing as more and more young people in urban centers are beginning to view bicycle transportation as a viable option (ahem, Memphis, ahem).  

The interview focuses largely on how Madison navigates the mostly-white world of custom made bikes as a black business owner and bicycle enthusiast.  When reading the article, I expected both individual and systemic racism to be stated obstacles in Mikel’s story, and they were: he briefly mentioned racist encounters he has faced as a customer in other Atlanta bike shops, and also touched on what I’d call “white pricing” within the bike customization industry (essentially, pricing to the customer’s means and not to actual costs).  An element of racism that I wasn’t expecting to encounter in Mikel’s story, however, was the peculiar situation of wholesale bike-equipment distributors who were uneasy about partnering with an up-and-coming black entrepreneur until he had obtained a permanent storefront.  Some of this reluctance could have been tied to market dynamics, but one has to acknowledge that being shut out by wholesale distributors for that reason alone (and come on, how many small-industry, customization start-ups begin expansion having already secured a storefront??) probably has at least partially biased/racist roots.  

Another interesting point that comes up during the course of Mikel’s interview involves the complicated realities of gentrification.  When asked why he had chosen to open a storefront space on Edgewood Avenue, Mikel points out that the building’s two story, loft-above-store-below layout meant that he would only have to pay one rent instead of two.  He also describes how he set up shop in the area “before this area underwent it’s makeover.  There weren’t any cool restaurants or hangouts here…”  Later in the same line of thought, though, he makes clear that he identifies with the longstanding tradition of the black business owner who resists gentrification: “I’ve been trying to stay on this block because I think it’s important for something like this to be in this neighborhood. I think it is important for black business to be in this neighborhood, especially with Sweet Auburn being gentrified, I want to keep my little foothold in the community.”  These two quotes illustrate Fixie Bicycle Gallery’s duality; on the one hand, in 2010, FBG was a sleek, new, hip concept in the vanguard of Edgewood’s gentrification, while in 2013, it had become a stalwart black business that pays lip service (at the very minimum) to anti-gentrification rhetoric within Atlanta’s black business community.  Surviving the thin margins that define custom-build, hipster bike shops remains difficult enough without the aforementioned biases and racism that have shaped Fixie Bicycle’s development.  Nevertheless, Mikel Madison’s Fixie Bicycle Gallery keeps on rolling.

the full interview is available here