City Cycle at Union & Steiner. Great guys, excellent wrenches, the owner is from my hometown in Kansas. They don't even get annoyed with the stupid questions I always have.

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

Not sure how big an area you mean, but in the south bay I'd recommend Cupertino Bike Shop. Great folks.

Vogel, I believe John Cobb Bicycle Sports just recently opened a shop there. Link is below. Not sure on how they are but I can swear by the one in St. Paul, MN. Hope this helps and good luck!

http://www.bicyclesports.com/support/locations.aspx

In the South Bay, I've had really goode experience with The Bicycle Outfitter in Los Altos. Great mechanics, there's even a builder on staff, Tellerico, and they've given me odds and ends free. Performance Bicycle in Redwood City also has most everything and is quite cheap.

In the city, I've heard that Roaring Mouse has fantastic service.

Good luck.

Let me understand this, you want excellent service but you don't want to pay for it? That LBS would not be long for this world. To offer excellent service one must hire and retain excellent staff. That excellent staff would like to eat when they go home so they usually require a paycheck. In order to pay them, we the consumer must part with our hard earned dollars in exchange for the service offered. If you know what you are doing, and don't need the added service of the LBS, go online. Otherwise, be happy they are available to exchange your nickels for something you require, goods and services.

Top shops:
City Cycle of SF
A Bicycle Odessy in Sausalito
Mill Valley Cycleworks
The Bike Nook for more roadie stuff.

Buy a few tools, learn how to do most of it yourself, and be happy they are there to help you with the rest.

Oh, and a six-pack of good beer near closing will often go a long way towards taking care of a quick adjustment with 'no charge'.

Cheers

Thanks all for the replies.

cmetri - no, I'm not looking for excellent service for free, and I never said that. I am more than willing to pay for great service. However, there have been instances where I feel some additional labor charges are a bit high - the bike is already apart, and it didn't take a quarter of an hour to make a particular change. I do agree with you, though, that I need to learn to do it by myself.

I love American Cyclery on Stanyan. The service is wonderful and I always feel like I'm getting great value for my money, service-wise. (This may be because they have a lot of competition within those four blocks of Stanyan.) Also, while I also like City Cycle, CC tends to have a very long wait list for routine service, while I can usually get into American pretty quickly. And they'll always take an emergency repair, like when I broke a spoke on the 4th of July and needed to ride again on the 5th.

Incidentally, speaking of value, the parts you buy at the LBS will ALWAYS be expensive. The economics of this have been explained very well on this site. But you can't very well expect to buy something at half price online and then have your LBS happily install it for you.

Try FreeWheel Bikes at 980 Valencia Street is awesome (www.thefreewheel.com). great staff, great selection, reasonable prices. The owner, Carlos, is very happy to talk to you about anything. And, if you join SF Tri Club, you get a nice discount on parts, labor, accessories and even bikes (www.sftriclub.org). Plus, they offer SF Tri Club members free clinics so you can learn to do much of the work yourself!