Extreme Green Machines first store was in Fisherman’s Wharf San Francisco, one block from Jefferson street.
We started as an electric bike and scooter rental shop, giving many tourists their first taste of small EV’s, and then began retailing E-bikes and scooters. We specialized in very fast machines and got a lot of attention both positive and negative. I was hanging around a lot with Brian from thunderstruck motors and together we designed the 50-MPH Jackal which is still sold today. On weekends we would stage electric races and rides.
I remember we got caught by the landlord racing electric pocketbikes on the roof top of that building (it had this fantastic view looking over the bay) and he screamed at me for a good 3 minutes.
Someone sent me this picture today showing not only the orginal store in the background but my favorite road trip car I would take out on weekends…my custom Lincoln.
This is the only photo I have of the original Extreme Green Machines store that a friend of mine shared with me tonight.
We lost this store to a LiPo fire (lithium cobalt cells were downright dangerous back then). Good thing that store sucked…and the wharf sucks.
We would start a new bigger store in downtown SF on market street a few months later. Electric bikes and scooters were the rage.
Good times….
Here is an SF Gate clip as a document of the 989 Market Street store (one of two we had on Market Street). I wish I would have kept better documentation, taken pictures etc of it all, but back then…I thought it would all last forever. Nothing lasts forever…maybe a website:
Most people – or, more accurately, most younger males – -can’t resist stopping to eyeball the windows of the Extreme Green Machine store at 940 Market St.
Behind the plate glass are rows of go-carts, motorized scooters, customized bicycles and “pocket bikes,” the tiny motorcycles about the size of one of those horses you can keep as a house pet.
Given the flood of these types of machines upon the urban landscape nowadays, the store is either the Mecca for extra-cool wheels that a person can operate without a license or a one-stop aggravation shop. If you can’t tell if the merchandise is right for you, just look in one of the mirrors hanging above the goods in the window. If the reflection looks like a dork, walks like a dork and talks like a dork, well, the truth hurts.
The 30 year old manager Rob Reed, says people come from all over the state, even from around the world, to purchase the merchandise. The motorized scooters – both gas and electric powered – are big sellers. They run from $400 to $700 each.
The bigger mini-cycles, which are still small, run from $1,000 to $3,000.
Electric scooters are available to rent for $20 an hour, and the shop also does repairs if you were in on the first wave of purchases. As for the shop name, the original “green machines” were a form of “Big Wheel” type kiddie rides. The extreme green machines are for those who have grown up… somewhat.
Extreme Green Machines; 940 Market St, San Francisco…
