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HOW IT BEGAN*
(*How the classic bicycle hobby began and how it became what it is today.)

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.

So... let’s go back to the 1960s when these bicycles certainly were forgotten and far from being considered collector items...

PART ONE: DETROIT... THE REAL BEGINNINGS IN ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN... POPULAR MECHANICS MAGAZINE... RECYCLED CYCLES IN NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA... AND- JUST A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE SCHWINN CALIFORNIA CRUISER...

copyright © Leon Dixon, 2009. All rights reserved

I got my first bicycle catalogue in 1953... and I never stopped collecting them. For me, loving bicycles was never a political statement or some radical protest against cars. And it had nothing whatsoever to do with participating in a "sport" or eating nuts and berries. I never cared about how much a bicycle weighed and I couldn't tell you a darned thing about "cadence pedaling." I just never viewed loving bicycles as being part of a "movement." QUITE the CONTRARY!

While perhaps not politically correct today in the 21st Century, I loved cars as much as bicycles. Still do. I was always fascinated by anything with wheels. Cars, bicycles, motorcycles. And I loved aircraft and trains. So my love for bicycles did not just happen out of the sky one day. I had always loved bicycles since I was old enough to say the word. In fact, I nearly lost one of my feet when one got caught in the front wheel of my cousin's Shelby bicycle. I was barely old enough to walk at the time.

By the 1960s, I had begun a kind of pen-pal correspondence with an old bicycle man in Chicago, Corwin Thomas Bruck, who I simply knew as Tom. He was an expert on the early days of bicycles and taught me a lot about bicycle history in the USA. You see, Tom had been around to see it all happen. He was old enough to have personally known men like Gormally and Jeffrey (whom he worked for) and Colonel Pope. And countless others. He knew about the glory days of the bicycle industry in Chicago. He knew about BOTH Monarch and Monark. He knew the Schwinn family and even had his own key to the company library.

Anytime I had a question about some ancient bicycle history, Tom knew it. He knew the people, the factories, the bicycles themselves. As an old retiree, Tom lived in a single room, surrounded floor-to-ceiling with old bicycle literature and photos. I learned a lot from him and later, from Keith Kingbay of Schwinn who was also a good friend to both of us and very nice man.

Anyway, time rolled by. 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 Totem Pole, The Egg & I, Big Boy, Big Town, Coral Gables, and Ted’s Drive-in Restaurant on the Detroit area’s North Woodward Avenue. This was decades before anyone ever thought ot the famous Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise that exists today.

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.

I began the restoration work on my J.C. Higgins in Northwest Detroit. Many years earlier as a teen, I used to occasionally ride over to visit the famous Alexander Brothers at their shop (quite a trek from my house) and I picked up a few tips from them on bodywork and paint. I had met Mike Alexander years earlier when I won an award at Detroit's Cobo Hall for a special scale model car I built (it was a Pontiac Tempest with a WORKING convertible top!). I had built championship model cars all during my teen years. Me and my buddies Conce (the genius at this stuff), Mickey, Eric, and Vince all entered every model car contest we could find. And one of us usually won- sometimes ALL of the awards- like 1-2-3. Sometimes we'd tick off the hobby shop owner by winning all of his trophies, but frankly, we helped whomever it was sell a BUNCH of AMT, Revell and Monogram car kits! Anyway, with all this experience, I figured I knew enough to restore a simple bicycle.

I also had the experience of hanging out at every used bicycle shop I could find in the 1950s. My dad had commercial property and we rented a building to a fellow everyone knew as just "Mr. Green". He had PILES of ancient bicycles stacked in that building like cordwood. And he KNEW each and every one of them. He could just LOOK at any old rusty frame and tell you how old it was and when it was made- and THIS was in the 1950s when there really was a LOT of old stuff still around!

I was at Mr. Green's shop almost every day and he taught me how to rebuild a New Departure hub when I was only age 8. Green also knew and taught me how to identify frames and forks and how to tell when something had been changed. He even knew WHO (if it was done in the city at a shop) changed it! For instance, one shop always painted their refurbished bicycles a certain way. Another switched every hub to a certain brand. Green even did this himself. At one time, I estimate he may have had as many as 10,000 MORROW hubs stacked in his building. He LOVED the things! He used to say, "...boy! Deese MORRA hubs is hard ta build, but they the BEST! Ya hear me? Da BEST! Stick wid me and some day when ya daddy gives ya some extra time, I'll take a day and show ya how to rebuild a MORRA hub!" Between Morrow hubs and Schwinn bicycles (his OTHER favorite thing in the world- and he had a pile of them too and rode one for daily transportation), Green was in heaven!

