By Amy Reinink/ photos by Alessandro Rossi

Robin Little insists his tandem beach cruiser isn’t a pickup ploy.

But it’s hard to believe him when he admits that when he offers his back seat to women he meets on pub crawls through around his home city of Sacramento, Calif., they rarely refuse.

And while it may not be picking up girls, there is an ulterior motive to Little’s two-wheeled generosity. Whenever the 45-year-old rides his 7-speed Schwinn Tandem SS or any of his half-dozen cruiser bicycles, he is helping build what is becoming one of the largest cruiser bike cultures in the lower 48. This is Sacramento—not exactly a beach cruiser town, such as Santa Monica—so it takes a little work.

Little recently opened Bikes and Bites, a shop that rents beach cruisers to tourists and sends them to area bars, restaurants and other Sacramento hot spots, where they get discounts on food and drinks.

It’s a business, sure, but it’s also a conduit for promoting the lifestyle he loves.

Bikes and Bites was born more than a year ago by Little and his buddies. They were lounging at a bar, their cruiser bikes prominently stowed outside, when some tourists stopped and asked where they could rent cruisers like theirs. After some detective work, Little discovered a major void in the Sacramento cycling world and set about hatching a plan to fill it.

The idea is simple: Sacramento business owners “sponsor” cruisers for about $450 a pop in exchange for getting their business’ name on a bike and on the map of the city’s restaurants attached to the handlebar basket.

Chris Nestor, owner of Sacramento’s Ink, Eats and Drinks, sponsored the first bike, and installed a bike rack outside his restaurant for riders. He says Little’s cruiser love has been contagious.

“The bicycle scene has just boomed here in the last three years, and this is a big part of that,” Nestor says.

Bikes and Bites opened last July, on a day when temperatures topped 106 degrees in downtown Sacramento. It was a heat best quenched by four kegs that Little shared with his 200 closest friends.

Since Sacramento is a city filled with flat, tree-lined streets and organized by a simple grid layout, it’s pretty much a perfect cruiser bicycling city. Little began understanding this the moment he jumped on his first beach cruiser a few years ago.

“I just saw people riding around Sacramento, having a great time on their beach cruisers, and decided I wanted to get in on that,” Little says.

Little immediately felt a rush unlike any experience he’d ever had on a road or mountain bike. “With road bikes, I don’t know how you have fun wearing that Spandex crap,” Little said. “And jumping over things with a bike with big shock absorbers, I don’t see any joy in that, either. Cruisers are just fun.”

Now he goes everywhere by cruiser: art galleries, theaters, bars and restaurants, not to mention the pub crawls he organizes regularly.

Little and his date once stole the show at a classy, Hamptons-themed “white party,” a cancer fundraiser organized by Little and friends, by rolling up on his tandem cruiser.

“If you’re in Sacramento with a beach cruiser, you’re only contained by bad weather and no ideas,” Little said.

It isn’t just about fun, even though Little’s new lifestyle certainly dishes up an extra helping of it. Little spends most of his spare time planning bicycle-related fundraisers and urging the city to add more bike parking and lanes. It’s all part of his ulterior motive to bring smiles to Sacramento faces, one cruiser at a time.

“We’re not doing this as an ‘Oh my God, how are we going to make a living’ venture,” Little said. “We just want to see how a two-wheel cruiser bike can contribute to the betterment of our city. When you’re motivated by passion and fun, it’s always easier to wake up in morning, no?”

Check out Robin’s Race for the Rock charity event on Saturday, June 6