I sent Larry Black, an inactive lister, some of the correspondence recently, and he responded with this missive. I have edited lightly, mostly shortening by deleting material about people I deemed unimportant to most living humans, and have translated some of Larry-spell into English.
harvey sachs mcLean va ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Harvey Sachs: Thanks for the forward of the interesting digest.If appropriate, fwd to list. <snip> I could fill a few chapters, maybe volumes, but today just a few notes, in vague and broken order.:
C.I.D. was Cycle Import and Design, our 'other' marque besides Alpine. Peter Koskinen was a little off on the acronym. The basement at 3310 M Street was occupied by Pete Barrett, a fellow motorhead whom we frequented to visit his car and motorcycle projects, but there was not much bicycle activity there. Mike 'the Schwer' Schwering hung out there, mostly because he liked to visit places while we worked the shop. Barrett helped us once in awhile with special repairs and fixturing - his machine skills and equipment were quite advanced.
I left Maryland Cycle and Mower (later became 'The Bike Pedalers" in 1972 during Bike Boom One) about 1974 and shared time between Georgetown and the newly-opened Georgetown Cycle Sport II. To get me out of his face, Schwering sent me on silly goose chases in 'the raging queen' - our green ChevyVan/ Once was to Patapsco Cycle in Ellicott City to get 10 Pirelli Clinchers - Patapsco was the Pirelli importer that also did a huge gitane business - it was flooded over the roof during Hurricane Agnes and had some great deals on Professionals and T d F's after that - salvageable after the waters receeded.
CID and Alpine transfers were appropriately applied to Eisentrauts from the USA, including our own designed 'Limited - a joint deal between Albert and us - and we even had a spade-shaped die made (a whopping $400) for our lug cut-outs. The Limited was also the Grey and crimson 'Team' bike that featured Heavy-duty 531, columbus, and Falck tubing. many had rear dropout eyelets for those that wanted to install one of the chrome Claude Butler rear racks - Schwerting brought in hundreds and the bulk are somewhere unknown - i saved a half dozen over the years.
Decals were also appropriately applied to Paris Sport bikes from Rene LaPort and Pepe Limongi from Europe, and as Peter mentioned, there might have been a few USA bikes from Paris sport - Dave Moulton had a vague association, and Cosme Saavedra and another South American also had a hand. The line between Alpine, CID, and Paris Sport became vague at times.
Other 'official' applications were on Bob Jacksons, Mercians, MKM (Arthur Metcalfe, Ron Kitching,Wes? Mason), Hurlow, Alec Iles(sp?)
Decals were inappropriately applied to Schwer's girlfriend's Fuji, and a few Paramount repaints.
A batch of Colnago (according to the Schwer) track frames without forks were badged and Rob 'horriblewitz' Horowitz of Tanguy Cycles and Laughing alley bikes in New England made the forks - with the crown and blades mistakenly brazed backwards yielding a rear-facing slot.CR Fred Rednor, I recall, is a cousin of rob, and Rob was a student of the Albert class, $500 was the fee and you got to walk away with a frame. Enrollment was about a half dozen.
Georgetown bit the dust about 1975..The Schwer had bankrupted and my $5k 'stock' was never to be seen.
In 1977 I read a 'business opportunity' ad in the Washington Post and encouraged Dan 'Don Washer' Wagner to buy a fledgling shop in Alexandria. The owner was a nightclub operator in Hybla Valley, and the shop was in Belleview, now a Spokes, Etc (coincidentally an NCVC sponsor) shop. the place was filled with video and arcade games, pool tables, and even a bed that some of the derelict teens might have used in a dark dank corner of the cavernous 20,000 square foot basement that took in water from time to time. There were about 20 bikes and enough parts, accessories, tools, and fixtures to do a turnkey bike shop. I was in charge and Wagner came down on occasion. I put in 14 hour days and quite a bit of time with a 16 lb sledge and a huge broom.
Having commuted from Silver Spring through Northeast DC on my 67inch gear Gitane track bike, the workout was part of my training. The place was so bad, it would have to remodeled in order to be condemned.
