Above: self portrait, Taylor "Niki" Hurley
Below: words by JESSE VERNON

Mobius Cycle gets a write-up in The Stranger What are you doing? article. Here it is:

Taylor Hurley, bike stylist

Taylor Nichole Hurley, aka Niki, builds dream bikes at Mobius Cycle. After one too many times getting hit by a car as a messenger, Hurley, an experienced mechanic, decided to focus on her downtown bicycle boutique full-time. Mobius is known in the bike-geek world for hot, stylized fixies and steel road cycles that withstand daily use (and abuse). The bike she was plotting when I dropped in: a frosty purple vintage road frame on hand-built wheels with purple spokes, silver nipples, and matte white phosphorescent rims that glow purple in the dark.

It's a bit tricky to find the shop at first (official hours are late afternoon to late evening, details at www.mobiuscycle.com), with its alleyway entrance and four floors to climb, but the huge loft space inside is like a secret world. You'll find a rack of hand-screen-printed Mobius T-shirts (one design has the namesake strip, another a 1973 compact Leica CL camera above the word "grain"). Some messengers might be winding down with pool and air hockey after a long day while an artist weaves cashmere underwear on a giant loom—the shop shares space with an array of artist studios. Hurley is also a professional photographer, a skill she honed to catalog her creations—find her bike-porn shots at www.flickr.com/mobiuscycle. But Hurley's bicycles aren't just sexy in appearance. "A junky bike will abuse your body, and your body will acclimate to the abuse," she explains. "When you ride a good bike that's solid under your body, and the wheels sing and the frame sings, you realize how good it can be." JESSE VERNON