Bike Shop’s Sewer Stench Promoted To Permanent Department
A south London bicycle shop is working outdoors while the smell establishes a union, requests office space and begins issuing permits.
HERNE HILL, A south London bicycle shop has been pushed outside and is turning customers away after a Thames Water drain beneath the premises began producing a severe sewage smell. It has since acquired several smaller smells, each apparently equipped with a clipboard.
By Tuesday morning, the odour had settled around the shop in a dense fog and begun acting like a regional authority. The pavement was divided into administrative zones. No one could locate the office responsible for issuing the pavement in the first place.
The bicycles have formed the Association of Mechanically Disappointed Cycles. A seven-speed commuter bike became secretary, largely because repeated disappointment had given it the strongest record. The group wants better ventilation, less time listening to customer conversations and a ban on the phrase “just a quick repair”.
“We will not now be expected to endure the smell without collective bargaining.”
“We have spent years being leaned against walls while people discuss their knees,” said Myrtle Quench, the association’s temporary press secretary, a blue folding bicycle with one stubborn brake. “We will not now be expected to endure the smell without collective bargaining.”
The matter then reached the town’s Office of Unpleasant Atmospheres. Its inspection team consisted of one exhausted clerk, two laminated forms and a jar marked “sample, probably”. Officials decided the fog was not technically fog. They called it a “semi-permanent outdoor indoor area”, which means the shop must seek planning permission to stay outside.
At lunchtime, the smell submitted a request for a desk, a pension and recognition as a local heritage feature. Officials returned the form because it had been signed in vapour. A second application arrived in a damp envelope containing only the words “I am here”. The paperwork was judged unusually clear.
Customers still approach the shop, stop at the edge of the atmospheric zone and quietly reconsider their relationship with transport. One man said the bicycles looked “surprisingly calm”. He accepted a tyre pump from a passing pigeon, then left through an area marked EXIT, MAYBE.
The shop will continue working outdoors while the drain-related smell remains unbearable. The bicycles are planning a ceremonial strike, with every wheel stopping for three minutes. Afterwards, they will hold a press conference inside a cardboard box, assuming the box receives planning approval.