My LBS seems pretty friendly (Peddlers in Redcar), they like to talk bikes and won't try to sell me something I don't need. I recently took a bike in thinking I needed a different shim for the seatpost, but was told I had the right size shim and to clean up the inside of the seat tube and use grease and perseverance.... it worked
and I didn't need to fork out for a new shim.
On the other side of the coin though...a work colleague was telling me a couple of months ago that he was going to sell his Giant (Yecora iirc) as he hadn't used it much, and would I mind helping him sort out the brakes & indexing.
He went on to tell me how he was new to mountainbikes when he went into a large bike shop near his home looking to buy his 1st "proper" mountainbike, and how he felt that the people he spoke to in the shop looked down their noses at him and basically made him feel belittled because of his very basic knowledge of mountainbikes.
Not only that but the bike they "sold" him was a 20" frame and waaay too big for him, I think this was part of the reason he was reluctant to go out and ride it.
Anyway, after helping him fix the bike up, and explaining what bits were called and what they did along the way, he decided to hang onto the bike for a while and get out on it. Last I heard he was selling it still, but getting a new bike which was the right size for him
I really don't understand much of this bike snobbery, where unless you have this years latest model costing £2k or more then you are a "Nobody", and if you don't know your headtube from your seat tube then you are plainly an illiterate retard and should be viewed as nothing more than dogshit on someones bike tyre.
I wish there were more friendly bike shops, but it seems they may be an endangered species :cry: