Art,
You make some good points. All I can say is that where I live (Memphis, TN) a lightweight style road bike was a rare sight before the Bike Boom days. I can't even recall ever seeing a road bike with drop bars growing up iin the 1960's. I do remember when all of the sudden you looked like a kid if you were on a "stingray" style bike and not on a "10-speed" bike. My Mom finally gave in and bought me a cheap piece of crap deparment store "10-speed" in 1971. To tell you the truth, I've only seen a few pre-bike boom road bikes in the flesh. Some areas of the country were much more fortunate to have had tracks, etc. and have long and rich associations with leightweight bikes. The European/U.K. crowd probably laughs at 1970's bikes as being considered vintage. I really enjoy reading about the pre-Bike Boom stuff on the list from time to time and only wish I had something to contribute to those threads.
Jim Cole
Memphis, TN
>Following the discussions for the last few weeks, I became confused
>about what is a vintage lightweight. When I checked with the
>definition of vintage lightweights on the homepage, it said that the
>discussion would center on bikes from the turn of the
>century to the early eighties. That was reassuring to me because I had
>come to believe through these posts that if a bike wasn't built in the
>seventies, by Mario, lugged, with Campy components, etc. that somehow
>it wasn't a vintage lightweight. When I
>saw the post for the 37 Peugeot for sale, I realized that the bikes
>that I really love, and that I know little about ,are those bikes by
>big and small frame builders that set the stage and paved the way for
>what many of you call "the Pinnacle" of
>vintage lightweights. I'd be interested in hearing about and seeing
>images of pre 1950 bikes that were the forerunners of those popular
>bikes from the sixties and seventies. I hope that a discussion of bikes
>that don't have dropped Cinelli bars is
>not off topic. I think early experiments with gearing systems,
>including Sturmey Archer are interesting in this context. I would just
>like to here some comments about older bikes. I think it's interesting
>that there has been no discussion whatever on
>the Emil Wastyn Paramount from the '30's on e-bay but we've had a
>painfully long discussion on shoes!
>Art Smith
>Phoenix