Of course, the BEST and biggest used bicycle shop in Detroit in the 1950s was out Mack Avenue on the East side. It was known back then as ACME Bike Shop. Owners changed over the years. At one time it was a Mr. Jackson... then a Mr. Rivers. It took up two buildings and filled the basements of at least two. The favorite of at least these two owners was what they called "Silva-Khang" (Silver King) bicycles and they had BUNCHES of them. PILES of them It was here that I learned all about Silver Kings in the 1950s. And a lot of other bicycles, like Shelby. So by the time I was restoring my J.C. Higgins, I knew a huge amount about old balloon tire American bicycles.

A bit later, I moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan where the Higgins restoration was ultimately completed in the basement of my new townhouse. I rode this and other of my balloon tire bicycles to the U of M "diag" where I used to sit and have modern cyclists make fun of how "heavy" my old beautiful bicycles were. One by one, they would beg to lift my bicycles and then chuckle about the weight as if this were the sole criteria to have a bicycle. Yet people would walk up and marvel at the designs... the chrome...the big whitewall tires... the electric horn... the spring fork. Remember, such bicycles were not available for sale then, and there were no repops. I was the first to ride, display and restore classic bicycles in Ann Arbor. Yet, years later, no one could seem to remember my bicycle parked on the Ann Arbor 'diag." Nor in the lobby of Tower Plaza at 555 East William street (where I once also lived) back when that building was new–decades before others in Ann Arbor were claiming credit (even expertise) for loving balloon tire bicycles!

Now, today there are those who would say it is merely "ego" or "big bragging" to say I started the hobby or did anything FIRST. But when asked to show proof of who did any of this stuff BEFORE me, they either get very loud and rude... or very quiet–but either way, never come up with anything to show otherwise. There are even people who offer ridiculous alternative explanations that minimize what we did, saying things like, "well, it woulda happened anyway if you hadn't done it!" Silly stuff. But where were THEY in 1968? Or in 1973? And what did they do that we can refer to today that was prior to 1973... or even IN 1973?

Anyway, in 1973, 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. They were run by people who could talk for hours on the merits of lugged diamond lightweight frames and "Campy stuff" but they didn't have a clue what an Elgin Bluebird or Colson Commander or Schwinn Phantom was. 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 along with a little text. This appeared on news stands in late 1974 in the January, 1975 issue, page 54. Another photo appeared on the contents page 4. It was a milestone. No modern bicycle magazine had ever mentioned (much less shown) a restored (we mean, put back to original equipment and appearance- not rat-rodded) American classic 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 ALSO ran a photo of an old 3-speed right next to my Higgins. But in this case, they unleashed, letting the owner ramble on and on about this nondescript imported English bicycle while the text sent with my Higgins was cut to a mere blurb. It was perhaps a subtle message to the readership, revealing what the editors felt was REALLY important in old bicycles. You could just see where it was "multi-speed lightweight import= COOL!... fat-tire American heavyweight= BAD" kind of thing. 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. Forget that skinny-tire foreign 3-speed. People wanted to know more about that balloon tire streamlined job with the big whitewall tires! 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. OMG!! There WERE folks out there in bicycle land who didn’t give a hoot for old skinny tire imported 3-speeds, or 10-speeds... but DID want to know about streamlined classic American bicycles! Uh-ohhhh! Whoa! DOHHhhhhh! What was happening here?

By 1976, I roughed out a bulletin that I thought might strike a chord with potential old balloon tire 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 AND FELT like a vinyl-covered two-by-four! Recycled Cycles owners Larry and Don figured they had the answer.

