Who gets to ride: gatekeeping in cycling.

Cycling has a gatekeeping problem. It’s not unique to cycling — plenty of outdoor sports have the same disease — but cycling’s version is particularly well-dressed and expensive and self-righteous about it, and that combination makes it harder to call out. So let’s call it out.

Kit culture is a dress code, and dress codes are about exclusion

There’s an unspoken rule in certain cycling circles that says you’re not a real cyclist unless you’re wearing the right clothes. Bib shorts with a chamois. A jersey with pockets. Clipless pedals — and God help you if you call them “clipless” without knowing why they’re called that. Matching helmet. Cycling-specific sunglasses. The total cost of entry to look right on a group ride can easily run $500 before you even touch a bike. And if you show up in basketball shorts on a flat-bar hybrid, you can feel it — the glances, the condescension, the way people drift ahead when you’re trying to keep up.

“Nobody needs bib shorts to ride a bike. The bib shorts are a signal, not a tool. The signal is: do you belong here?”

Price as a structural barrier

The average new bike sold at a traditional bike shop in 2024 costs over $1,000. The average American worker makes about $23 an hour. Do the math. A “starter” road bike at a boutique shop is 40-plus hours of labor for someone at median wage — and that’s before you add a helmet, a lock, lights, and a tune-up after six months. The industry has convinced itself that this is just the cost of quality, but what it’s actually done is sorted cycling into a leisure activity for people with disposable income, and left everyone else on Walmart bikes with no support when those bikes inevitably fall apart.

That’s why we exist. Our shop floor is built around used bikes in the $150–$500 range, inspected, adjusted, and ready to ride. Not every bike is a project bike. Not every customer has a Saturday afternoon and a YouTube education in bottom bracket threads. Some people just need a bike that works, priced like something a person can actually buy.

Jargon as a gate

This one is sneakier. Cycling language was invented by cyclists for cyclists, and that’s fine, but it gets weaponized. Someone walks in and asks for a “regular bike” and a shop employee launches into a Socratic dialogue about riding style, terrain preference, and Q-factor. That’s not helpful. That’s performance. Real help sounds like: “Tell me where you’re riding and how far, and I’ll show you three bikes that might work.”

Here’s the actual minimum vocabulary you need to interact with LoBall:

• Bike — you have one or want one. That’s it.
• Broken — something’s wrong. Bring it in.
• Ride — what you do on the bike. We want to know where.

Everything else we’ll explain as we go. No quiz at the door. No eyebrows raised at your terminology. Our service desk runs the same way — tell us what’s wrong in whatever words you have, and we’ll figure it out together. That’s the shop we want to be. Call us at 520-365-0754 if you want to talk it through before you come in.