BOX 862 GIG HARBOR, WASHINGTON 98335
email us at: Oldbicycle@aol.com
Click on the colored letters at right to : Send Email to NBHAA
HOW IT BEGAN*
(*How the classic bicycle hobby began and how it became what it is today.)
copyright © Leon Dixon and NBHAA 1997, 1999, 2007, 2008. All rights reserved
DID YOU KNOW THAT 2007 WAS THE 30th ANNIVERSARY OF THE OFFICIAL BEGINNING OF THE CLASSIC BICYCLE HOBBY? DID YOU KNOW THAT more than thirty years have passed since the first newsletter and official beginnings of the classic bicycle hobby took place?
Thus, submitted for your approval is the first installment of NBHAA "HOW IT BEGAN"- the story of how the classic bicycle hobby began. THIS IS JUST A SAMPLE. THIS AREA IS PRESENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION. We will be adding to this section over time, so stay tuned for more info and expansions.
Today, there is a hobby of collecting and restoring classic balloon tire bicycles. There are swap meets, events and collectors nationwide. Publications have come and gone. Do-it-yourself web sites have sprung up spreading stories of these bicycles. There are now books (most of which are not very good) and numerous publications on this hobby. There are internet BLOGS. Lots of people who claim to be experts. Museums- even the ones who once turned their noses up at balloon tire bicycles- now include these classics- and brag about them as if (ohhh yes) they were fans all along and have great expertise. Bicycle companies have repopped old models with mixed success. Various individuals are busily turning out reproduced parts, from fenders to handlebar grips. Even the Whizzer Motorbike has been resurrected. Auction companies have suddenly taken to selling and hawking these bicycles- all while pretending to know about them. There are fake, but decently and creatively executed character model Whizzers showing up at ritzy classic car auctions. Shops specialize in selling and restoring classic bicycles. So...it is certainly a different world today for classic bicycles when compared to the early 1970s when nobody cared. But let’s go back to the 1960s when these bicycles certainly were forgotten and far from being considered collector items...
In 1968, I returned home from Viet Nam and the brutal experience of war. One of the first things I did was to get my car out of the garage. It was a 1963 Ford Galaxie 500 XL convertible- all black, loaded, with sporty bucket seats and console. It had the optional 390 cubic inch V8 with the Police Interceptor package that made it a very hot engine. I used to take my beautiful XL cruising and racing. I hung out at places like Ted’s Drive-in Restaurant on the Detroit area’s North Woodward Avenue. Behind the Ford XL in the garage was my beautiful J.C. Higgins bicycle, dusty, a bit rusty and forlorn from years of neglect. Right then and there I decided to clean my Higgins and restore it back to the way it was when I first got the bicycle. My dad bought it for me from the mighty Sears, Roebuck store that once stood on the corner of Van Dyke and Gratiot avenues in Detroit, Michigan. That beautiful bicycle had been stolen from me at a park in Detroit in 1958 and some parts were still missing- having never fully been recovered. So now it was a priority to put it all back like it belonged. And thus began an odyssey that in some ways, led far beyond anything I had dreamed. In others, far short of what I had hoped.
Some 32 years ago, I contacted Bicycling! magazine (and yes, in those days the title of the magazine included an exclamation mark) about a bicycle I had refurbished. The bicycle in question was my original J.C. Higgins owned since new. Mine was a 1955-1/2 model and I wanted to alert the magazine to the existence of vintage balloon tire bicycles. The magazine then (as it is today) was solely focused on modern lightweight bicycles, 10-speeds and racing stuff. Most people into bicycles in the 1960s and 1970s were involved with the upcoming 10-speed lightweight phenomenon and fat tired balloon bicycles were so passé and un-chic, they were not even mentioned. I wanted to get a hobby going nationwide and some publicity for these bicycles. I wanted to preserve the memory of bicycles that I knew as a boy. The kind I had. The kind my father had. The kind HIS father had. But who cared about this stuff by the late 1960s/early 1970s? Almost no one… and certainly no publications or bicycle companies cared, I can assure you.
Luckily, Bicycling! decided to run photos of my J.C. Higgins. It was a milestone. No modern bicycle magazine had ever mentioned (much less shown) a restored or any vintage balloon tire bicycle. Of course, even then, the magazine was much more interested in talking about a skinny-tire imported 3-speed bicycle. They ran photos of an old 3-speed while letting the owner ramble on about this bicycle while the text sent with the Higgins was cut to a mere blurb. Such was the state of things back then. But it was a start.
But what happened next startled the magazine. Mail started to roll in asking about the J.C. Higgins and balloon tire American bicycles. The editors had no idea what to say or how to respond, so they contacted me and said something to the effect that a dam appeared to be bursting. There WERE folks out there in bicycle land who didn’t give a hoot for old skinny tire imported 3-speeds, but DID want to know about streamlined classic American bicycles! Whoa! What was happening here?
By 1976, I roughed out a bulletin that I thought might strike a chord with potential old bicycle fans. I called it California Balloon Bike & Whizzer News. The only old bicycle shop I knew of in those days was a place in Newport Beach, California called Recycled Cycles owned and operated by Larry and Don McNeely. I heard of a couple of other places that had old bicycles sitting around (a place in Seattle called Aurora Cycle, another in Key West and Rollie Hilger’s place in Menomenee Falls, Wisconsin). And there were a few used bicycle shops scattered around the country. But at that time, none of these places were in business solely to sell vintage balloon tire bicycles. Even Recycled Cycles was selling new and vintage bicycles. One of their interesting NEW bicycles LOOKED OLD and was capitalizing on the retro look for the new phenomenon fad of so-called "beach cruisers". It was the California Cruiser.