Recently Larry said, "A girl came in one day back in the 1970s and asked me to fix her 3-speed beater import bike. It was a rusty mess, but she said if was more comfy than a 10-speed and she could leave it anywhere and because it was old and rusty and heavy by the standards then, it wouldn't get stolen! She called it her 'Bay Cruiser.' That got me thinking that if that bike was so comfy, a balloon tire bike would be even MORE comfy and perfect for the beach. So I laid out a design like one of my old early balloon frames and took it to LRV industries in El Monte. They asked me if I would supply an old balloon tire bicycle frame to copy. THIS led to production of Recycled Cycles' California Cruiser and THAT's where I got the idea to call it California Cruiser instead of Bay Cruiser." Here (courtesy of NBHAA's files saved since the 1970s) is how one of Larry's first flyers about the bicycle looked in the mid-1970s...

Of course, poor Larry neglected to patent and register his design and people started to smell money. It wasn't long before LRV was making their OWN version of the California Cruiser. Their copy was dubbed (Hmmmmmmmmm) "ROB" (for Regular Old Bike) and their press release read as if we had written it for them (hmmmmm again). Then a SoCal exhaust header company followed soon after with their own copy. Suddenly the beach cruiser thing was a contender in the NEW bicycle realm. It wasn't long before the BIG boys... Huffy, Murray... and the almighty Schwinn came calling.

As odd as it may seem, Schwinn (who became so almost ruthlessly protective of THEIR names and copyrights AFTER 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 resurrect 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, I kept telling Schwinn, Murray, Columbia, Roadmaster, Huffy and the other American bicycle companies, "Hey guys- market's moved over here! Take a LOOK! 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! It's NOT light weight that counts so much–it's COMFORT and UTILITY! And STYLE!! You can make money at this!" But they ignored me. They'd stop by my display booth at the trade shows back then (NBDA and BDS-EXPO)and giggle. Then walk away smirking. What was all this for? All these old balloon tire bicycles. Hey- everybody knows that heavy balloon tires are dead! They even laughed at us. After all, the market was booming with lightweight 10-speed sales and everybody was darned well gonna ride and want a 10-speed. You were gonna hunch over dropped racing bars and perch on a seat that resembled a vinyl-covered 2x4, even if it inflamed your gonads and sent you to a doctor... Right? Who cared about the future?

The bicycle companies of the 1970s had professional marketing geniuses. They had staffs of young pros who KNEW what was going on out there in bicycleland. They had guys with degrees who said they knew all there was to know about making and marketing bicycles. That's why they got paid the big bucks! Right?

They already knew what the future was- and they had their minds made up that it was 20-inch kiddie bikes and 10-speeds. And ANYTHING for adults had to be LIGHT and racing oriented! NO DEVIATIONS ALLOWED! They were pros... and they KNEW the facts! And who was I 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! How dare any upstart tell them anything different?

The real truth was that the bicycle industry was strangling on its own hubris. It was killing itself, but was blind to it all. The American bicycle business of the 1970s was just like the American car business of the 1980s and 90s. They got this idea that dealers all needed to have degrees in marketing. It no longer mattered how well you knew your local neighborhood in Los Angeles because some school kid in Chicago or some guy at a desk in New York was gonna tell you how you should run your store! It didn't matter how smart you were or how much business savvy you had. Passion was secondary- even tertiary- to having an ID card that said you made it though an academic maze! Geniuses issued one edict after another. Stuff like all the stores needed to look the same and have the same kinds of lighting.

The bicycle industry in America was simply exchanging one bad problem and replacing it with another. Suddenly, like a guy who's just discovered God, then goes out to spread the word and change the world. Like a smoker who's just quit smoking, suddenly anyone with a cigarette in their mouth was evil. And the industry HAD to get rid of evil! So instead of MIXING the personnel and combining age and experience with youth and a degree, the industry allowed the pendulum to swing all the way in the opposite direction! It was the emperor's new clothes and nobody dared challenge the almighty emperor. There was an irony that the young president/CEO of one big bicycle company was pictured riding a little kiddie bicycle in a commercial advertisement.

So? The big companies slowly started getting rid of anyone who was either too old or who had no degree or special familial relation. The upshot of this was that all of the old-timers and non-degreed personnel were pushed out of key industry positions in just a few years. Before anyone knew what was happening, kids in their 20s and 30s who had no long-term knowledge of the industry were suddenly put in charge of running things (remember- they had these papers from universities that said they were experts!). These guys were all university-bred and thus, all taught to think the same way. They saw things in one-dimensional ways and tended to have severe limits on creativity. Like Robert McNamara and Viet Nam- they saw the world as ... you do A... and the result is B. But this is the very thing that slowly shot them in the foot.

