Indeed, you can spend hours on the website, which has Japanese and English versions, and the shop’s social media channels. Blue Lug has very active Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr accounts, the latter with over 139,000 photos spread across 1,391 pages. There’s also a whole set of YouTube videos of bikes being assembled up from a naked frame to a completed custom build. The videos tend to be wordless and mesmerizing, following the process as a skilled mechanic works. Many are over 20 minutes long, and one, a 44-minute Crust build, gets a custom paint job and a dreamy soundtrack.
The videos have a soothing, ASMR quality, and you can learn a lot just by watching, or get ideas for your dream bike or current ride. Even if you’re not paying that much attention, a pleasant half hour might slip away.
What Blue Lug creates tend to be works of beauty that sit at the nexus between fun, fashion, and practicality.
“They put bikes together in ways no one else has thought of. They pay attention to details,” Keating says before diverting into a little soliloquy about micro crazes the shop has created for bicycle minutiae like cable hangers and top-tube protectors.
With the help of the shop’s staff, I borrow a bike from one of Blue Lug’s tallest employees—thanks, Kaisei!—hop on, and ride into the city. The bike is a two-year-old All-City Space Horse with a beautiful blue color I’ve never seen, nice fat tires, and crisp, dialed-in shifting.
I start off picking little neighborhoods to visit and navigating my way to them. This is sorta fun, but lots of pulling the map out and trying to figure out a way to get from one place to another. It’s doable but fussy. But then I stop trying to navigate and just ride. The guys at the shop recommended visiting Yoyogi Park, which turns out to have a dedicated cycling path with a sign in English that tells you to “Just enjoy it,” and I try to internalize that a bit.
After a highly enjoyable croquette sandwich from a food truck in the park, I get back on the bike, ditch the map, and point myself in a general direction—”toward the water”—and just ride. It’s surprisingly chill. In Seattle, I say, tongue in cheek, that the drivers are quick to honk. Less jokingly, they tend to assume right of way. It leaves you on edge. In Tokyo, things felt more integrated and equal. Nobody honks. Simply following people makes opposite-side riding surprisingly easy. It’s very much about entering the flow, and there’s often a cyclist in front of you leading the way.
Considering I was on a bike that was new to me in a town that was new to me on a side of the road that was new to me, it was exhilarating and created a new way to connect with the city. You don’t really let ’er rip that often. On a ride through Tokyo on a perfect bicycle, you enjoy the flow state.