by Steven Myatt

He’s not got a sneer or a quiff, but Steven Myatt knows his Gene Vincent from his Johnny Kidd. After a gap of 33 years he went back to the Unity Equipe in Rochdale – heaven on earth for Triton fans.

Once upon a time all bike shops looked like this. Nowadays most have pretty tiled floors, halogen spotlights that make daylight look like a night fixture at Old Trafford, and salesmen in shiny suits – which may or may not be a good thing, and a great advance on the ‘good old days’. Not this one though. I was last here in, I do believe, 1970, and apart from the price tags no longer reading in pounds, shillings and pence – and an unsurprising upwards adjustment in those prices – absolutely nothing seems to have changed.
This is Unity Equipe in Castleton near Rochdale, bang on the main road, in the area of southern Lancashire, which was one of the cradles of the Industrial Revolution. In many Northern city centres Nineteenth century architecture has been gentrified in recent years – been dragged into the present tense to appeal to the smart cappuccino-drinking classes. Not here though. Many areas of town are much brighter and obviously more affluent than they were thirty or so years ago, but the streets, which radiate off this road, are lined with grimmer terraced homes. There are no front gardens here; no gravel drives – and most houses need the weeds trowelling out of their gutters at the very least.
Unity’s building was originally a Co-op shop – Rochdale being the home of the co-operative movement – and indeed it’s still fitted out with metal (yes, really, not wood at all) panelling on the walls and compartmentalised display shelves reaching up to the heavens. This is where conscientious housewives, clutching wicker baskets and eyeing up how many lamb chops were left on the slab, would collect their carefully-guarded ‘divi’ – knowing that they were saving as they were spending, and that no big man with a gold watch hanging from his waistcoat was going to get rich off their backs.

Both Tritons have been used to show off Unity’s products and are now for sale – with all-new parts and reconditioned motors.

John Newby established Unity as a bike spares business in 1959. He’d been round the block himself by then, having been a merchant seaman and having tried a couple of other jobs – but he had been a long-time AJS rider. His shop never offered new bikes, but could handle just about everything else – including, in premises next door but one, bike salvage.