I did see a wonderful appreciation of Ben Olken once, and have my own cherished memory of the time he spent showing me the new catalogue of radical stuff about to hit from Japan. I lived in Providence '68 - '72, and we would look for opportunities to go into "Boston" for BiEx and EMS. There was the day in January when we joined the horde for the famous EMS Sale. Wound up having to buy new boots. Had brought my old ones to compare with new ones, and wasn't thinking when someone asked to try mine on. I actually sold them to him, right in the store, before having found the pair that was just right. C'est la vie.
harvey
Sheldon Brown wrote:
> Jerry Moos a écrit:
>
>> I don't really think the French bike culture in US is any less recent
>> than Italian. My first exposure to Lightweight European bikes in the
>> early 70's was mostly French - Peugeots, LeJeunes, Gitanes. And the
>> fact they were French was a major component of their "coolness". I
>> think it was a matter of where in the US you lived. In CA, it seems
>> to have been Cinelli and Masi that represented the cool European
>> bike. In the Cleveland, OH area, were I first encountered
>> lightweights, Peugeot was the icon, although of course a few lusted
>> after all-Campy Cinelli SC's. On the East Coast, UK seems to have
>> had the most influence, as Peter Weigle and richie both apprenticed
>> at Witcomb and Doug Fattic (although he's a Midwesterner) at
>> Ellis-Briggs. What does seem a bit more recent is the appreciation
>> of the low-volume French "constructeurs" like Rene Herse and Alex
>> Singer, whose products were mostly NOT racing models.
>
>
> Jerry is right on target here. I think also that a key determinant is
> whether one is speaking of a racing scene or a touring scene. Italian
> stuff has always been hot with racers and racer wannabes, but in
> touring circles French and British stuff has always been much more
> prominent.
>
> My own orientation has always been toward touring, and I don't recall
> encountering any Italian bikes before the 1970s.
>
> Also, before the '70s bike boom, North America was pretty much a
> wasteland as far as adult bikes was concerned. There were, however, a
> few specialist shops, mainly in larger college towns, that acted as
> nuclei of adult cycling. Whatever those shops carried would tend to
> become the ideal of aspiring cyclists.
>
> In my area, my generation, the main one was the Bicycle Exchange, in
> Cambridge Mass, across the street from Harvard. They stocked Raleigh,
> Peugeot and Dawes, would also special order from Herse, Singer, Ideor,
> Carlton and others. Ben Olken, the proprietor, later went into the
> wholesale end partnered with Ben Lawee, pioneering the Italvega,
> Univega and Motobecane lines.
>
> I recall one of my many early '60s visits to the BiEx (a 20 mile ride
> from my home town, Marblehead) when everybody in the shop was gathered
> around as a customer was taking delivery of a legendary Dawes Double
> Blue, a bike that sold for the astonishing sum of a hundred dollars!
> Most of us could only dream of such an exotic, expensive machine!
>
> There was another, smaller shop nearby called "Ace" that catered to
> the teeny racing scene, they probably had Italian stuff, but I never
> felt welcome at Ace, and rarely visited it.
>
> Sheldon "Memoires" Brown
> Newtonville, Massachusetts
> +--------------------------------------------------------+
> | The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep. |
> | --W. C. Fields |
> +--------------------------------------------------------+