After Hours

| AFTER HOURS sweet ride When your garage is bigger than your home, it’s a pretty good sign that you have an affinity for wheels...

Jonathan Jurgens sits atop his 1915 Chief.

A love affair with antique bicycles started early for Jonathan Jurgens. “My brother and I used to hang around dad’s shop and watch him fix cars, so we started fixing old bicycles. And it just snowballed from there,” he explains. Jurgens’ father, Peter, was a racecar driver in England who moved to San Luis Obispo on a whim the day after he was married in 1980. On the day after that, he opened his shop on Marsh Street, British Sports Cars, where it still stands today. Jurgens, having inherited his father’s passion for automobiles, started a shop of his own, Broad Street Automotive, where he spends his days fixing cars. But in the evening, he retreats into his 1,300 square foot garage—which he sheepishly admits is larger than his house—to restore his menagerie of rare bicycles and automobiles. A few dozen of the bicycles from the collection he shares with his brother, Justin, who works with their father, can be found hanging in the rafters of their father’s shop. As kids, the brothers, who are identical twins, would often barter their labor doing odd jobs for people in exchange for “old, ratty bicycles.” One guy, who Jurgens refers to as “Willie from See Canyon,” supplied many of their early two-wheeled treasures, which they have since restored and still ride to this day. SLO LIFE