Tangent Cycles

Tangent Cycles, operated solely by John Drake, is a custom bike shop. First, John is a true enthusiast - his shop's walls are filled with working vintage bikes he's personally collected, and ridden.

The shop has two main services:
1 - helping you select and design a truly custom fitted bike - JP Weigel, Erickson, Parlee, etc.
2 - fitting your existing bike to you.

John's skills at custom fitting my existing bike greatly improved my riding comfort. Then he devised new gearing and wheel sizing for both my wife and I to further adapt the bike to our riding styles. Retail shops are good, but rely on volume to survive. If you want to find a new dimension in bicycle enjoyment - visit Tangent.

Finally, John custom roasts fine coffee with the same care he outfits you bike.

Personal and wonderful experience! Got some custom made insoles, a must for any cyclist riding any fair amount or more. Got my custom Gunnar through Tangent cycles.

John fit me on my new road bike and I've been fit several times in the past so I'm familiar with the process. Instantly felt comfortable on the bike again and back to training consistently. John was very thorough and clearly has a passion for all things cycling. I would definitely recommend going to see him if you're looking to get more comfortable on the bike!

John has built two bikes for me. The first was a custom Parlee Z1 back in 2012 when John had a shop in Sylvania, Ohio and I had just moved to Michigan from San Francisco. The second was a custom Bingham Built all-road travel bike with couplers, which John put together for me in 2019 in Asheville and I flew out to pick up. (The story between the lines there is that it's worth flying half way across the country to have John build your bike). Both bikes are awesome. John is a one-of-a-kind builder. He knows all his suppliers on a first name basis--it's not Parlee, Bingham Built, René Herse, it's Bob, Brad, Jan. He cares about every detail of the bike almost obsessively and creates something perfectly suited to each rider. With 40,000 miles and 8,000 miles on my bikes respectively, both are still going strong. I'm biding my time until I can justify having him build another one for me. As he says on his site, why pay a ton for off the rack, when you can pay about the same and have a unique bike crafted just for you?