You found SVBE through Craigslist, of all places. Tell us about that.
A random online rabbit hole, honestly. I came across BikeX through Craigslist ads and bikex.org, drove in to see a Rans Stratus recumbent bike, which another customer bought, but I looked around and saw a variety of interesting bikes.
I missed out on the bike but met Gregg and got to look at all the neat retro bikes. I had worked at a couple of bike shops in the late '90s, so when the opportunity to join the team came up, I jumped at it. A chance to work with my hands doing something that helps people — that combination is hard to pass up.
Sang adding wheel lights to his recumbent bike that he converted to mid-drive electric
You've got some bike shop history. How did it all start?
I was a kid in the '70s and '80s — biking was the fastest way to get to a friend's house, a small but real taste of freedom. Of course, then you turn 16 and suddenly a car is even faster, so the bike gets forgotten. There was a long pause between 16 and 23 before cycling found its way back into my life, and then again after working at Performance Bikes and Wheelsmith in the late '90s, another long pause until 2016. That's the thing about cycling for my generation, though — the joy of it sits deep inside you, planted early and patient. It isn't a straight line back. It's stops and starts, detours and returns. But it always seems to find you again. Some things stick with you.
What are you most excited about this year?
Riding more, learning more and hunting down the weird bikes. There's so much to explore beyond the standard road-mountain-gravel categories and BikeX's eclectic inventory only feeds that curiosity.
Tell us about your personal collection.
I have too many bikes but not enough. I love exploring different builds and experiencing what each one is actually like to ride. A shoulder injury steered me toward recumbent bikes and trikes over the last few years — a completely different riding universe. Mini-velos are another obsession: a Mercier Nano, a Soma Mini-Velo and a Soma Rufus. If it's unusual, I want to understand it.
Sang's first bike tire and tubes recycle run
What's your riding style, and what's your favorite local route?
Exploring, commuting, general riding around — finding routes on multi-use trails and sneaking onto single tracks when they appear. On hot days, I'll drive to Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve and ride south toward Sunnyvale or north on the Stevens Creek Trail toward Mountain View. The headwinds back to the parking lot are brutal, but still better than 100 degrees in San Jose.
What are you into outside of bikes?
Visual storytelling in all its forms — film, television, narrative video games, comics, anime. And weird bikes. Recumbents, trikes, mini-velos, folders — they occupy the same part of my brain as a well-constructed graphic novel. Unconventional and worth your time.
A fun fact most people wouldn't know?
In the '90s, I wrote articles for a pop culture zine offshoot of The Metro — about Spider-Man cartoons. Bike mechanic, recumbent enthusiast, published animation critic. BikeX contains multitudes.
