Good day listers!
After a long and cold winter, now summer seems to have reached the Netherlands (what happened to spring?), so it's time for a story (before I go out for a ride)!
In the 50s and 60s Jaap van de Bergh ran a well-known bikeshop in Amsterdam
.
He was also a framebuilder, and catered for many Amsterdam and regional
racers. His brandname was Bergh Sport; for some reason the headbadge (
http://www.wooljersey.com/
The shop, and workshop, of van de Bergh was in the Jacob van Lennepstraat, just outside the 'grachtengordel', in the 19th century ring of Amsterdam. O n warmer days, Van de Bergh, while working on a frame, usually left the door of his workshop open (not something to recommend I believe). One day in the summer, the police came to a house across the street, to settle a disturbance; they came on horses, and left them in the street, tied to a lamppost.
A customer in van de Bergh's shop (probably there just for a friendly chat, or 'slap ouwehoeren' as we say in Rotterdam), noticed the horses and though t a practical joke was the right thing to do. He walked across the street, untied one of the horses, led it gently into the workshop, and tied it to the workbench.
Unruffled, van de Bergh just went on brazing whatever he was brazing at the time, leaning against the horse in a relaxed manner. So much for the joke.
Now the way van de Bergh built his frames was not with a jig, but with the help of markings on the wooden floor of his workshop. This seemed to have worked well, since he had a lot of satisfied customers; many of them had a new frame built for every new season.
Some months after the visit of the horse however, complaints began to reach him. 'This bike won't go round the corners', 'I keep hitting the pavement when accelerating out of the corners', etc. The horse, weighing over a 1000 kilo's, must have shifted something in that wooden floor!
*(This story was told to me by Pieter Buysman, who worked for van de Bergh in the 60s)*
**
Freek Faro
Rotterdam Netherlands