In a message dated 4/15/2004 6:19:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time, bianchipan@yahoo.com writes:
<< The catalog I have from "The Blue Wheel"lists a Peter Simpson Denver CO as the importer.Grandis is the top model,Ghisallo is in the middle,and A.Camera ia at the bottom. >>
Ah ha! Pete Simpson ended up moving to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and operating Tumbleweed Cyclery. Has to have been 1973ish? That is where I saw my first Grandis. He died a number of years ago but can be remembered as a robust guy with a big handlebar mustache and a bit of a short temper. He also set up a frame shop in a small building in back, bank rolling an eccentric guy named Chuck Eldridge as builder.
Chuck was (is?) an amazing tattooed man.. He rode his bike everywhere, had a mostly Campag Fiorelli, also had a big mustache and long hair.. and tattoos over much of his body. He was good buddies with any & all rock bands who came into the region, often riding his bike to their hotel and emerging again at the end of their stay. It was rumored that he had a bit of commerce going on.. So.. Chuck goes west and hangs out at Eisentraut's in Oakland for a couple of years and comes back to North Carolina and goes straight to work in this Tumbleweed frame shop. Trick is, I never saw but one frame come out of that shop. Maybe there were other frames made but most of the time spent in this tiny workshop "went up in smoke" (I was there too!)
So, final end of this story is that I was channel surfing and come upon a Discovery channel (Or was it Bravo?) show about Body Art.. There's our frame builder, Chuck Eldridge, talking all about how he is a big guy artiste in inking skin in San Francisco...
Dale Brown
Greensboro, NC