Why this Bay Area business is closing after 101 years

Frank Dryer started working at his dad’s bike shop as a kid in the 1970s, building tricycles and sweeping the floors. He bought the Lafayette store, Hank and Frank Bicycles, in 1991. Monday, at 64, he locks the doors for good, ending a 101-year run for a business that kept generations of East Bay wheels spinning.

Online shopping didn’t kill his business, and neither did the economy. Dryer’s landlord sold the building to new owners who want to open a dance studio. Dryer, who has opened the store nearly every day of his adult life, figured that was a good reason to finally retire. 

“I’m pretty sad that I’m leaving,” Dryer said. “But I need to retire. If I had a kid, his name would be Hank and he’d be taking over the business.”

There has never been a Hank in Dryer’s family, kid or otherwise. The real Hank was Hank Stahl, who opened the shop in 1918 in Oakland and took a partner named Frank — no relation to Dryer — in 1925, at which time it became Hank and Frank Bicycles. 

Dryer’s father, Dale, bought it from Stahl’s widow in about 1968 and opened a second store in Lafayette, keeping the name. He added a Rockridge location around 1986 and shut the original Oakland store. Rockridge closed in about 2022. The Lafayette location, on Mount Diablo Boulevard, outlasted them both.

When Dryer was a kid, customers walked in asking for Hank, or for Frank. 

“My dad would come get me and go, ‘Here you go,’” Dryer said, laughing. “Because there was no Hank and Frank anymore.”

Dryer bought the business from his dad in about 1991. 

“I was born into it,” Dryer said. 

Since then, his days have mostly started the same: he wakes up, takes a shower, opens the store and goes to Diablo Foods nearby for lunch. He still has his father’s photo on the shelf behind the register.

Two competitors eventually opened in town, but Dryer said it didn’t affect his business. He had something that they didn’t: free lifetime tune-ups that came with every bike he sold, a perk he’s handing off to a mom-and-pop shop in Walnut Creek so the benefit to his customers doesn’t die with him.

In the last few days of his business, Dryer and his staff sold off whatever was left — from bikes and tires to water bottle holders and locks. Regulars and old employees kept wandering in, some for a final repair, some just to say goodbye to the place. Dryer and his staff eagerly greeted customers, wheeling their bikes into the back to make final repairs. 

Behind the register, Dryer had printed a board with messages from his customers, congratulating him on his retirement. 

“Thank you for being my go-to for my first chrome Moly Mongoose dirt bike, Moto Mag Wheels w/the gum wall tires!” one message read.

Amber Lerma stopped by Friday to get her son’s bike fixed. Both her kids bought their first bikes there. Her son, now 15, races mountain bikes for a cross-country team in Oakland and still comes back for repairs.

“We’ll miss them. It’s such a special place and they’ve been here for so long, but I’m happy for Frank that he’s retiring,” Lerma said. “They were always so caring and punctual and thoughtful about doing repairs on bikes.”

Brenden Cohen worked on Lerma’s bike. He’s been at the shop five years, the latest stop in a career spent at mom-and-pop bike stores since high school. His severance is going toward a bike-packing trip down Highway 1 to see his brother in Los Angeles.

“I definitely teared up when he let me know,” Cohen said. “I wasn’t ready for it to be over. This is where we feel at home.”

A few days before closing, Dryer got a call from Hank Stahl’s son, who had heard the shop was shutting down.

“I told him, ‘Thanks,’” Dryer said, “‘because if it wasn’t for your dad, Hank, I wouldn’t be here.’”