Business (and everything) goes in cycles
Marie and Martin Langley at The Quiet Revolution Cycle Shop. Photo: Gerard Hindmarsh.
It’s been nearly 15 years since Martin Langley set up The Quiet Revolution cycle shop, initially in the front alcove of GB Mechanical before its move into the old Bickley’s building next door three years later.
The c.1870 wooden building reeks of history. It’s been everything from a general store to a radio and jewellery shop, and once had an office out the back where the Social Credit party used to meet. It still sits on its original totara piles, and a big bulge in the shop floor indicates the existence of a huge rata stump underneath, a remnant from when the section was hewn out of the original bush. The building’s only real changes have been to the original wooden veranda posts, which were replaced with big steel pipes taken from the boiler of the Tarakohe Cement Co. This was considered necessary after increasing numbers of vehicles began bumping into them while parking, and they still do today, but with less effect.
It’s not the first time the shop has sold cycles, either. In the early 1950s it opened for trading as Matthews’ Takaka Cycle Works.
Comments Martin: “Everything goes in cycles! I guess when I came along and opened a bike shop back up, Golden Bay was ready for it all again. Technology-wise, the changes have been incredible this last decade or so. Bikes now are routinely made out of once-exotic materials like lightweight metals or carbon fibre. They have disc brakes and advanced suspension technology that you would have once only found on a motocross bike.”
To keep up with all the latest advancements, Martin regularly goes on Shimano bike mechanic courses in Auckland. His daughter Rita recently accompanied him to learn the finer points of wheel building and disc brakes. A competitive downhill mountainbike rider in her own right, she has reached pro-elite level in this country.
Martin was a primary-trained teacher who was running lessons mostly in outdoor education and music at Collingwood Area School until 1995 before he left to start up his cycle shop. His partner Marie, who was an English teacher and deputy principal at the school, left her own teaching career in 2002 to since write two children’s books (Pukeko and Pukeko the Performer), a juvenile novel and lots of educational resources for three different companies. She also helps out in the business, in which she is a partner with Martin. Their other daughter, Chloe Langley, recently played at the Mussel Inn in her band Faster Pussycat Kill Kill.
“Bikes and music have always been big in our family,” says Martin, “Which is why we also sell guitars and guitar strings and other musical instruments in our shop.” Along with cycles, Martin has also been known to fix scooters and skateboards. His all-round abilities – which include all the track building he’s done at Parapara, and in the early days at Canaan and Project Rameka as well – have served to earn him a loyal clientele and the respect and gratitude of local and visiting cyclists.
“It’s been great to be part of a whole movement, the cycling one that is. It’s been a quiet revolution, exactly what we named our shop.”
Gerard Hindmarsh
