Prelude
We started out as Velo Culture but shortened the name to Velo Cult in summer of 08. We just felt it was catchier and easier for shirts and other design oriented things. Velo Culture is French for Bike Culture and bike Culture is what we’re about.

About
Alright, the story of Velo Cult, where do I start. My name is Sky and I started racing the Velodrome when I was 9 years old. Right after that I started racing road bike, mountain bikes, cyclocross bikes, downhill, single speed and a host of other forms of bike racing. Did that through my mid 20’s and loved every bit of it. I loved riding, racing and kicking ass. Being a racer the only cool job to have was working at bike shops so that’s what I did. I started working in shops when I was 15 years old and really never stopped. I started as the wrench and then started working as the head tech and soon started managing bike stores (maybe 10 different shops in all). I can’t say I liked a single one of them. I did not like they way there were run, the way they treated customers, the way they looked, the way they treated their employee’s, etc. I got to a point where I decided I had to be my own boss in which time I started an internet based business restoring and selling bikes online. This was a very fun and challenging time as it was exciting to control my own destiny.

After a few years of this it became apparent that I needed to expand out of my garage. I found a small place to operate out of in La Jolla just north of San Diego. Initially the idea was to run my on-line biz in the shop an maybe sell a few accessories to kids in the neighborhood. Well, as it turns out the bike dorks loved this little tucked away shop full of vintage lugged steel bikes. The little shop got very popular as I tried to run it like I’ve always wanted to see a shop run. Two years into this shop the decision was made that La Jolla was just too far from the heart of the bike culture and two it was too small. We packed everything up and moved to our dream location in South Park San Diego right new downtown. With this new nicer building we set into motion all the fun neat things we’ve always wanted to do. Now we have a shop that sell thing to bike dorks and bike commuters. These two segments of the population are often ignored by bike shops so we took them under our wing. The shop was built up in a way that showed permanence with a handmade furniture, nice paint and a layout that showed we aren’t your typical bike shop. Ever notice how temporary and ugly most bike shops are? Why is that?

This brings us to this web site. We felt that the culture, products and style that we brought to San Diego could be expanded to the rest of the country. We managed over the years to pull together a nice collection of steel bikes and where better to display them than the internet, right? We hope to help spread bike culture far and wide.

I myself represent a lot of different genre’s in cycling and my employee’s share that same passion. We don’t fall into the idea that you can only be a road rider or a mountain bike rider or that a Randoneering guy can’t enjoy a ride on an urban track bike. We love bikes and we ride them all from vintage mountain bikes to modern race bikes. Our specialty is steel bikes and if you know about bikes you know why that is.