DEPOT
Video, 2min 46sec, 2009 (TRW07)

Depot Cycle & Recycle is a bicycle shop in Ichikawa, an eastern suburb of Tokyo a little more than an hour's bike ride from Shibuya. Established by Seiya Minato in 2001, Depot first began by offering bike parts and accessories to Tokyo's far-flung messenger community. Seiya made his mark too by importing many foreign brands into Japan, introducing companies like ReLoad and Freitag to Tokyo's cyclists while encouraging local producers to develop their own products. Seiya presaged Japan's street trend of fixed-gear track bikes and for years was the only Tokyo-area bike shop selling used keirin frames, working with local frame builders to resell retired bikes. Now that the trend has exploded into a media-recognized phenomenon, spiking prices to unaffordable levels, Seiya has concentrated more on encouraging bike culture, the "things around the bike," as he puts it. "I'm not so interested in the bike... I like riding bikes."

We talked to Seiya about running a store and was particularly curious about why he was way out in Ichikawa when shop after shop was springing up in central Tokyo, feasting off a scene he helped develop. "We were born here," he explained, "we should do it in our place. It is our reality." If you spend an afternoon at Depot you will meet all sorts of people: shoppers, messengers, neighborhood residents, and certainly his two young daughters, Aika and Yume, and his wife, Mami, who may be nursing their newborn son. It is a kind of, er, hub for a community that responds positively to Seiya's infectious energy, generosity, and kindness. And then it becomes clear that Depot was never about scenes but about the strength and sincerity of relationships. Like the best kinds of bike shops all around the world, it is a community service.