> Another place I experience this phenomenon is bike shops. They'll start talking to you with specialized vocabulary and won't give you the time of day if you don't know exactly what they're talking about. Yet, I brought my bike to the bike shop because I'm not an expert bike mechanic. Funny enough, I couldn't find a bike shop that wasn't like this so with the help of youtube I do all my own bike work now.

Ugh, the industry still needs to do so much work to this end. There are good shops out there, fwiw, but the elitism is real. Totally counterproductive for a means of conveyance that is so elegantly classless (in the positive, egalitarian sense).

I design and build things 100x[0] more complex than any bicycle, yet I don't know the jargon and feel like an idiot when I got into my local bike shop to ask simple questions. They are mostly nice and understanding, but the jargon and elitism is still very real that my wife doesn't like going there.

[0]though adjusting the tension spring on the brake levers still puzzles me sometimes... Looser should mean it travels more when you squeeze and release the brake lever, right? Stiffer spring has less displacement for a given force. Not quite. https://www.sheldonbrown.com/canti-direct.html#parallel

There was a focused effort to "professionalize" the hobby by researcher (crank) John Forester. Thousands of cyclist deaths can be attributed to his efforts, which included promoting "serious" cycling over accessible and casual transport, and personally destroying early plans for widely-available bike lanes in California a la in the Netherlands. Though not as infamous, you can think of him as a mini Moses.

I bought my wife's bike, which she'd purchased back in England while on a fitness kick, to a local shop in Manhattan for a brake service years ago. I have never forgotten the interaction: the hipster douche who greeted me launched into a multi-minute tirade about how Decathlon was "ruining cycling in Europe" and how I was complicit in doing the same in the USA by bringing this abomination into his store.

I'm pretty sure I know who is more responsible for ruining cycling.

Fortunately my local shop in the suburbs here couldn't be more different. They're patient and lovely with my kids, efficient and non-condescending with my wife, will even send a little car to your house to collect a broken bike for service - whether or not they sold it.

Speaking about elitism/classless - in some german towns, there are more and more non profit self help bike repair places. Good concept I think, but sadly not for E-Bikes it seems. At least I was told that much, so I had to start getting my own repair gear.

Catering exclusively to snobbery is everywhere in commissioned sales.

The only bike shops that aren't this way are going to be relatively small and new establishments where the owner is the only guy there. Do not expect the advice or inventory to be all that great.

If you just want the advice, catch the salesman that he's eventually forced to hire when they're off work at the bar.

Most of them live and breathe biking. They choose to make close to minimum wage to "do what they love", they don't own the store. I think it's genuine excitement and enthusiasm that you take as elitism. Often, it's a big part of their identity... "how could anyone else _not_ care as much"?

I used to bike with a few bike shop employees and they were only in it to eke out a living doing something adjacent to the thing they love, selling bikes was not their passion, riding them and talking about the tech was.

At least 10 years ago, wages in the whole sector were pretty low, so you'd only work there if you really wanted to and valued perks like buying bikes at wholesale (hey, that's half off) and having access to tools or a mechanic buddy.