In Chain Reaction, Green Bay Cycles mechanic to open new bike shop in old Phototronics space

Anatoliy Plotskiy, a former mechanic at Green Bay Cycles, is gearing up for his next adventure, with his own Winnetka bike shop, Chain Reaction, pedaling into town this summer.

Although an opening date has not been set, Plotskiy said he is targeting the first two weeks of June to start welcoming customers at the 996 Green Bay Road storefront, the home to Phototronics until just last month (April).

Once set in stone, pending inventory arrival and storefront readiness, he plans to post the official opening date to the Chain Reaction website.

“It will continue the same spirit that made Green Bay Cycles so special: honest service, expert repairs, quality bikes, and most importantly genuine care for every customer and the local cycling community,” he wrote of the new shop in an email to The Record.

Chain Reaction is set to offer Jamis Bikes for families and teenagers, Prevelo Bikes for children, and custom titanium bikes from Portugal, among other inventory.

The idea for Chain Reaction arose after husband-wife duo Larry and Pam Faulkner announced in November 2025 that Green Bay Cycles would be shutting its doors. Plotskiy, an avid cyclist himself, began to consider his options and spoke with the Faulkners about his vision for a smaller, but still community-friendly, bikeshop.

It’s a vision Plotskiy said the Faulkners supported and one that he has been working to bring to fruition; although the process has not been stress free.

Plotskiy revealed that he opened his own shop in Russia — he moved to Illinois in 2023 — servicing bicycles in the summer and Alpine skis in the winter, but he finds opening a store front in the United States to be a new, challenging experience.

He, however, emphasized that the support from the North Shore community and former Green Bay Cycles customers has been invaluable.

“While I have experience opening a shop back in Russia where I’m from, here my experience is worth pretty much nothing because it’s a lot of new stuff, and I need to learn it really fast,” he told The Record during a phone interview. “But hopefully a lot of our customers are helping me to dial this together, which is very good, and I really appreciate the North Shore community for this help.”

Throughout his conversation with The Record, it was clear that Plotskiy’s passion for cycling is a driving force behind Chain Reaction.

At the age of 14, his parents gifted him his first mountain bike. By the age of 16, Plotskiy participated in his first cross-country race, placing fourth.

“It was my first race, and everybody told me I need to continue,” he said. “After that, I went, ‘Yeah, sure, why not?’ And [then] I tried to figure out how to make my bike faster, how I should make myself faster, and I started to read a lot of books about this. The next year I was in third place. And year [after] year, I was faster, faster, and in 2011, I was on the first-place podium, and I won the championship in my state, which was kind of cool.”

The victory inspired Plotskiy to go a step further and travel the world on his bike alongside his friends. Among the routes he’s taken was the “TransAlp,” an Alpine crossing route for cyclists.

By 2022, Plotskiy, who is also a photographer, had cycled through more than 14 countries, snapping pictures of the landscapes and landmarks he passed along the way.

“All those years, I also deepened my knowledge of bike mechanics and maintenance,” Plotskiy shared via email. “I was fortunate to work as one of the mechanics supporting the incredible athletes of the Red Bull Trans-Siberian Extreme — helping those tough riders who tackled the enormous distance from Moscow to Vladivostok. The experience, stories, and technical wisdom I gained from them and their support crew still inspire me today.”

Plotskiy said he has even toyed with the idea of one day providing these types of cycling adventure trips, in the form of group rides, to Chain Reaction customers who hope to travel with their own bikes.

In the meantime, he’s raring to go and hoping to open the store’s doors to customers in the very near future.

“I just want to open as soon as possible and start to help people because right now I’ve got a lot of people [messaging] me on [Chain Reaction’s] Instagram,” he said. “They’re like, ‘When will you be open? I need to fix this, I need to fix this. When will we be able to bring bikes for tuneups?’ And I would love to answer all these questions.”

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