Re: [CR]Ken Kifer: Cycling in the Sixties: A History of US Bicycling inthe 1960's

inthe 1960's

> Ken Kifer article: "Cycling in the Sixties: A History of US Bicycling in
> the 1960's"
>
> http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/lifestyle/60s.htm
>
>
>
>
> Cycling in the Sixties: A History of US Bicycling in the 1960's
>
>
> The story that one usually hears is that adult
> bicycling ended at the turn of the century (that is, in 1900) with
> the introduction of the motor car. Then, it
> suddenly sprang back into existence at the beginning of the 70's.
> Back then, I heard Eugene Sloane's book, The
> Complete Book of Bicycling, given credit for this "sudden"
> change, and recently I heard credit being given to
> Greg Siple, of the Adventure Cycling Association, who
> started the TOSRV. Actually, the reappearance of
> cycling was not all that sudden or unpredictable, and I think
> the real credit must be given to important culture
> changes that were happening at the same time, not to any one
> individual.
>
> Each decade has it's own themes. After the roaring
> 20's, there was the great depression which set the mood
> for the 30's. In the 40's, the US was at war, and
> towards the end of the 40's, the cold war began. During the
> 50's, with the cold war and anti-communism in full
> swing and with most people comfortably settled into the
> middle-class, support for the dominant lifestyle
> was strong, and everyone was supposed to be alike, living a
> Father-Knows-Best, Ozzie and Harriet,
> Leave-It-to-Beaver lifestyle, except for the Blacks, who were
> supposed to remain invisible. But there were cracks
> appearing even during the 40's and 50's, people with
> different value systems, who wanted to live their
> own lives and who thought life should consist of more than a
> good car, good house, and steady job. As a result,
> the 60's ended up being a period of conflict between
> differing lifestyles, as the dominant culture
> fought back. The vague rustling of trouble at the beginning of the
> decade turned into disturbances and then into
> full-scale protests, demonstrations, and even war in the streets
> near the end. While segregation and the war in
> Vietnam were immediate causes, under attack was the entire
> middle class value system. Protesters rode busses,
> marched in the streets, burned flags and bras, and
> demanded the right to be equal, the right to speak
> out, and the right to be themselves. "Square" and
> "middle-class" became insults. The United States
> would never be the same again.
>
> I can't help thinking that Henry Thoreau was
> partially responsible for these changes. He had been
> rediscovered in the late 40's. Until that time,
> Thoreau had been seen as an unsuccessful follower of Emerson
> who was at best a nature writer. However, the
> anti-war movement during W.W. II had found something else
> in him, and in the controversy of the cold war,
> some saw him as a third choice, someone neither communistic
> nor capitalistic. But most importantly, he spoke to
> those who felt trapped in a world where everyone was
> supposed to look alike, think alike, and dream
> alike. Thoreau gave people permission to be themselves: "If a
> man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps
> it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step
> to the music which he hears, however measured or
> far away." At any rate, Thoreau was taught in every
> classroom in the country as part of American
> literature, and my students in 1972 understood exactly what he
> was talking about. In fact, my English professor of
> the mid-60's would denounce Thoreau to the class every
> time he heard about a march or protest. And many of
> the protests in the 60's began in the classroom. I know
> that Martin Luther King was inspired by Thoreau,
> and I'm sure many others were as well.
>
> And, as the quietest protest movement of all,
> adults began to ride bicycles. In comparison with the civil rights
> movement, the anti-war movement, the free speech
> movement, the sexual revolution, the women's liberation
> movement, and the environmental movement, it was an
> almost unnoticeable change, and the number of
> cyclists increased only gradually, but it was just
> as revolutionary nonetheless. Before then, the thinking had
> been that only children ride bicycles and that the
> automobile was the center of one's life. Obviously, whenever
> a powerful car came along, the humble bicycle was
> supposed to hit the ditch.
>
> It's not that no adults ever rode bicycles before
> the 60's; some cyclists rode throughout that period. Harold
> Fincher, in my own town of Gadsden, Alabama, got
> his two bikes in the 30's, when they still were sold with
> wooden wheels and continued to ride them into the
> 80's. The League of American Wheelmen kept trying to
> get back up on its legs, organizing rides and
> events for a few years before sinking into obscurity again. The
> six-day bicycle races were held right up to the
> beginning of the second world war.