'Belleview Cycle Sport got rolling within a few months and went into the black.
The skateboards to which Tom refers saved Bethesda from demise. We turned $3000 into $5000 in a few months during the boom and took on mopeds in the mid 70's during their boom.
In 1979, while teaching a bike class at U of M, my students encouraged me to take over the vacant laundramat in College Park. If belleview was bad, this was worse. I went to Dan and said that this was a great third location, making a triangle around the Nation's Capital, but Wagner was not in the mood. College Park was really sleazy. Wagner remembered the riots when he was student. <snip stuff about that area...extraneous>
While he did not come out and say 'no way', he did agree that it could be time for me to go on my own. Because I worked for him for a very petty $4,500 a year for too long, he made a great amend. He supplied $20,000 worth of bikes and goods a bunch of guys for a few weeks to help get the place going.
I had to guarantee a couple months' rent ($1,100 a month) and a parental signature ("I can kiss that money goodbye" said the reluctant parent) and we opened the doors on the first day of school, August 20, 1979.
Not only were there several tons of concrete blocks on which washers and dryers once stood, but homeless people and dogs had been squatting there (with no indoor plumbing!) for a long time, this place was beyond belief.
Sledge hammering those blocks was like putting out a five alarm blaze with a hypodermic syringe. months after working around the two-foot-high, 40-foot-long blocks, the surprise 440-volt live wires, and the mystery water that gushed from the floor when it wanted through the miles of buried water lines, we finally grabbed a crew one night after hours from a PEPCO project and stuffed a c note in the foreman's hand. What must have been the largest jack hammers in the world were carried in, the compressor truck roared to capacity, and three hours later 4 tons of crumbled concrete and rebar stood in huge piles on our floor like Berlin in 1945.
Three weeks later, boulder by boulder, shovel by shovel, the floor was nearly level - the dust covered a city block and lingered in the shop for many more months.
11 feet above that floor, hanging by regina chains, was a bed spring frame and a mattress. During the day, the 10-foot stepladder was removed and the thing looked like any other ceiling gridwall fixture with merchandise hanging from it.
Flashing back to Bethesda, just before I opened the CP shop, Steve 'Reno ' Rashid and an accomplice named Ciro started reviving the Alpine name building frames (we had quite a few decals, why not?) and we did a fair amount of painting too.
I almost had the entire place closed down with a blunder. I rolled my '64 VW Bug into the rear of the shop (we had a Garage door and a ramp) and decided to use the paint and gun to put a nice finish on the ol car. I mixed up a pot of Imron - and spent the next three hours in a green fog with a minimal mask. mind you non-painters - Imron was originally designed to be applied by robotics, not humans -but today fresh-air masks and water-wash booths make it less dangerous.
Well, good news and bad news. There was some ventilation, BUT, it served the entire shopping center. Wildwood was a posh area and the boutique-ish establishments - from the beauty parlor to the gourmet food shops to the pharmacy.....all complained of very strong odors and green haze the next morning- and some time after that too. rumor had it that some of the beauty parlor clients went away with green tint on their hair!!
A stunt like that today would certainly have the hazmat team there in force, me in custody, and the Beltway closed for the day. [Editor's note: Imron contains pretty nasty neurotoxins. We don't know what Larry was like "before"...but we know him now. DON'T USE IMRON W/O THE RIGHT STUFF.
Fred Kelley was a fellow racer for NCVC and we sold him a racing bike when we opened college Park in 1979. He broke it, and we gave him a stronger replacement Austro Daimler made of their famous thick-walled 'Graz' tubing. He broke it. That's when he decided to make his own frames, took over the 'Alpine' name, brought in Ned Carey, and opened a nice shop in Rockville.
>From that moment forward, Alpine decals were only used on 'Fred n' Ned' bikes,
The Georgetown story is over, but the legacy will forever live in the frames and bikes that still ride between the legs of riders throughout the planet.
I mentioned a short story, but got into my usual filibuster. More to come. I'll see if I can cring out some souvenirs for the next show n. tell
Cheers
Larry Black
Washington, DC.