Last Tuesday's BVVW meeting was the best-attended of any I've been to yet. The place: Michael Lebron's apartment at the top of the Village Voice building. The ringleader: John Pergolizzi, alias "Omnipotent Despot." The attendees (I hope I'm not missing anyone): Vincente Saraco, Bill Vojtech, Paul & Rita Lee, Michael Allison, Michael Schmidt, Josh Berger, Tom Adams, Joe Bender-Zanoni, Edward Albert, Antonio Gulino, Chuck & Darlene Damsky, Steve Klein, David Perry, Taliah Lempert, Greg Arnold, and myself. The topic of the day: "What we did for our summer vacation."
First, we all stood around admiring some of Michael Lebron's bicycles.
(He also has an amazing vinyl record collection, lots of Latin American
music). More about his bikes shortly. Steve Klein spoke first. He was
at last year's World Championships in Hamilton, Ont., and thought that
this year's Worlds in Verona would be a good excuse to visit Italy. He
took his Bike Friday, and toured for a week first. There were some very
nice photos of his trip, including of the Madonna del Ghisallo, one of
the great shrines of European bicycle racing. Then John Pergolizzi
talked about his trip in northern Italy and Holland. He also visited
the Madonna del Ghisallo, going from Cernobbio by boat to Como, by
another boat to Belaggio and then by a bus up to Ghisallo. He showed us
photos of Torino, a very beautiful city with a great cycling heritage.
In Amsterdam he dropped in at RIH Sport, which made frames for countless
World and Olympic champions. (Peter Post raced on their frames. Sam
Zeitlin, who passed away this year, rode one to a silver medal in the
national sprint championships.) There were some photos of a bike with a
wooden frame and most parts made of wood. He had a lot of good stories,
told with the unique Pergolizzi humor. Ed Albert spoke last, about his
experience riding L'Eroica (see
http://search.bikelist.org/
After the presentations, we examined Michael's bikes again. Among these
were:
1) Imperial Petrel Superigid, alias the "Joe Cooke Jughandle," from
Birmingham (Cirque du Cyclisme British Best of Show for 2004).
http://www.classicrendezvous.com/
After the rest of the party had left for the pizza shop, Michael showed me something in his storage room that really surprised me: a 3Rensho. I could never have imagined him owning a frame made outside the British Isles. Well, neither could I have conceived of Peter Kohler buying a Cinelli.
Afterwards we went to John's, and talked bikes while we ate great pizza and drank cold beer. Then dessert at Rocco's, and off into the night. If you live in the NYC metro area and haven't been to a BVVW meeting, you're missing out on a lot of fun.
Mordecai Silver
NYC