The Three Penny Wrench, parts 3280 - 3283

 3280. Therefore, although the city still exists, the bicycle store is gone, its building is gone, its street has disappeared, and the neighborhood has been transformed into highway surface. So, in many ways you might say that the city still exists in name only, whatever its name might be.

 3281. In the bicycle store, on the second floor, was a big attic room with hardly any light except for a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. In the gloom the entire floor was four feet deep with bicycles in various states of decomposition; a true bicycle junk yard. 

 3282. One could not simply go to the back of the store, mount the stairs and go rummaging through the great collection of broken bicycle parts that were stored there. If you ventured to go up the stairs to the mysterious dead bicycle room, the owner would call out to you to desist, and then mutter something about how his insurance did not cover the second floor.

3283. If, over the years you made purchases that indicated that you were a true lover of bicycles, you graduated to the statues of being allowed to go to the second floor. How did the special status come about? Simply by the inadvertent display of knowledge about bicycles and their parts.