Watching the Tour at Rapha cycling club NYC

We’re not sure what to make of Rapha.   There are two types of cyclist who ride to compete – those that ALWAYS wear their team or club jersey and those that don’t.   We’re in the latter camp.   Sure we’ll wear them in a race, but you know the type – as sure as the sun will rise, they riders will have on their team or club jersey no matter the week of the day or no matter ths size or speed of the group.    That’s not us and frankly we don’t get a lot of support as the industry lacks good simple jerseys.   There are some, but there need to be more and they need some style to boot.   Enter Rapha – they have a discerning eye for style and detail and we appreciate their understated tones.    The belgium country jersey design is something we would never change.   The style is one-of-kind, and the design says classic for years to come, but unfortunately that’s about wear it ends.   The cost is up there, as in up there with Assos and for quality we’ll pay it, but rapha fit isn’t for us.   It’s for riders with money and in cycling money more often than not comes with weight and girth.   Sure it’s a generalization and not all svelte guys are cash strapped and conversely not all portly riders are loaded with another kind of dough.   Nevertheless, if this were vegas we know where the house would make their bets.   To sum, we like the design and quality, but not the fit and in the end that prohibits us from riding their gear.

The Rapha cycling club in NYC is supposed to be a place for cyclist to come and chill and check out Rapha gear.   Since one of us has a job that takes them into NYC three days a week the cycle club was something that got us excited.   A lot of press has been written about the cycle club and it’s not just cycling media and blogs.   A place to go and get good coffee and watch the tour on a big screen with other aficionados – count us in.   BTW, we agree with Rapha’s Mike Spiggs, most cycling fans are coffee freaks and so are we, not all, but most – see what we mean about generalizations ; )

The layout of the club, like all rapha products, was well done and the jerseys, hats and other items made us long to wear their products.   The products worked in conjunction with the ever-cool Paul Smith, love his suits, were awesome.   The coffee bar looked appetizing and it was confirmed to us the night before that the TV would indeed be tuned in live to the tour.   We schlepped over during stage 10 with a work colleague who knows nothing of cycling, but wants to learn and coincidently  enjoys coffee.

Well, the experience feel far short.   First the coffee: good coffee, should, never, ever be served out of a vacuum pump carafe.   We don’t care what the claims are – after 5 minutes in a carafe the coffee comes out luke warm and the taste is substantially degraded.   Coffee needs to be ground right, brewed right and served right – if you only do two of the three you’re not doing it right and that was the case.   The coffee was luke warm and, well, worse than, say, starbucks drip.

In the end the rapha cycling club came out like their products – excellent concept, flawed execution.   Nevertheless, we wish them the best, anyone investing in cycling should be commended.   We just hope they learn and codify their approach in their stores and in their products.