Andy Wright/The Bay Citizen

A morning commuter makes his way past Huckleberry Bicycles on Market Street

Huckleberry Bicycles, located at 1073 Market Street, has been open just over a week, and, if all goes according to plan, Market Street Cycles will open its doors at 1592 Market Street on Monday.

So why, in a city known for its dedicated cyclists, has it taken so long for bike shops to pop up on its most trafficked street?

Zack Stender of Huckleberry Bicycles surmised that some business owners may have been scared off in previous years by the Mid-Market neighborhood’s "sketchy" reputation. But he called opening a shop on Market Street a “no brainer”. After surveying several neighborhoods, he and his business partners decided that Market was the place to be, although finding a storefront was tough.

“A lot of owners seemed like they are waiting for the area to blow up,” Steader said, “They made it clear that they were only interested in a month to month lease when we approached them. We weren’t interested in a short-term thing; we didn’t want to do a pop-up store at all.”

Finally, after working with the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and the economic development group Urban Solutions, they landed their current spot.

John McDonell, co-owner of Market Street Cycles, shared a similar story. After working as a bike messenger in Washington D.C. and in cycling shops around San Francisco, he decided it was time to open his own store, and he wanted to do it on Market Street where cyclists were rife and where the city has been promising a revamped arts district.

Like Stender, he found landing a spot difficult and expensive. Finally, he got a lease on a location that was going for a good price because the non-profit that owned it was renting it “as-is”. (In other words, it was a fixer upper.) Luckily, McDonnell and his business partner Matt Ames are handy with tools; they’ve been renovating the space, and hope to open Monday, although the store is still a work in progress.

“We’re knee-deep in boxes,” McDonell said.

In addition to coming on the heels of a promised redevelopment of the Mid-Market district, the shops arrive at a time when Market Street has been rapidly transformed following the lift of a bike injunction in 2010 that kept the city from instituting new bike lanes for four years: green bike paths and divided lanes have sprung up on the thoroughfare. And both storefronts are accounting for the diversity of riders.

“I’m not running a fashion bike shop,” McDonell said, “We’re going to be a pragmatic, practical shop. People who go by here are using their bikes for transportation, as an integral part of their life.”

Huckleberry Bicycles, whose motto is “Bikes Are For People”, says the response so far has been positive, with some shoppers buying whole bikes right off the bat.

“It’s been totally awesome, to put it bluntly,” Stender said.

Correction: In an earlier version, Zack Stender's name was misspelled.