Freek,
What a great story. I really loved the bike shops in the
Netherlands when I visited there. First there was the
wonderful little shop in the Red Light District, where the
owner trued up my rear wheel for free. In fact, the entire
episode included getting a free sample at the whore house next
door. (Don't worry about where this story is going, Dale, it
was just a glass of fruit juice!)
But what really impressed me most about those shops, was
that - like van de Bergh's place - there was a wonderful air of
informality. For example, most shops I visited didn't mount
the bicycles in work stands for simple repairs. Instead, they
would hang them from long chains with hooks on the ends. In
fact, it appeared to me as though these chains simply came off
of old bicycles...
I wonder if shops like those still exist - in the
Netherlands or anywhere else, for that matter?
Fred Rednor - now at my desk in
Arlington, Virginia (USA)
> 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/
> very, very simila
> r
> to the headbadge of a RIH, a much wider known Amsterdam
> framebuilder.
>
> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
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