Dixon's Bicycle Shop
With a wild amount of bike lanes and paths, Brooklyn is New York’s most bikeable borough. And with about a dozen bike shops, Park Slope is cyclist mecca. But 50 years ago, the neighborhood had just one — Dixon’s Bicycle Shop.
“Back in the day, the biggest thing in Park Slope was break-ins to your house while you’re sleeping,” says David Dixon, 47, who runs the family-owned shop with his brother, Chris, offering a selection of bikes, accessories and parts, along with repairs and service. “Having a bike back then was like having a TV in 1935.”
But David’s father, a Jamaican immigrant and a gifted mechanic, helped repair bikes at a store near the family home and took it over in 1966, building it up into a neighborhood institution.
“Being that we’ve been here 50 years, the community trusts that we know how to fix a bicycle,” says David, adding that word of mouth is all the PR that Dixon’s Bicycle Shop has ever relied on. “We know what we’re doing. We keep fair prices. We don’t rob or cheat anybody. Those are the main reasons why we’ve lasted so long.”
We also dig the shop’s old-fashioned neighborhood feel, down to the vintage high-wheel bicycle hanging from the ceiling, and its complete absence of bike snobbery.
“Being that we’ve been here 50 years, the community trusts that we know how to fix a bicycle.”
We can’t talk about Dixon’s Bicycle Shop without talking about the mural. First thing you should know: it’s no longer there (this is an old picture). But for 40 years, around the corner on a wall owned by St. Francis Xavier School, the beloved painting — featuring an elegant, turn-of-the-century Black couple riding a tandem bicycle — directed the way to Dixon’s.
“The wall was always being graffitied up, so my dad went around the corner and made a deal with the principal,” David says. “If he could paint a mural on the wall, then he would send all his children to the school. It became a neighborhood staple.”
With the advent of a new school administration in 2017, unfortunately, the mural was painted over. It’s now a blank white wall. But the Dixon family isn’t dwelling on the past; they’re plotting the future. “We’ve been here 50 years and looking to do another 50 years,” David says.
792 Union Street, 718-636-0067, Dixon’s Bicycle Shop on Instagram
