Fluger's

With its location conveniently along the Boorman trail, Fluger’s goal is to serve everyone in the Longview area with their main trifecta of bicycles, rooftop tents, and kayaks. Their store has a large selection for most outdoor needs, with exceptional customer service and they even have an in-house service center for bikes. Whether you need a tricycle for your toddler or need more help with your bike, Fluger’s is here to help. And they have been there for the past two years, April 2023 marks their two-year anniversary in Longview.

“It’s a really cool niche for Longview. Community-wise, we’ve been able to cater to pretty much everyone,” owner Dereck Yagle said.

Whether it’s someone just getting into it, has done a couple of years, or a college student wanting to come in and get into it. We have price points for everybody.

From fixing a chain, to a full-service center, Flugers offers plenty of services in-house. They also work on helping the community in a variety of different ways. For example, bikes are continuously donated to the shop, and Dereck and his team generously work to fix them and give them away. They work with Highway 80 Mission and One Love to meet the needs of the community around them.

“Both of my assistants will see somebody coming in, and it’s a blessing just to see them interacting with people,” Yagle said. “They’ll just look at me and know that we have a better bike in the back, and ask if we can give it to them. It seems like we’ve really connected with people in that regard, but mostly because of our service department.”

Another way that Fluger’s is helping the environment is they have a wash station at the rear of their building open to anyone who needs to wash their bikes off after being on a trail. This is convenient for people who live in apartments and don’t have access to a hose, and for people who don’t live in Longview.

While the bike shop is what people driving on HWY 80 see, Flugers aims to be much more than that. When Dereck Yagle bought the property, he envisioned much more than just this shop. In the works is a food truck park, axe throwing, access to Lake Lamond, and an overall place for families and friends to spend time together. Dereck has worked with the Friends of Lake Lamond group to help them both accomplish their vision for the lake and how to foster the Longview community.

“Their vision is about the lake, and my vision is also the lake and trying to create somewhere where people can feed off of it. When food trucks got approved five or six years ago to serve in city limits, I thought they needed a place to go, and then I thought ‘I’d go there’ and then I thought ‘Why not me?’ and so that’s where I fell down into this idea.” Yagle said.

There are a couple of months left until the food truck park opens, and axe throwing will hopefully open in the fall. The vision is to create a fun and inviting atmosphere where the people and families of Longview and the surrounding area will come hang out for a night or two. There will be the food trucks that will park, live music with a stage, a covered area where there will be a bar, restrooms, and games, and a courtyard with picnic tables and lights, all looking toward Lake Lamond.

“We want to be family oriented, it’s a huge criteria for doing this,” Yagle said. “We want to have dogs and pets out here. One of the things that drew me to this is that I didn’t want this just to be Yagle's bicycle shop. I really don’t. I didn’t want it to just be my name on there. I wanted it to not mean anything specific. For you, Flugers might mean the food truck lot, for somebody else, it might be where they got their bike repaired. Flugers doesn’t have a title on it. It doesn’t scream bicycle shop, and it doesn’t seem like a food truck yard either. It’ll mean different things to different people.”

Flugers will be the only place in town where the backdrop to your meal is a beautiful lake while you are listening to live music. When you stand on the property, you cannot even tell that Highway 80 is right behind you. It’s an atmosphere that will be unique and new to Longview.

“The lake is such a hidden gem. It’s been sadly neglected. There’s a lot of trash. One of our biggest things and teaming up with the non-profit is going to be awareness getting out there, cleaning it up, and bringing the lake back to what it used to be. It used to be a super social place and we need to get it there again.”

The property had sat vacant for a while before Yagle bought it. The vision of utilizing Lake Lamond was formed as soon as he saw the potential. “I don’t want to be the next person to sit on this kind of scenery, view, and atmosphere.” Yagle said.