One of the big draws for Recycled Cycles was the fact that Southern Californians were discovering it was far more pleasurable to ride a comfy balloon tire bicycle along the beach (even on the paths). Up until then the only choice was to ride a hard, skinny-tire lightweight while hunching down over a set of dropped racing handlebars and perching on a seat that looked like a vinyl-covered two-by-four! A company approached Larry and Don and asked them if they would supply an old balloon tire bicycle frame to copy. THIS led to production of Recycled Cycles' California Cruiser
As odd as it may seem, Schwinn (who became so almost ruthlessly protective of THEIR names and copyrights when we got their Black Phantom and other bicycles popular again) helped themselves to the name California Cruiser. This happened after visiting Larry's shop and seeing the success of the beach cruiser he was making. So for a time, Schwinn decided to ressurect their old full-sized cantilever frame design (up to that time it was barely laboring along in a tiny gray corner of the market under the names "Heavy-Duti" and "Typhoon" with middleweight tires).
The whole time, we kept telling Schwinn, Murray, Columbia, Roadmaster, Huffy and the other American bicycle companies, "Hey guys- market's moved over here! Balloon tires! Comfy Seats! Vintage stuff is cool! Some guys in NorCal are riding these things down mountainsides! People are starting to restore classic bicycles like they restore classic cars!" But they ignored us. They even laughed at us. After all, the market was booming with 10-speed sales and everybody was darned well gonna ride and want a 10-speed. Right? Who cared about the future?
They already knew what the future was- and they had their minds made up that is was 20-inch kiddie bikes and 10-speeds. And ANYTHING for adults had to be LIGHT and racing oriented! They were pros... and they KNEW the facts! And who were we to tell them otherwise!? They were SMART GUYS! They had their important titles, business cards, long paychecks- and by golly, they were ON THE JOB! But when they heard what was going on at the beach in Southern California and Recycled Cycles, Schwinn realized they were missing the boat one more time as they had so many times before and later. So? Schwinn did a quick & dirty job of what they call "badge engineering" in the auto industry. They grabbed the cantilever framed Heavy-Duti, deleted the middleweight wheels and tires and shoved a couple of balloon tires on it, left off the fenders... and VOILA! Schwinn had their OWN California Cruiser. Now, IF you are lucky, you MAY just find one of these someplace with that name on it. If you do- hang onto it because it is rare. Why? Because Recycled Cycles owned the name and got their ownership enforced. Murray did virtually the same thing- except they actually took the time to make a fendered version of their Monterey- as per our advice. And by the way- these Montereys sold quite well for many years.
The upshot of this all was that Schwinn hastily changed the name of their beach cruiser from California Cruiser to Spitfire. Ultimately they even added a 5-speed model (as Schwinn always seemed to have a penchant to do- vis-a-vis their Corvette in the 1960s, Sting-Rays in the 70s and other models). Name of the 5-speed? Klunker 5. Of course, the Schwinn guys never figured out that "Klunker" was a name increasingly applied to certain mountain bikes and not beach cruisers. By 1980 when Recycled Cycles had basically disappeared from the scene, Schwinn crept back with yet another modified name because "Spitfire" never connected with the beach scene. So this time, Schwinn simply re-titled their line with the name, Cruiser. And the springfork version was called DELUXE Cruiser- with a nervy "TM" tag on it, supposedly to protect THEIR name this time. YOU WILL NOTICE THAT NONE OF THESE NAMES REFERRED TO THE TERM, CLASSIC BICYCLES. Try asking yourself WHY?
Nearly a year later after the Bicycling! article, a conversation with Michael Lamm, famous automotive editor, author and historian (whom I also wrote for in automotive publications), sparked interest in both my automotive knowledge and what I was doing with old bicycles. I mentioned to Mike that I had started saving balloon tire bicycle parts and catalogues back in the 1950s and that I had rescued much of the paperwork from the old Whizzer Motorbike Company. I mentioned that I had everything from original factory blueprints to old ads that had appeared in magazines, including Popular Mechanics. THAT got Mike grinning and he said, “Hey, why don’t you do an article for Popular Mechanics? Mike had a relationship with PM at that time and sometimes wrote for them. That led to the first worldwide article ever to appear in a news stand magazine. It was entitled, IF IT'S NOT TOO LATE... HANG ONTO THAT BALLOON TIRE BICYCLE! and in the later Spanish language editions the title was Restauare su Bicicleta. The English version appeared on USA news stands in the January, 1978 edition of Popular Mechanics magazine. The Spanish version debuted in the March, 1978 Spanish edition of PM. Those two articles were probably read by well over a million people. Little did anyone know, but a new hobby was being born right before our eyes.
Until our next installment, we'll leave you with a question: WHO were the people in the 1981 photo below and what were they doing? Of course, it involved old bicycles! And by the way, your NBHAA curator is in the photo. See if you can pick me out. Also, be sure to check out the new information and articles added to NBHAA Historical articles section, now including a list of major bicycle articles written by Leon Dixon.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Click on the colored letters at right to : Send Email to NBHAA
This page, all design and contents, all photos unless otherwise noted are Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2004, 2007, 2008 by Leon Dixon/NBHAA, All rights reserved. The information and photos on this website may not be reproduced in any form without expressed written permission of NBHAA or its curator.
Date of last update to this page: 18 JANUARY 2008
