This is a small shop in Santander where Bob Marley plays while he is working. There, the creators show off their handmade bikes that are then sold in Switzerland or the United States.
Let’s say that the place lives up to its name. It’s called La Pindia, and damn… You’re going to have to gasp for air, you’re going to have to sweat. You can park closer or further away, but you’re (almost) always going uphill with slopes like Angliru , because Santander is one of those cities where only posh people walk along the seafront promenade … the rest climb up to their apartments or to the bike shop… There are many of them in La Pindia today. Bikes, I mean, many. Beautiful, chic, robust and classy .
There will be about 20 bikes. For sale, on display, and some little things brought in by craftsmen from outside . They are all made of steel, some with a classic touch and lines, without any embellishment. There is a blue one with straight handlebars , with free pedals, with a Maurice Garin look. But you can also find, if you look up a little, a Colnago. And others with an air of handcraft, the latest technology, a fusion of old and sophistication, like putting all the comforts in a Citroën DS (if you love me very, very, very much, give me a Citroën DS).
A cozy shop
The shop has that modernised artisan feel, that cool, cosmopolitan touch, of someone who appreciates things for what they are and how they are made. The anti-multinational cycling world, so to speak. There are, for example, a thousand different tools. The multi-allen with their angle heads, the band cutters, wrenches, small pliers with which to perform open-heart operations . Everything is neatly organised in a small space, cluttered with metal and rubber, one where half-repaired tubes hang and about 100 tyres of all kinds (studded tyres, without studs, wide, thin, tyres with no tread, tyres as if they had been scratched by the cat Micifú). Bob Marley is playing now (not everything is Bon Scott in the cycling world) and there are pieces of chocolate on a plate for you to help yourself to as you please. Chocolate to eat, don’t think that Bob Marley was a second idea. Also, eating chocolate is a very cyclist thing, and eating chocolate has saved us from big falls.
A start from a hobby
Everyone calls Tomás Tomy. Tomy Salmon. La Pindia was his idea, a space where we could share passions, where we could meet and get together , where we could help people learn how to fix this puncture or how to change that tyre. Urban cycling, above all, but more cycling. Because Tomy is also a craftsman. Of steel, of metal . Like the old masters in boilermaking, only focused on two wheels, a frame, seatposts, handlebars.
“I started around 2015,” he tells me. He was doing mechanics as a hobby. It happens that you learn new things every time, you improve, and you look at the next step . And the next step is a bike frame . So he went to a master, almost a legend. Arregui Velázquez, his name. A one-week course, in which you have to build your own machine. Just like it sounds. Each frame, to put it into perspective, takes between fifty and sixty hours of work. Add in seatposts, cranks, all the other parts.
The use of classic bicycles
There is a book by Robert Penn, called The Bike Is Everything: The Pursuit of Happiness on Wheels (translation by Lucía Barahona, Capitán Swing, 2018), where they deal with these issues. With a sense of humor and a bit of malice, I add. Basically it is about the purchase of a bike by a typical mature English man with money . Liberal profession, cool touch, we want them to look at us but not too much, I’m sure they know what I’m talking about. The guy travels all over the world (did I say he has money?) to get the perfect component, the differentiating detail.
The vision of the bicycle in Spain
And, hey, what kind of people sign up for these events… “I think there are two standard profiles… Those who only do one march as an anecdote, because it’s famous or because it’s close to home, and the true retro fans who sign up for many and even, increasingly , end up organizing their own retro get-togethers. Among the latter, there are those who form a more or less stable and numerous gang, and those who go more on their own.”