>
> During the 40's, bicycling improved somewhat as a
> local activity, as gasoline was rationed, but bikes were
> hard to find. During this time, John Forester moved
> to the US as a boy and began cycling. While going to the
> university at Berkeley, he belonged to a city of
> Berkeley cycling club in 1947. The club had a standard
> meeting place and time for rides. The bikes were
> mainly foreign and included English bikes with
> Sturmey-Archer hubs and French bikes with
> derailleurs. The best bikes had alloy components and
> high-pressure tires. John also made three long
> cycling trips during the 40's, with his brother in July 1945
> from Berkeley to Medocino and back, with his
> brother again from Santa Barbara to Solvang and back in
> August 1945, with a friend from Berkeley down to
> Cambria and alone to Fresno in the spring of '49.
> Although some of his friends had bikes with dropped
> bars, clips, and straps during the 40's, he didn't
> experience these until 1949 when a Schwinn salesman
> loaned him a Paramount track bike. He spent the
> summer of '49 in Massachusetts, where riding out to
> Walden Pond or out to a AYH hostel 50 miles north
> were popular cycling activities. After he returned
> to California that fall, he participated in the Bay Cities
> Bicycle Club's San Francisco to Half Moon Bay
> Handicap Race, and he won it too. If you have the Adobe
> Reader, more of this history can be downloaded at
> American Cycling History as I Experienced It.
>
> During the 50's, the automobile became king again.
> Still, there was some bicycling. Nancy Neiman Baranet
> was a US racing cyclist and eventually competed in
> Europe. She began bicycling by riding on trips from one
> hostel to the other (the American Youth Hostel
> provided much support for bicycling during the dark ages of
> cycling), and later helped form a cycling club. At
> the time, there were only two racing tracks in the US, one in
> Wisconsin and the other in California. In 1954,
> Richard Berg crossed the US from Santa Monica to NYC,
> unsupported, in 14 days. Jobst Brandt began his
> tours into the California Sierras in 1957 or '58. He would
> make a long ride over difficult passes, spend the
> night at lodgings, and ride back the next day.
>
> Nonetheless,adult cyclists were a very rare breed
> during these years (99% of bikes were sold to children),
> and it seemed that they would stay that way
> forever. In 1959 or '60, I told my father that I would never ride a
> bike again because I was too old (I was under 15 at
> the time). The Andy Griffin Show, a few years later,
> included two visits by an Englishman traveling on
> his three-speed bike, sort of a strange and hopeless but
> harmless soul.
>
> I am hoping that the readers of this account will
> be able to furnish me with additional details both during the
> 60's and earlier about bicycling in the United
> States. I need information about touring trips that you made,
> rides, races, events, clubs, and publications. Be
> sure to furnish enough facts and figures so I have something
> to say, but note that this account is very
> condensed. At any rate, here is the information I have discovered (or
> that I remember) so far:
>
> 1960
>
> In 1960, the Bicycle Owner's Complete Handbook was
> published. There were 3.7 million bicycles sold in
> the US that year (55 million bikes had been sold
> during the period from 1933 to 1959, which included the
> depression and the war, so this was probably just a
> gradual increase).
>
> 1961
>
> In 1961, the Velo Sport Newsletter was published in
> the Bay Area in California. It was eight pages long, run
> off on a mimeograph machine by Peter Rich, the
> owner of a bike shop with the same name as the newsletter.
> Who would have dreamed that it would eventually
> become a major magazine? The same year, policemen were
> given bikes to patrol with in Minneapolis,
> Minnesota. Robert E. Grebel was discharged from the army in San
> Francisco and rode an Elgin single speed bike with
> 28 inch tires from there to Seattle, camping along the way.
> It took 47 days to make the trip. He met three or
> four other touring cyclists traveling in the opposite direction.
>
> 1962
>
> In February of 1962, Paul Dudley White,
> Eisenhower's former doctor, dedicated the first bikeway in the US
> in Homestead, Florida. White was a strong proponent
> of cycling, saying, "The American public is a slave to
> the automobile," and stating that no one should sit
> still for more than an hour without getting some exercise.
> That same year, the Velo Sport Newsletter became
> the Northern California Cycling Association Newsletter.
