Welcome to the party, Charlie! My son was born May 15th, and my life hasn’t been quite the same ever since. I will try to get back to a regular blogging schedule soon…

When Hurl made the announcement last month that CRC Coffee Bar and Cykel Garage would be closing its doors forever March 25th, it was a bitter pill to swallow. I knew that the shop was struggling, and that Hurl was feeling the grind of 60+ hour work weeks. The writing had been on the wall for a while. But CRC was like a second home, and the thought of losing its promise of comfort and camaraderie was, not to sound melodramatic, a little heartbreaking.

After the closing was made official, it was then that I decided I ought to write something about the shop and what it has come to mean to me.  In recent years, many of the most significant events in my life have involved CRC somewhere in the background.  After all, since early 2007 going to CRC has grown to be a part of my daily routine.  I went from regular, to employee, to… I don’t know, maybe alumni? 

About five years ago I made friends with one Trevor Lettman.  I had just started riding my bike around Minneapolis and loved it, and it turned out Trevor was of a similar mind-set.  Trevor was (and is) very into mountain bikes, a type of bike that kind of passed me by as a kid.  In my teenage years, BMX was still king of my world, and mountain bikes seemed overly complicated and expensive.  But Trevor talked about the joy of single-track and the more I heard about it, the more I wanted to try it.  Enter CRC.

I lived about 4 blocks away from CRC at the time.  I had noticed some tiny coffee shop had moved onto the corner of 34th and Lyndale, but at the time I had plenty of coffee shops in my life at the time.  Trevor told me I had to check it out.  It wasn’t like the other coffee shops I went to, this was a coffee shop dedicated to bikes!  So one day we went there and I met one Tom Everson (aka Hurl Everstone).  I remember telling him how I was interested in mountain bikes, and before long Hurl and I were reminiscing about our BMX glory days.  It was the start, as they say, of a beautiful friendship.

Soon after that, I bought a mountain bike from Hurl.   It was a Kona Munimula, converted to a single-speed, and I still own it and love it.  I also became a regular at CRC, which is how I came to know many of the friends I have today.  BRose was still slinging coffee there at the time, and he and his wife Julie have become some of my nearest and dearest friends.  I can’t imagine life without them. In fact, there is a staggering number of people I may have never met had that coffee shop never existed. 

By the summer of ’07 I found myself  immersed in the local bike scene.  Since this is Minneapolis we’re talking about, the word “immersion” is not an understatement.  Besides finding single-track trails to ride, there are an overwhelming number of group rides to partake, dedicated trails to explore and bike-oriented events one can participate in, whether the sun is shining or the snow is falling. It was in July that Hurl asked me if I wanted to cover some shifts for him.  He knew I had barista experience, and both he and BRose were off to Iowa for RAGBRAI for a week so he needed someone fast.  At the time I was just starting life as a freelancer, giving guitar lessons and learning to build web-sites, so I needed the work. Plus I looked forward to working in a coffee shop where I could play Slayer on the stereo and learn to code between customers.

I went on to work at CRC for a little over a year.  By then I had experienced both a literal and figurative crash course in what the world of bikes had to offer.  I made friends in the bike industry and got to know my South Minneapolis neighbors better.  

CRC for a good part of its existence served as an after-hours hangout. The Cykel Garage became a sort of clubhouse, where friends would meet for impromptu happy hours.  We’d drink beer and test ride bikes.  When Lyndale was ripped up for renovation, we even had ourselves a dirt track to play in.  Many nights, too many to remember, were spent there, often ending a little on the blurry side.

At one point, I was working for two other businesses on 34th and Lyndale- I was doing web-design at Space2burn (the studio belonging to Trevor and his lovely wife Bontie) and giving guitar lessons at Twin Town Guitars.  That intersection, which started with CRC, was the focal point of both business and social life.  Eventually I had to quit CRC because the other two jobs were taking up my time, and a barista’s pay just couldn’t compete.  But I still went in almost every day to get my coffee.  And, of course, to participate in after-hour hijinks.

Like most stories, CRC has had its hard times as well.  Rachel Dow came to work for Hurl near the tail end of my time there.  Rachel became fast friends with many of us.  She embodied an unmistakable joie de vivre and embraced new experiences with a courage that was rare and inspiring.  She was a relative new-comer to the Minneapolis bike scene, but she was one of those people who fit in fast without ever seeming like she was trying to fit in.  One fateful January night, while riding her bike to an overlook of the Mississippi River she was fond of visiting, her life came to a sudden end.  We’ll never know how she made it through the woods and into those freezing currents, but to quote Vonnegut, so it goes. The way it brought so many of us together stands as one of the most moving experiences of my life. The bike Rachel rode that night ended up rightfully with her younger brother, but her Bianchi Brava has hung in memory of her in CRC, with a dozen roses in the rear wheel, ever since.

It was also at CRC that I got to know one Molly Hanson.  I had met Molly through friends of mine that worked at her restaurant, Kings.  But it was at CRC where we first spent time together, meeting there as the starting point for some training rides in preparation of the Almanzo 100.  We are expecting a baby boy this May 14th (coincidentally, the day of this year’s Almanzo).

There are also dozens of strange and wonderful stories from my time there. Like when Garrison Keillor came into the Coffee Bar and bought a Minneapolis Bike Map. Or the time I was the model in a print ad for The Current after walking into the shop looking for a cup of coffee and ending up in a photo shoot. Not to mention the Stupor Bowl parties which must have scared some of the neighbors, not to mention taken years off our lives. Good times.

I knew from the get-go that writing about the CRC Coffee Bar and Cykel Garage, without overstaying my welcome in doing so, would be hard to do.  But still it’s not easy trying to condense so much into a few hundred words (ok, over 1300 words, but who’s counting).  Needless to say, I wish Hurl all the best in his future endeavors and look forward to years of friendship to come.  And I don’t want to lament the loss of CRC so much as to celebrate what it meant to me and the indelible impact it has had on my life. 

So in closing, I just want to say thanks a million, Hurl.  Your little shop made my life better, and in this I know I’m not alone.