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 |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
--
Harris Cyclery, West Newton, Massachusetts
Phone 617-244-9772 FAX 617-244-1041
http://harriscyclery.com
Hard-to-find parts shipped Worldwide
http://captainbike.com
Useful articles about bicycles and cycling
http://sheldonbrown.com