> At the time, there were about 1,500 racing cyclists
> in the US, according to Pete Hoffman, who wrote for the
> magazine at that time, and who later was in charge
> of it. That same year, 16-year-old Greg Siple and his dad
> made a ride from Columbus to Portsmouth, Ohio, that
> later became the TOSRV (Tour of the Scioto River
> Valley). Greg really had a great time, but his dad
> found the trip a bit much, as he hadn't been doing much
> riding. The ride was a two-day trip of about 105
> miles each day. In Bloomington, Indiana, Steve Tesich and
> Dave Blase won the Little 500 bicycle race, the
> events the movie Breaking Away are based upon (some parts
> of the movie, however, are based on another story
> that Tesich wrote later).
>
> 1963
>
> In 1963, Cycling in the School Fitness Program was
> published. At the time, due to President Kennedy, the
> schools were really pushing physical fitness. Bob
> Davenport, a head football coach at Taylor University in
> Indiana, organized a cycling group called Wandering
> Wheels. The first trip, was a thousand mile trip down the
> Mississippi. During the next two years, tours were
> made through Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
> West Virginia, and Kentucky. The gear for the
> riders was all carried on a following truck, and the bikes were
> all purchased by Davenport, at first all Louison
> Bobet 15-speed bikes and later all Schwinn Super Sport
> 10-speed bikes. In the beginning, these were
> probably all his own male students, but he gradually allowed
> other students at the school, students about to
> enter the school, students from other schools, and finally female
> students to ride also. The Great Western Rally
> began in La Jolla, California, in 1963. It's a mixture of rides
> and events which is still being held. Greg Siple
> that year talked three people into joining him for the second
> tour of the Scioto River valley.
>
> 1964
>
> In 1964, four people met in Chicago to refound LAW,
> the League of American Wheelmen. The motivation for
> doing so was that the organization had last
> disbanded in 1955, and according to the laws of Illinois, the money
> in the bank account would belong to the bank unless
> the account was reactivated. There were several active
> bicycle clubs in the Chicago area, so they believed
> that LAW could serve a useful purpose once again. In St.
> Louis, Missouri, a Midnight Ramble bicycle ride was
> organized that ran through the downtown, which is still
> run yearly. The Turned Down Bar, Nancy Neiman
> Baranet's account of her racing experiences, was
> published in 1964. That same year, the NCCA
> Newsletter was renamed the American Cycling Newsletter,
> in its slow evolution into a major publication.
> Paul Dudley White organized a ride involving congressmen in
> Washington DC, the men all riding in their suits on
> single-speed bikes. In the fall of 1964, Dr. Clifford
> Graves founded the International Bicycle Touring
> Society. The trip that fall was in New England, but the
> society was located in California. Every year, the
> society would make a different trip, including the Blue
> Ridge, Mississippi Valley, Ohio, and California,
> along with trips to Europe. These trips included deluxe
> accomodations and meals. Graves had been touring
> since W.W.II. That year, six people rode on the tour of
> the Scioto River valley. And least in importance, I
> began riding a bicycle again as an adult in 1964, traveling
> 45 miles on my first trip, which included about 25
> miles of highway. There were a few bicycles on my school
> campuses in those years, but very few. Two teachers
> rode bicycles a little, and I managed to convince a couple
> of friends to ride, unfortunately only one trip
> each.
>
> 1965
>
> In 1965, the number of bicycles sold was 5.6
> million. This should be a wake-up call to anyone that something
> was changing, as this was a 51% increase in bike
> sales in only five years. The League of American Wheelmen
> held a convention which turned it into a national
> organization again. The American Cycling Newsletter was
> renamed American Cycling, and the cost went up to
> 35¢. At that time, Pete Hoffman took over the magazine
> and kept building it up until 1969. There were
> three cycling books published that year with titles which
> indicate topics of interest at that time: Bike
> Trails and Facilities, Safe Bicycling, and A Handbook on
> Bicycle Track and Cycle Racing. That year, TOSRV
> had 16 riders, which is about the minimum number that
> I would consider to be an event. And in 1965, I
> made three centuries and a touring trip of nearly 600 miles to
> the Smoky Mountains, during which I met two younger
> cyclists (I was 19 at the time) from Knoxville, who
> had been riding with a club there and showed me
> some useful methods for getting along with motorists on the
> narrow, congested roads of the national park.
