My earliest memory of a bike shop was also a motorcycle shop, attached to a greasy spoon cafe. Everything needed was there on site; in oily jars, musty cardboard boxes or wrapped in wax paper on dusty shelves. Everything was there. The senior mechanic was in overalls, sporting an unlit pipe always hanging from his lip, thin yellow grey hair slicked back in a Brylcreem wave. On a long weekend ride home carrying our rods and tent we'd see him tanning it past us on a gleaming chrome racer; the overalls now swapped for tight woollens and racing cap. Pipe now lit and a smile wider than his handlebar moustache.
Some such characters are still apparent; anachronistic reminders of days when life was simpler and the world was a better place.
Capturing that mood is one way forward for cycling, for the cafe cycle shops at least, but the commercial pressures will against it. Complexity, and the opportunity to exploit such for gain, demand all the different standards and incompatibilities that frustrate those who favour cycling as an activity over cycling as an interest.
Perhaps there is a change occurring, but is it an electronic shift?