Life moves in cycles

Columbia Cycle & Hobby has been in Kathy Bruce’s family since her father bought it in 1952. When she complained that her allowance was meager as a child, her dad put her to work cleaning the shop’s basement, where there was a slot-car track. Later, in the early ‘80s, Bruce’s father fired her in a dispute about vacation time, but instead of leaving, she said, she kept coming to work. Not long after that she took over the business.

“It blew over,” she said of their disagreement.

Besides being a mainstay in Bruce’s life, Columbia Cycle & Hobby has been a fixture for the many Spokanites who shopped there decades ago and now bring their grandchildren in, she said.

So it wasn’t an easy decision to close the shop, which has been around in name since the early 1900s, when it was located in the basement of the downtown post office. It’s currently located at 1808 N. Monroe St., near the intersection with West Indiana Avenue.

Bruce said she hasn’t decided when she’ll shut the doors, but her building is for sale.

“It’s been a soul-searching decision,” she said. “It’s been a tough decision. We’re going to miss a lot of our customers.”

Some of those customers aren’t happy about the decision, she added — especially the ladies who are used to buying craft supplies they can’t get elsewhere.

“I threaten to check some of the craft ladies for weapons when they come in the door,” she said jokingly.

Columbia Cycle & Hobby isn’t failing. Rather, Bruce just decided it was time for her to explore what else she could do with her life, and with her two children having other interests, she didn’t have anyone to pass it on to.

“(I) want to retire while I’m young enough to pursue some other desires,” said Bruce, who is 48.

Her father, Bill Wardrop, said he bought Columbia Cycle after his employer at the time, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., wanted to send him to work in South America.

There were good and bad times at the shop, which moved over the years to four or five locations between the 1400 and 1900 blocks of North Monroe Street.

The toughest time wasn’t when business was bad; it was when it was too good, said Wardrop, who’s 82. In the 1970s, new lighter bikes came out and exploded in popularity; the shop couldn’t keep up with demand.

“We sold everything we could get our hands on,” he said.

Wardrop had loyal customers and good help, however. He said he balanced the checkbooks for six developmentally disabled customers who often shopped there and extended credit lines to other patrons.

Bruce said work on Monroe Street and the Monroe Street Bridge has been hardest for her. Each time there’s construction on the street, customers are diverted from the area, forcing her to boost advertising and run specials to generate foot traffic, she said.

Columbia Cycle has a wide variety of customers, mainly because it also carries arts and crafts supplies. Other bike shops traditionally sold winter sports equipment to attract customers in the off season. Some of those crafts customers have been shopping at Columbia Cycle & Hobby so long they enter and ask how to get to the balcony, where the crafts are, or were. Crafts used to be stored on a balcony when the shop was in a former JC Penney building.

“They haven’t needed anything, obviously, for 20 years,” Bruce said.

Perhaps one of the shop’s most high-profile customers was President George H.W. Bush, who wanted a Schwinn exercise bike when he was staying at a downtown hotel for several days, Bruce said.

Bruce said final papers haven’t been signed on the building where the bike and craft shop has been for 18 years. She doesn’t know what will locate there after she’s gone.

But, unlike her father, who builds and repairs computers for his friends in his retirement, Bruce will stay near bicycles. She’ll buy, refurbish and sell vintage bikes out of her home, she said.

She’s going to retain the store’s license, however, just in case she can’t handle being away from the business.