>
> 1966
>
> In 1966, John Howard was in his first bicycle race,
> which he lost. TOSRV really did become an event this
> year, with 45 riders, three from out of state. A
> director was chosen, and a regular date was set. This was also
> the first year that it was called the TOSRV. That
> same year, Wandering Wheels made its first coast to coast
> ride, with 35 students on the trip. After that,
> coast to coast rides by the Wandering Wheels, with different
> starting and finishing points, became common. In
> 1966, I made my first really long bike tour, traveling from
> Alabama to Ontario and then back along the
> Mississippi River, over 3,400 miles. On the trip, I met the
> president of the Louisville (Kentucky) cycling
> club, and he told me he had made touring trips to Canada and
> another member had twice bicycled to Florida. Also,
> while bicycling into Louisville, I saw about 40 children
> riding bikes at one time or another on the road,
> including two on a tandem bike. I did not see a single other
> touring cyclist or even an adult cyclist during
> that tour. I did hear reports of someone very much like me
> traveling either in front or behind me while I was
> in Ontario, but the people who reported hearing about him
> did not actually see him, and the person sounded
> too much like me to be anyone else.
>
> 1967
>
> In 1967, TOSRV had about two hundred riders. The
> Wheelmen was founded the same year. This
> organization consists of enthusiasts who collect
> old bicycles and memorabilia and who ride high-wheelers. In
> the spring, I began what was supposed to be a four
> or five hundred mile tour, but on the first day, a motorist
> lost control of her vehicle and hit another
> vehicle. Although I was not at fault and no one was injured, I was
> rather upset. I did make a short tour instead.
>
> 1968
>
> In 1968, TOSRV had about four hundred riders. I
> began a tour in the spring, only to have another woman
> driver lose control of her vehicle. While I did
> make a second tour that year, it was entirely on back roads. On
> the second tour, I returned on the same night that
> Dr. Martin Luther King was shot. That same year, Fred
> Bauer, who was not a cyclist, traveled by bike with
> his entire family from New York to as far as New
> Mexico, destination California. The youngest child
> rode on a child's seat, but the 13-year-old girl and the
> 11-year-old boy had to pedal the whole way. In
> December, American Cyclist changed its name to
> Bicycling! (with the exclamation mark). Circulation
> had climbed to 12,000, as the magazine had been
> broadened to include touring and family cycling.
>
> 1969
>
> In 1969, TOSRV had about seven hundred riders. The
> first edition of the North American Bicycle Atlas, an
> AYH publication, was published. Judging from the
> third edition (1971), this was a collection of day trip
> locations from around the country, with a few
> longer rides and some general information about touring. That
> year, Wandering Wheels went coed for the first
> time, including young women on a 900 mile tour in Georgia
> and Florida. Pete Hoffman left Bicycling! that
> year, and it was purchased by Rodale eight years later.
>
> 1970
>
> In 1970, it was obvious to me that the bicycle had
> come into its own. That year, Eugene Sloane's Complete
> Book of Bicycling was published, but I had more
> direct evidence. That year, I made my only long-distance
> automobile tour, and on that trip, I saw groups of
> touring cyclists several times on my trip across Canada.
> Bike sales had increased to 6.9 million by 1970,
> which was only a 23% increase from 1965, but the feeling of
> change was in the air. I planned to begin a winter
> tour and wanted a better bike than my Varsity, but the shops
> were out of bicycles due to the recent demand. The
> next four years would see a number of new bicycling
> books, and bike sales would jump to 15.2 million in
> 1973.
>
> The Bicycles
>
> One of the changes during that period of time that
> greatly contributed to the popularity of cycling was in the
> bicycles themselves. After Schwinn introduced the
> balloon-tired bicycle in 1933, these bikes made up 2/3rds
> of the sales until 1960. These single-speed bikes
> were heavy, with fenders, carriers, lights, and fake gas
> tanks, which added to the weight. They are the
> daddy of the current mountain bike. The second most popular
> bike was also single speed, with somewhat lighter
> tires and a minimum amount of tubing, very much like a
> hybrid bike. However, the English had been making
> lighter bikes, equipped with Sturmey-Archer three-speed
> hubs, and these bikes began arriving in my area at
> the end of the fifties. My 1964 bike, which I used to travel
> to the Smokies, was such a three-speed, from
> England, but cheaper than the prestigious Raleigh. Of course, it
> was black with white fender patches. In 1960,
> Schwinn had begun production of derailleur-equipped,
> moderately-priced bikes, the Varsity and the
> Continental. In 1965, when I decided I needed a ten-speed bike, I
> discovered that both Columbia and Schwinn had them
> for sale, but I chose the Varsity because I wanted
> fenders. It must have been the right choice because
> I never did see a single Columbia bicycle. While bicycles
> had been imported from Europe all during the
> fifties and sixties (my 1953 child's bike was made in West
> Germany), towards the end of this period, lighter,
> better, and less expensive bikes than the Schwinn models
> began arriving while the Schwinn's actually became
> heavier in an attempt to keep the price low. (My 1965
> Varsity weighed 40 pounds; my wife's 1971 Varsity
> weighed 45 pounds, in spite of a smaller frame, due to a
> change from alloy to steel handlebar, stem, and
> seatpost. Her bike also had a plastic seat, while my seat was
> leather.) In 1970, it was possible to purchase a
> ten-speed, 21-pound Peugeot PX-10 "racing bicycle" with
> double butted 531 seamless tubing for $160, while
> the Schwinn cost $100. However, the prices for the
> European bikes doubled within a few years, and the
> Schwinn Varsity managed to survive until 1986, a real
> dinosaur by that time.
