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Arrow dynamic
Dandyhorse, Summer 2009
"I get my bikes from the garbage and from dead people," says Leslie, the shop's 33-year-old owner and sole employee. He uses his stockpile — made up of vintage track bikes, brightly-coloured kids' cruisers and other oddities — for parts.
Bicycles have always been an important part of Leslie's life. As a child he was a BMX rider, and he had to learn to fix flats and do other basic repairs because there was no bike shop in his small Northern Ontario town. When he was just 13 years old, Leslie ended up living on the streets of Toronto — his mother had died and he wasn't getting along with his father. During his years on the streets, he got a job sweeping the floor of a bicycle shop and assembling new bikes from boxes.
Leslie learned the ins and outs of bicycle repair in his 20s and early 30s, while working in various bike shops in Halifax and Toronto. Eventually, Leslie says he got sick of the high-pressure sales techniques at the shop he was working for, and in 2007, he opened his own shop, drawing on his knowledge of bike repair and the life skills he gained while he was homeless. "I learned a lot on the streets," Leslie says. "I learned how to deal with people. I learned to be friendly when I didn't want to be friendly. I learned how to sell things to people. I transferred all that knowledge into running this place."
In just a year and a half, Red Arrow Bikes has become a hotspot for bike messengers. "He's the guy you go to if you need to fix something in a pinch and get back on the road that day," says Marli Epp, a friend of Leslie and a board member with the Toronto Bike Messenger Association. "He does impeccable work and he's the only person I would trust to fix my bike." However, Leslie can do a lot more than just repair the fixed-gear bikes that messengers favour; he also works on commuter bikes, rickshaws and pedicabs. "I got a weird curse," he says. "I know how to fix everything."
Even though Leslie didn't go through any formal training, he is advocating a certification system for bike mechanics that he says will help raise wages, increase job security and improve standards. He's working with the Industrial Workers of the World, an anarchist union that has around two dozen Toronto bike mechanics signed up, to create a system where current and new mechanics can be certified. "We want bike mechanics to be recognized as a skilled trade, the same as auto mechanics," Leslie says. "This will be a good thing for people like me — people who are career mechanics for the rest of their lives."
Red Arrow Bikes
24 Kensington Ave (around the back)
tel: 416 668 0433