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@Oliver Schick
Interesting perception, James. Happily, I can report that this is not at all the case in Hackney, where we now have more than 25 bike shops. (It's becoming really hard to keep that list up-to-date!) While we have some of the 'high end' places, too (e.g., Pretorius), there are a number of very 'low-end' (which I don't mean pejoratively in this context at all) repair services like the excellent Bike Yard East, Bike Mech, Lock 7, Cycle Pit Stop, etc. We have a wide array of different businesses, like Armourtex, as well as bike shops offering very different types of bike (e.g., Mamachari, Volt BMX), and, of course, our five cycle cafés.
Hopefully, this will spill over into other boroughs--there have been plenty of really good openings in Lambeth. It's really quite simple--where people use bikes for day-to-day transport a lot, you'll get the bike shops eventually, too.