People who thought like this could never imagine doing A and getting a result of Z! In their minds, that just couldn't happen. Their university higher education linear thinking had convinced them of this. It was the same kind of prideful blindness that once had the head of the US Patent office proclaiming in the early 1900s that everything that COULD be invented already HAD BEEN invented! But as with the "unsinkable" Titanic... and war in Viet Nam (and even later in Iraq, Afghanistan and 9/11 in New York)... AND in the bicycle industry, "Z" is EXACTLY what did happen.

Yet, the companies never realized that it wasn't their marketing geniuses who were predicting trends and swiftly moving to cash in on them. It wasn't the bicycle companies that were inventing new directions to market their goods. No. It was the KIDS in Southern California who came up with different ways to fit out 20-inch bicycles that resulted in the Penguin, Sting-Ray and so-called musclebikes. It was hippies and bikers in the mountains of Northern California who came out with mountain bikes. None of this was a result of bicycle companies being creative; it was the result of bicycle companies merely being REACTIVE. It was their golden parachute. But they never saw it that way. They wanted to think they were being smart and that THEY had caused all these phenomenons. Even today, there are still people who firmly believe this myth.

Meanwhile, the old guys who ate, slept and breathed bicycles- the guys who had lifelong PASSION for bicycles- were systematically weeded out. Hey, it was the new frontier! The rules of membership were now all changed. One by one, these poor folks were either laid off, pushed into retirement or put into meaningless positions that eventually discouraged them to the point of leaving (the Japanese refer to this as having a "window seat"). The people that were increasingly left in charge had no idea what was going on out on the street- or how to predict REAL trends. They saw the world only through their university training that told them, maybe they could hold "clinics" and do surveys. Have meetings. Do A and get B. Meanwhile, the bicycle world was doing its own thing- and the people who were making money off of the latest trend were NOT the guys with the business cards, cigars and fancy titles! Like John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens while you're busy making plans to live..."

So when the big guys at Schwinn and elsewhere heard what was going on at the beach in Southern California and Recycled Cycles, Schwinn finally–at long last realized they were missing the boat yet one more time– as they had so many times before and later. So? Schwinn did a quick & dirty job of what the auto industry calls "badge engineering." They grabbed the cantilever framed Heavy-Duti, deleted the middleweight wheels and tires, shoved a couple of balloon tires on it, left off the fenders... and VOILA! Instant beach cruiser! Schwinn had their OWN California Cruiser. And they brazenly, arrogantly decided to name it just that!

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 fairly rare. Why? Because Recycled Cycles owned the name (it was already being used on their very own retro beach cruiser that was manufactured in SoCal. Yes, it had a badge and everything). Larry and Recycled got their ownership enforced. The result was that perhaps only a few months' worth of production was ever made before Schwinn dropped the name. So if there was ever a collectible beach cruiser- this is probably it- just based on rarity (wonder how long it'll take now before someone comes up with a fake stencil to cash in?)

Murray did virtually the same thing as Schwinn by badge engineering- except they actually took the time to make a fendered version- as per our advice. And they were wise enough to at least pick a name that had SOMETHING to do with a California beach–even if it was not a Southern California beach! And by the way- Murray's Montereys sold quite well for many years.

Anyway, the upshot of this all on Schwinn's side was that they 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 (which- curiously enough was a name used once long ago on Firestone bicycles). 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 RESTAURE SU BICICLETA. The English version appeared on USA news stands in late 1977 in the January, 1978 edition of Popular Mechanics magazine. The Spanish version debuted later in the March, 1978 Spanish-language 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.

And if you are lucky enough to find either of these magazines, you will also see that they say, "By Leon Dixon (or "por Leon Dixon in the Spanish-language version). Now, this article was cloned, imitated and repeated and parroted at least twice with bogus info and photos many years later by a Popular Mechanics that had oddly developed amnesia about the FIRST article. And it was credited to other people who were not around when we wrote the very article that they were imitating. We wonder why.

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. And if you've got VERY sharp eyes, you'll notice that the sign above the overhang says "SCHWINN PARTS DIV." 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.

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, 2009 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: 21 SEPTEMBER 2009

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