Photos and reporting by Stacie Joy
After nearly 40 years in business, Sixth Street Specials is closing and moving on from the East Village.
Owner Hugh Mackie tells me that the specialty motorcycle repair shop, which opened in 1986, will shutter by June 15 here on Sixth Street between Avenue C and Avenue D.
"In September, the landlord notified us the building had been sold, and we had to be out by January," Mackie says. "Then that deal fell through."
A new for-sale sign arrived this past Friday and now hangs on the building. Mackie says the landlord has been great. He started working with the father and now his son, and they "have come to an agreement to be out of the space by June 15. The landlord's been 100% cool with me."
The shop is located in the building, which also serves as a living and working space for Mackie and his family. Mackie, his wife, and their son will move to an apartment they found in Sunnyside, Queens. The rest of the building is now vacant.
The sale also prompted Mackie to retire, with longtime shop manager Joshua Mackenzie taking over the business and moving it elsewhere.
"Josh came here to relieve me from running the shop floor and has been managing it since COVID began," Mackie says.
Mackenzie worked at Sixth Street Specials from 1997 to 2002 and returned in March 2020.
He says he's looking for a space to move the business, maybe in New Rochelle or Red Hook, the two primary locations he's scoping out.
During the transition, he plans to keep the name Sixth Street Specials but says he might eventually change it.
And Mackie?
"Hugh will always have a bench," Mackenzie says. "It will be my shop, but he'll always have access."
Mackenzie plans to "stay on course with what we do, fixing old Triumphs," but he hopes the new location can fill a void for Upstate New York and New England, where there is a dearth of mechanics for these old bikes.
Mackie adds, "I hope we can spread the word and that the Triumph community will still come out and get work done."
I asked Mackie why he didn't want to continue in a new location.
"I've done this since I was young. God knows how we managed these years, with shop fires, 9/11, Hurricane Sandy — endless shit. I'm 66 years old, I can't imagine doing this for another 30 years," he says. "We're the last bike shop down here. Independent businesses get squeezed too hard! The old days of dumping tires are over. The days of junkies dumping gas are over. I can't run a business with no money, and all of my peers have moved on. Now, it's just millennials with new bikes. This place has always made money, one way or another we survived. Winters sucked, and the summers were too busy. But I can't keep doing it anymore."
And how does he feel about semi-retirement?
"Remember, it was a good thing. It's not a bad thing. When we started here, it was a dump. A drug den and a notorious tent city, heroin everywhere, people lined up to buy," Mackie says. "When I showed up, it meant safety; a business was now open on the street. I'm not looking for a bunch of nostalgia, just looking to get on with the next stage of my life."
Mackie says his cell number hasn't changed if you know him, although he admits he's planning on ignoring it as much as possible. He reminds me he's "old school, no website."
I became friends with Mackie after our previous
EVG interview in 2019 when I crawled down the motorcycle ramp into the basement because I didn't realize there was an upstairs office. There, Mackie was sipping a cup of tea. (However, he admits he recently switched to coffee.)
I'll miss being able to drop by and hang out for a spell and talk about the neighborhood. On sunny days, we'd sit on the stoop and watch his son play with his toy cars or just people-watch. So, personally, I wish Hugh well with his next chapter, but selfishly, I will miss having him and the shop close by.
The shop's new number is (917) 284-4181. The shop's previous Instagram account will remain active.
