Bicycle Belle owner Carice Reddien said she’s closing her pioneering bicycle store after accomplishing many of her goals. Reddien’s store has been a fixture for 13 years at the junction of Beacon and Oxford streets on the Somerville/Cambridge city line near Porter Square.
Interviewed at the store on Wednesday, Reddien said running a small business was hard with three children in elementary and middle school, and that there were now plenty of local options for cargo and e-bikes. “I feel like I need to be available for my family,” she said.
From the start, Bicycle Belle was not your typical bike shop. Reddien didn’t sell recreational or racing bicycles. No, she aimed for urban utility, offering practical e-bikes, cargo loaders and extended frame rides that could comfortably and safely seat kids for their trips to and from school. The store also encouraged women to bicycle.
Reddien’s championing of cargo and e-bikes made her early to the micromobility market, which now also includes hoverboards and e-scooters in addition to throngs of “acoustic” (not electric) cyclists. Her store became a go-to for Dutch-style “bakfiets” (family cargo bikes) and was one of the only local retailers importing them. Reddien also started a blog, “Biking in Heels,” about the challenges and rewards of year-round urban biking.
Back then, “it felt like I knew every cargo bike in the city by sight, and I couldn’t go to a playground without someone telling me how much they loved their bike,” Reddien wrote in an email to the Bicycle Belle community. “I’m so excited that there are so many families that have embraced cargo bikes that I don’t know everyone now.”
Reddien told Cambridge Day “I feel like we accomplished a lot of things — especially with what this shop was trying to do in terms of normalizing city bikes, cargo bikes and e-bikes.”
In particular, she aimed to make bicycles a viable replacement for a motor vehicle. Reddien acknowledges this was a higher bar for an “acoustic” bike, but the rise of e-bikes has closed the gap. “When it’s one of those days when it’s 34 degrees and raining, and you also don’t want to get a workout, it just removes that barrier that’s it’s a little too far to do — it’s the difference between, ‘Well, we could go there, but … ’ versus, ‘Oh sure, we’ll go.’”
One Cambridge resident said Reddien had played a role in reducing car use in the city. “Bicycle Belle helped so many families make biking part of everyday life,” said Christopher Cassa of Cambridge Bike Safety. “By specializing in larger bikes and cargo bikes, they helped people do everyday tasks like shopping, school drop-offs and family errands without owning a car or second car.”
Many in the local biking community were dismayed by the news that her store will close. At midday today, several patrons and cycling enthusiasts popped in to share their appreciation and gratitude. One brought her a bouquet and a gift bag.
Reddien, previously a trained architect who lived in Europe, was a bicycle advocate who worked at the LiveableStreets Alliance before she opened Bicycle Belle, and says she may go back to it. The Belmont resident said “I’d like to do more activism. I just haven’t had any bandwidth for that because I’ve been doing a business.”
The shop will close August 1 and is offering deep deals on its inventory of electric bikes from Gazelle, Benno and Surly. All Urban Arrow Family Cargo bikes are $1,000 off and come with a free raincover or suncover.
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