Ten grand for a bicycle - what the f does it buy?

You Paid How Much for That Bike? -- by STEVE FRIEDMAN

IN April, two months before turning 39, Stacy Jargowsky decided to learn to ride a bicycle. So she spent $9,000 for a brushed-silver custom-made bike called a Guru. “If I can only have one, I feel like it should be the best,” she said. It was made of titanium, which — gearhead chatter about high performance, ultralight strength and lifetime durability notwithstanding — is as incredibly cool as it sounds. (Try saying “I’m taking my titanium Guru out for a spin today.” Don’t you feel better?)

A few months later, Ms. Jargowsky, who works for Flybar, a pogo-stick manufacturer, spent $10,000 for another custom-made cycle. “They kind of become like pets,” she said. “Once you have one, you want to get another.” This time she bought a Cervelo, made of carbon fiber. It’s black. Carbon, according to many in the gearhead community, is even cooler than titanium.

That Ms. Jargowsky spent the equivalent of a few years’ tuition at a perfectly respectable state university to buy two bikes when she barely knew how to ride may strike some people as — let’s be honest here — floridly insane. Then again, people who raise their eyebrows at titanium Gurus and the men and women who love them like pets, it is safe to say, have not been paying attention to what’s been happening at the upper end of the cycling market in Manhattan.

“You go to Central Park and there are all these expensive custom-made bikes, and they’re not just for the bike geeks anymore,” said Noah Budnick, a deputy director at Transportation Alternatives, a nonprofit group that lobbies for bicycle-friendly laws in New York City. “You have these corporate guys now. I like to say that bicycling is the new golf.”

Nationwide, demand for specially made bikes is higher than ever. “Custom bike sales are on the rise, and we’re nowhere near the saturation point yet,” said Megan Tompkins, the editor of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, a trade magazine.

Lance Armstrong ’s seven Tour de France victories provide one explanation why the road bike has seized back ground it had lost to mountain bikes in the ’80s and ’90s.

Another reason: aging baby boomers with worn-out knees have embraced cycling as a low-impact, aerobically demanding alternative to cartilage-grinding sports like basketball and tennis. The explosive growth of triathlons, whose participants need bicycles that will perform at long distances, has created tens of thousands more buyers since 2000. Finally — and not to be underestimated, especially in Manhattan — rich people like to buy cool things.

It’s no secret to anyone who has ever endured an encounter with a grease-stained, eye-rolling, heavily sighing bicycle shop employee that customer service in the industry has historically ranged from sullen to supercilious to overtly hateful. (“It’s one of the few retail industries where a condition for employment seems to be utter contempt for the customer,” said one industry executive.)

Perhaps that’s why many local sellers of custom bikes are newcomers to the market and eager to cater to a discriminating clientele. In January, JackRabbit, based in Brooklyn, opened a store at 42 West 14th Street, near Union Square. It traffics almost exclusively in custom bicycles, mostly carbon and titanium. So does two-year-old SBR MultiSports, at 203 West 58th Street, where Ms. Jargowsky bought her bikes. Signature Cycles opened its appointment-only store at 80 West End Avenue in February.

Although Altheus Cycling and Endurance Center, based in Rye, N.Y., closed its Union Square branch this week, Tom Crawford, the store’s president, said the company plans to open at least one Manhattan outpost in 2007. In mid-April, another store that specializes in custom bicycles, Cadence Cycling and Multisport Centers in Philadelphia, will open an 11,000-square-foot store at 174 Hudson Street.

Customers who buy bikes at any of these shops first undergo an interrogation that bears more similarity to an adoption proceeding than to a bicycle purchase. What are their hopes for their new bicycle? What are their dreams? After the discussion comes the hallmark feature of the custom bike experience: the fitting. An assessment can last one to five hours, and — depending on the store — may involve computerized pedaling analysis, range-of-motion tests and individually designed insoles for cycling shoes (all for $200 to $375).

The cheapest bike at any of the stores costs about $1,600 (a single-speed aluminum road bike), and the most expensive, $23,000 (a carbon time-trial bike sold at Signature Cycles that comes with handmade German wheels at $5,500 a set).

If traditional bicycle shops are to SBR, Altheus and JackRabbit as coach is to first class, then Signature Cycles is a Gulfstream jet. “Very, very boutique,” David Jordan, a cycling coach and former professional racer, said of Signature Cycles. He said that Paul Levine, Signature’s owner, will “offer you a glass of Courvoisier while you discuss your cycling habits.”

At Signature Cycles’ Manhattan store (there is also a branch in Central Valley, N.Y.), there is a massage table for range-of-motion analysis. There is an espresso machine. There is, at the bar, Penfolds Shiraz and Maker’s Mark. Courvoisier, too. There is a shower, because the fitting can be strenuous, and, as Grant Salter, an employee, said, “Our clients are Wall Street guys, and they don’t want to go back to the office after a visit here and close a $5 million deal all sweaty and smelly.”

To cyclists for whom the phrase “close a $5 million deal” has approximately the same relevance as “Why not take a weekend jaunt to the third moon of Jupiter,” bicycles like the ones sold at Signature may represent nothing so much as the glittery and degraded signs of a gilded age’s inevitable decline. Don’t tell that to custom bike owners, though.

A year ago, when Manny Vidal came to Signature Cycles, he was 42 and hadn’t been on a road bike for 20 years, and, at 5 feet 11 inches, weighed 260 pounds. He would go to the gym once or twice a week. He felt tired often.

Since buying his $10,000 gray titanium-and-carbon Serotta, Mr. Vidal, the chief executive of Vidal Partnership, which specializes in advertising in the Hispanic market, has lost more than 40 pounds. He rides at least 5 days a week for 90 minutes.

Mr. Vidal admits that his Serotta is sometimes more than just something he pedals. “Oh, it’s definitely an accessory,” he said. “People stop you and comment on the bike. They’ll want to talk about it, ask you about it. They’re the same kinds of looks I used to get when I drove a Porsche.”

Ms. Jargowsky, who rides 60 to 70 miles a week, also confesses to a special bond with her bikes.

“The first time I had to check my triathlon bike for my race, I really noticed it missing in my home,” said Mr. Jargowsky, who finished three triathlons this summer. “I would look out in the hallway and it wasn’t there. It was kind of sad.”

An accessory? Sad? Are these the sentiments of serious cyclists or well-heeled fanatics? Is there a difference? Dr. David Levine, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan, took up cycling three years ago. Now 39, he rides three or four laps around Central Park every weekday morning, with a group of other doctors from the hospital. They average about 16 minutes for a 6-mile lap, or 22.5 miles an hour. Dr. Levine (no relation to Paul, the Signature Cycles owner) rides a carbon Colnago, which he got from an Italian anesthesiologist who, he said, “has a nice connection to a bike shop in Como.”

Yes, he said, riders of high-end bikes notice other high-end bikes. Is there wheel envy? “I’m not sure I’d call it that,” he said, adding that it’s more a matter of proud owners comparing the advantages of their bikes’ technology.

Dr. Levine bristled slightly when it was suggested that people like him may be a little, um, obsessed with what is, after all, just a bicycle.

“You do feel a connection with it,” he said. “But I don’t think anyone in our group takes it to a psychotic, unreasonable extent.”

He paused. “But my wife might disagree with that.”