>
> I would judge the bikes at the end of that era to
> be mostly as good as the bikes of today with one major
> exception -- shifting. The derailleurs used then
> were extremely poor compared with current models, and the
> shifters tended to slip as well. Good shifting did
> not occur until SunTour redesigned the derailleur and the
> cogs.
>
> Bike Shops
>
> Bike shops were not the same back then. Only the
> largest cities had real bike shops; otherwise, one mainly
> looked for bikes and bike supplies in the hardware
> store; in fact, a hardware store and a bike shop looked a lot
> alike anyway, as the bike shop would be
> garage-like, with cardboard boxes full of old parts. At that time, a
> bicycle was a once in a lifetime purchase for a
> child, and the bikes were seldom serviced, so there was not
> much money in selling and repairing bikes. Nor was
> there much bicycling gear available for sale either. Some
> cyclists have made fun of the Schwinn's being sold
> with lawn mowers, but actually that was the only way for
> the company to sell bikes during the long years
> when bike shops were not profitable. When I bought my
> Schwinn in '65, I ordered it from a nice catalog,
> but no bikes were actually kept in the store.
>
> Bike Equipment
>
> Equipment, as you may imagine, was in short supply,
> and often of toy quality. To measure the miles on my
> bike, I had to get a big, car-like toy speedometer.
> However, there was one exception: it was always easy to
> find a generator light for a bicycle, something
> which is impossible to find even in a bike shop today.
>
> Cycling Clothing
>
> In short, there wasn't any. There really wasn't any
> during the 70's either. However, don't think of 60's
> cyclists as having long hair, granny glasses,
> bell-bottomed blue jeans, and tie-dyed shirts. That was the 70's.
> To go bicycling, one would put on some tennis
> shoes, canvas shoes, or loafers, a T-shirt, and some shorts. In
> the first half of the 60's, young males wore crew
> cuts, and in the second half, they began letting their hair
> grow a few inches long, which created great anguish
> for their parents and their barbers. Young females wore
> elaborate hairdos during the first half of this
> period but more simple styles towards the end, along with tighter
> dresses and sometimes mini-skirts and short shorts.
>
> Bicycling on the Roadway
>
> Traveling on a bike was actually much easier back
> then, at least for me. Although the highways were
> narrower, speeds were a lot lower, and there was a
> lot less traffic. Motorists were more polite as well. In
> making my trips, I just used the main highways.
> Unfortunately, there was some additional danger because
> motorists did not know how to behave when
> approaching cyclists, and there were many inexperienced women
> drivers on the road, as many middle-aged women were
> just then beginning to drive.
>
> Conclusion
>
> In many ways, the sixties were a less desirable
> time for cycling, but in many other ways, they were better
> than today. My overall judgment, however, is that
> bicycling is the same now as it was back then. While some
> things get better and others worse, the pleasure of
> riding a bike is the same, no matter the bike or the decade in
> which it is ridden. The most important factor is
> whether the cyclist is spending time on the bike or doing
> something much less important.
>
> Sources of information: Glenn's Complete Bicycle
> Manual, 1973 edition, and The Cyclist's Sourcebook
> by Peter Nye, 1991, were the sources for most of
> this information. These books provided a great more detail
> than I used. I also used the TOSRV website, my
> memory, and information sent to me by the individuals
> (Robert E. Grebel, Jobst Brandt, and John
> Forester). A few other cycling books furnished a fact or two each.