Out with the old, in with the older

I spent several days in the greater NYC metro area of my youth catching up with friends and family. I drove down since Megabus has eliminated their super convenient Hartford service. While I wasn't particularly in any mood to drive, this ended up being a good thing for a couple of reasons. As it worked out, driving the car enabled me to deliver some bulky items I've been meaning to get rid of, and ultimately bring home just as many bulky items. Oh well.

One of the first things I realized upon arrival at my Mom's house was that I had forgotten my own backpack when I loaded the carfull of stuff I carted down. Not willing to milk that many days out of the clothes on my back, I made a Christmas Eve trip to a couple of thrift stores to assemble a few days' worth of wardrobe on the cheap. I scored some more wool clothes to expand my wintertime outdoor clothing options, which was a bonus.

At the second store, a longtime thrift institution of sorts in Paterson, I found a rack full of rickety bikes between the men's clothing and housewares. Most of them were battered department store quality bikes that were not very good to begin with and were far worse for wear and neglect, but two of them caught my eye. One was a Tyler children's bike, only the second example of this Polish marque I have seen in person.

The other thrift store standout was a vintage Firestone single speed cruiser frame with an assortment of newer used parts affixed to it.


The front fender was mashed up from the store's ham-fisted display method of hanging the bikes over an angle iron frame. The frame had a pretty head tube badge, but was otherwise slathered in many chipped layers of poorly applied paint. I was sort of tempted to adopt it and save it from such an undignified fate, but then I saw the asking price of $79! I examined the tag carefully, but found no decimal point or other factor that would point to a more reasonable price. The moment a thrift store thinks something is "collectible" is akin to a precocious child realizing or thinking they are cute. The magic is lost.


It was good that the ratty cruiser bike was overpriced, as it wouldn't have left enough room in the car for the two bikes that two of my friends gave me during the remainder of my visit. The first is a hard-luck case, a sorely neglected urban beater of a mountain bike that a friend's roommate abandoned when she moved overseas. It was homely enough that it was able to sit unlocked and undisturbed outside of their Jersey City apartment building, which is saying something. I was hopelessly charmed by the combination of a lugged Bridgestone frame with a Biopace crankset, so I dragged the seatless bike flat tires and all on the Path train and the subway to my Brooklyn crash space.


My friend in Flatbush has an amazing knack for finding really cool stuff for cheap or free. Limited storage space means he regularly passes his unwanted finds along to friends on equal terms, so it's only a matter of time before he re-homes something really cool that he can no longer justify keeping around. The other morning, he offered me an old folding bike he had sitting in a relative's garage out in Queens. We met up there and dug it out as I was heading homeward. I have been on a folding bike kick for a while now, so any old folding bike would have made me happy. That said, I was pretty well blown away to discover that this was a 1940's BSA paratrooper bike! It had been "civilianized" with black paint and chrome rims and fenders at some point in the past, but a few minutes of fingernail-scratching revealed the remnants of the original olive-drab paint and a WWII-era serial number. It's in rough shape now and missing most of its original parts (including the sweet "BSA" chainwheel), but I'm really looking forward to restoring this bike when time and money allow it. I found a couple of websites with pictures and info, so I can gather some information (and parts, if I'm lucky) in the meantime.



Happy New Year, by the way!



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Such a DB

A friend of mine was in need of transportation. Like many carless Hartford residents, this young man, whom I shall call Squiggy for no real reason other than the enjoyment I get from saying "Squiggy", found that area bus schedules don't mesh well with his school and work schedules. As a bike-loving man about town and veteran scrounger, I was asked to keep an eye out for a decent bike at a price ranging anywhere from free to cheap. After a few weeks, the ever-generous trash night and a friend cleaning out his garage found me in possession of two free 1990's Diamond Back Topanga mountain bikes. Neither was quite fully functioning, but there were enough parts between the two to make a decent rider. The slightly larger of the two bikes had more intact parts and higher end components, so its smaller, downmarket brethren got cannibalized. Reduce, reuse, bicycle.

I haven't really thought about the Diamond Back brand since I was in elementary school and coveted a lighter, faster BMX bike than my own ponderously heavy (but indestructible) looptail Fuji. My friend Mike had a chrome Diamond Back with black accents. I remember him sticking a black, die-cut Oakley decal on the black, hard plastic seat, creating the convincing illusion of the only custom-molded Oakley seat in town. This decision made him the most visionary aesthete in the 5th grade. DB later came out with some pretty badass snakeskin motifs on their BMX bikes, but I stopped thinking about them altogether sometime late in the Reagan administration, when a hand-me-down Viscount 10 speed made me focus on road bikes. I digress (habitually, you'll get used to it.)

The look of these two bikes is unapologetically 1990s, with splatter paint and little touches of neon pink here and there. I have this sudden urge to ride to Tower Records to buy a Blues Traveler tape when I look at them. They both have Shimano Biopace cranksets, which long ago fell out of favor, but Saint Sheldon liked them and my old Shogun had them, so I'll consider this an asset. The "DB" logo these frames wear proudly on their head tubes predates the now-common shorthand for douchebag. My favorite detail is the star-spangled "Designed in USA" followed by the pink "Made in China." Why pink? Did test marketing find a watered-down pink China less threatening than the full-strength red variety? It was obviously vital to make it known that this furrin'-made bike has that all-important 'Merican pedigree.

I did a trial assembly and took a test ride the other night. The front derailleur isn't right, which seems to be the case with every used bike I get. The chain needs a good cleaning and lube, but is surprisingly unworn, which makes me happy, as the Biopace setup calls for a different chain than any other that I have around the house. Of all the things I've observed thus far whilst riding in diagnostic mode, the most apparent is that I'm growing fond of this bike. The short seat tube/long top tube geometry is well suited to my own peculiar dimensions (short legs/long torso) I may end up scrounging up some parts and building up the donor DB frame at some point. I've been thinking about putting together a snow bike this winter, and this could be just the thing, even if it is a bit heavy. Before I devote any more thought to the donor bike, I'll be riding this one around for the next week or so, sorting it out and replacing parts as needed. Today, for example, the sidewall on the rear tire blew out on my way home from work, so some new tires just went to the top of the list. I was just thinking that I didn't have enough projects... Read more!