Does anyone recall a Seattle bike shop located at 4753 Roosevelt Way called Spoke Folks?
The reason I ask is that I recently acquired a Bugatti bicycle-- not the famous one with the multiple top tubes-- and there is a shop identification sticker above the bottom bracket on the seat tube that indicates it was purchased from Spoke Folks.
I want to figure out the age of this bike. It doesn't have a lot of nice parts, a Valentino RD, a Simplex plastic FD, "Patent Campagnolo Vicenza, Italy" shifters, Model 61 (I think) Universal brakes (centerpulls with the quick release). The hubs and crank are unmarked, but look to be Gnutti, like the quick releases are. The stem is a TTT.
But it does have really nice chrome lugs. The whole frame seems to have been chromed. It is white with a light blue headtube. There's a nice clean Campagnolo decal above where the downtube shifters are mounted. It has decrepit yellow Bugatti decals, and another nice clean one that says Made in Italy. The bottom bracket is solid with no cutout and there is a number scratched in there but it doesn't look much like a manufacturer serial number, more like theft identification.
Any ideas on this bike, including who may have manufactured it, and when? That's why I want to know about Spoke Folks, maybe that's a clue. The phone number on the sticker starts with letters the old fashioned way, "ME-XXXX." My co-worker says that Seattle went away from these letter designations between 1958 and 1960, and went to 6 digits around the same time. And the Valentino RD was from this era as well. I had assumed it was an early 70's low cost rebadge trying to look really fast and rare, but could it be an early 60's low cost rebadge trying to look fast and rare?
Keven Ruf Seattle, WA with a panoramic white top mountain view