You could spend a year touring bike shops and never find anything quite like what’s happening at Hobo Hub Works in south St. Louis.
It's a bike shop that operates differently from most. Owner Matt Steward started the business about two years ago in his basement and then expanded into his Southampton garage. Last year, he and Zach Smith, owner of the custom bike bag maker South City Stitchworks, went in together on a space in the old Lemp Brewery warehouses south of Cherokee Street.
Reaching the space is a bit of an adventure. Steward posted a video on the shop’s Instagram page to keep his customers from getting lost. It charts the course through nondescript, exterior double doors, across industrial plank floors and up wooden steps to a vast second floor where, after a few “Am I doing this right?” moments, visitors find an open door to their left.
Inside, the room is bright, thanks to a wall of leaded glass windows. Stripped-down bike frames of various makes and ages dangle from the ceiling. An old couch sitting in the middle of leafy potted plants separates Steward’s bike-building half of the space from the side that holds Smith’s sewing table and workbench. It’s surprisingly homey for a place with no heat or air conditioning.
“I want it to feel like a clubhouse,” Steward said. Adding to the vibe are frequent do-it-yourselfers working on their own bikes, often borrowing tools and making use of Steward’s cache of salvaged parts.
Hobo Hub Works is different from a traditional bike shop because Steward only sells used bikes — but that’s only part of the story. His bikes are custom-built, carefully assembled from old and new bits. In an industry in which even weekend warriors find themselves buying easily fractured carbon-frame bikes for thousands of dollars, Steward tends toward long-lasting steel frames and prices that start at about $200.
“He’s figured out a way to make really high-quality bikes that are sustainable and affordable,” Smith said.
The secret is saving good parts from castoffs and piecing them together until he has made something better than new. The upcycled cycles usually cost less than one of the big manufacturer’s entry-level bikes and eschew cheap components that can fail with frustrating speed.
The tradeoff is time. Steward might spend several weeks sourcing parts and assembling the bike.
“The big thing is patience,” he said.
For years, Steward worked in traditional bike shops and even owned one in Florida, where he sold new bikes and made repairs. He moved about four years ago to St. Louis with his wife, who grew up in Webster Groves. As he settled into his new city, the idea of a different kind of shop began to form in the back of his head. He wanted to make bikes that more people could afford and that would last, while also diverting some of the waste he saw in the industry.
“Price and sustainability is where a lot of this was born,” he said.
Steward met Smith while working at the now-closed Trailhead Mesa Cycles location in Richmond Heights.
Smith, a former schoolteacher, started making bags because he couldn’t find what he wanted on the market. He competes in bikepacking races — endurance events in which riders traverse rough terrain, even mountains, carrying their own gear. Soon, some of the best bikepacking racers in the world were calling. He’s seen his handmade bags on winner’s podiums for races all over the globe, from Arkansas to Kyrgyzstan.
“People call me up, and they’re usually planning a wild ride — hundreds and hundreds of miles,” he said.
Steward and Smith connected over a commitment to durability and sustainability. When Smith saw the space in the Lemp warehouse, he approached Steward about sharing a shop where their businesses could grow side by side.
“Also, it’s kind of a spooky building, so I didn’t want to be alone,” Smith joked.
Rent is cheap, and both businesses make deft use of social media for low-cost marketing. One bonus of the warehouse is that it provides a striking background for luxurious closeup photos of bikes and bags and, for cross-promotions, bags on bikes. This setup wouldn’t be possible in more expensive cities, they said.
“I’ve lived in a lot of places, and this is one place where you can make your life what you want,” Smith said.
Sometimes, customers pick a bike that Steward has already built. More often, they describe what they’re looking for, and his hunt begins. He spends a chunk of most days scouring Facebook Marketplace and other sources in search of used bikes and parts. Where others scroll past a $50 clunker, Steward might spot a set of perfectly good wheels and a chainring that would cost him double if he ordered the parts new.
He’ll buy the whole bike and use the pieces where he can. The frame might go to one build, the components to several others. He doesn’t need to sink a lot of capital into keeping everything he needs on hand because he can always find it online, given enough time.
“The world is my warehouse,” he said.
He is constantly mixing and matching parts in a process that can seem like building Frankenstein’s monster. Each bicycle mosaic is unique.
In a fairly typical build, he upgraded a frame from a 1990s mountain bike with salvaged shifters, a recently ordered seat, a wire basket and aftermarket handlebars that sweep back toward the cyclist for cruising. In another, he outfitted a mint green Peugeot from the 1980s with matching green tires, an older leather seat made by the beloved British saddle manufacturer Brooks and an orange Stridsland chainring that complements a very ’80s progression of yellow to red stripes on the frame.
Steward’s aesthetic leans toward color, functionality and, generally, fun. It encourages a different kind of riding. Rather than time trials and Strava-tracked speedsters, Steward posts videos on Instagram of joyful neighborhood cruises in street clothes and weekend sojourns along dirt roads. He organizes Saturday morning social rides that he calls Coffee Outside, which, yes, begin with making and drinking coffee outside somewhere before rambling around the city on two wheels.
Audrey Johnson, a 30-year-old transplant from Washington, D.C., learned about Steward from friends and has two bikes from Hobo Hub Works. The first was a Specialized Stumpjumper, fortified with racks and baskets. It was built as a grocery go-getter to facilitate her car-free lifestyle. For her second bike, she wanted something sporty and fun.
She settled on a vintage Raleigh frame with stylish, budget-friendly upgrades, plus one costlier accessory, a Dynamo. That is a cylindrical mechanism installed on the axle that generates electricity from the spinning wheel to power the bike’s lights. Because the other components were relatively inexpensive, the total price still came in under $500.
Johnson grinned when she saw the bright blue bicycle. “I love it!”
At Johnson’s request, Steward made a couple of quick changes while she waited, swapping out the tan handlebar grips for teal ones and adding a cage for a water bottle. Johnson said she might have caved and bought a car had it not been for Steward’s bikes.
“You’re helping me live my dream,” she said.
She added one more accessory, a brightly colored bag from Smith, before heading out through the warehouse, down the stairs and off to ride.
