But Chuck,
Your experience was extremely rare. There were those in the know such as yoursef, but it was like a quiet little secret. My guess is that no more than 70 to 80 Herse bikes and perhaps also less than 100 Singers made it to the US from the 50's through 80's. If I'm wrong maybe the number is double that. You just happened to see them!
In fact, there were two builders in Vermont making French style touring bikes in the 70's! But they weren't on the radar of most US tourists and certainly not of most racers.
Note: A few Herse bikes and other high-end makes hit the east coast. But I was on the east coast and entering the sport in 1977 I missed out on knowing about these.
For most of us, we never knew anything about these bikes. Campy was the religion and some among us knew the big picture. But almost all of us had no clue about french stuff at the time.
Mike (making up for lost time) Kone in Boulder
> Jan Heine wrote:
\r?\n> >
\r?\n> > We used to "ignore" the French and Italian machines as well, until some
\r?\n> > people went over there and brought back news from that cycling
\r?\n> > culture... For the Italians, that happened relatively early, while the
\r?\n> > "French phenomen" is more recent, dating from the early 1990s, I'd say.
\r?\n> > I am just the "second generation" in that respect - early proponents of
\r?\n> > French constructeur bikes were Grant Handley and Mike Kone. (Of course,
\r?\n> > French bikes in the U.S. are an older phenomenon than that, but the
\r?\n> > culture never really made it across until recently.)
\r?\n>
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Jan, can you elaborate?
\r?\n>
\r?\n> I thought the French bikes and the *French (bike) culture* made it over
\r?\n> to the US in the 50s and 60s, long before the 1990s. The Rene Herse and
\r?\n> Alex Singer bikes I first saw in the mid-70s when I started riding as an
\r?\n> adult had been brought back from France by wealthy Southern California
\r?\n> folks cycle touring in France in the 50s and 60s.
\r?\n>
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Chuck Schmidt
\r?\n> South Pasadena, Southern California
\r?\n>
\r?\n> .