Thank you David Mann, for a long and interesting post. Let me just add three brief comments:
1) Whadday mean (wrt the sociologist), "Of course, this is a different Harvey Sachs." Harvey Sachs (R) is a collective polymath, well known in vintage cycling, energy efficiency, radon in buildings, micropaleontology, paleoclimatology, sociology, and music criticism (see our Toscanini biography). Unlike most polymaths, we have multiple identities to go with our multiple skills. We were born in the mid-1940s, when a certain invisible 6' tall rabbit was on folks' minds. The species is unknown to younger generations. 2) At least one early Cirque did have a "hot-rod" category, and the term would also characterize one focus of Wayne Bingham's interests, as he has described them so vividly with some of his lovely and disctinctive bikes. 3) I know your mentor, I bet. Consider that you are in (from?) Boston, and your description of your mentor as riding a Raleigh Clubman from the 1950s: "It sports a TA crank with 62/42/22 rings shifted with suicide levers. To make this work, he's made his own RD with a massively long swing arm. His fenders are made from spiral cut soda bottles. I think the bike (and the rider) is stunning. The bike and the rider are in harmony and the Clubman continues to have life and vitality." I would also claim to be a friend of Chuck Harris, of Gambier, Ohio these last three decades or so. Beloved Spouse and I did TOSRV one year on our tandem, passing and being passed by Chuck and his two daughters. But, my memories of Chuck, dating back to the hostel on the hill, are of the Raleigh Record Ace, not the Clubman. :-)
Thanks for all of the thoughtful notes, from the Harvey Sachs collective.
harvey sachs McLean va and the world.
Mann, Dave wrote:
> Harvey Sachs wrote:
>
>>Peter Weigle (I think it was my esteemed friend Peter) suggested that
>>each owner in the Cirque show declare whether his bike is "original"
>>vs. "restored," to make judging easier.
>
> [much good stuff cut...]
>
> 4 comments on i) the meaning of categories with a connection
> to another Harvey Sachs, ii) bikes vs frames, iii) my own
> desire about bike shows and iv) and yet another appeal to
> catalog the geometries of these bikes.
>
> I'm tickled beyond words that Harvey Sachs has raised
> thorny questions about categories as I've been reading
> a bit of Harvey Sachs and Harold Garfinkel in the area
> of sociology and language often called Conversation Analysis
> and Ethnomethodology. Of course, this is a different
> Harvey Sachs (which is just screamingly appropriate).
>
> Sachs wrote a great lecture/essay on the how the word
> "hot rodder" comes into being that is just fascinating.
> The basic assertion is that nouns (categories) take their
> meaning from the context of a conversation, not some
> preset agreed to meaning. As a result, we find that
> all categories (all nouns) have maleable, hard to pin
> down boundaries -- messy edge cases. The results in
> congnitive pyscology are similar. People don't really
> think in terms of perfect categories. "The Big Book of
> Concepts" by ??? and put out by MIT Press gives a great
> overview and is well worth reading.
>
> Short summary of this bit... I think it's well worth trying
> to come to shared understandings of the words "original"
> and "restored" in this context. In fact, I advocate the
> same thing in terms of bike handling vocabularies. But,
> in doing so, we must be at peace with the fact that we
> won't be able to neatly bin bikes into one category or
> the other, no matter how hard we try.
>
>
>>But wait, it gets better: What about a custom, that was bought from a
>
>
>>builder or shop as a frameset and built up? Does "original" mean
>
> that
>
>>it has the parts it was first ridden with, or only that the frame
>
> finish
>
>>is original?
>
>
> This question begins to poke at the differences in the
> possible definition of the word "bike", perhaps as
> juxtoposed with "frame" or "model". The shop in which
> I learned bikes, the owner emphasized that the frame *WAS*
> the bike and that when you bought a bike, you should
> think of it as buying a frame that happened to have some
> parts on it. The ultimate ideal was to buy a bare frame,
> say from Trek (just out) or Mercian and select the parts
> yourself. Short of that, you could buy an off-the-shelf
> Fuji or Miyata from us and over time, upgrade and modify
> to meet your needs. Everybody who worked in the shop
> followed this principle and modified their bikes by swapping
> parts in and out with abandon.
>
> So as a rider and mechanic, I've always regard "stock"
> bikes with a heavy dose of saddness -- something like a
> citizen of the land of unwanted toys. It represents a bike
> that hasn't yet been unified with the will and body of the
> rider. The relationship between bike and rider is still
> unconsumated by the necessary modification of the bike.
>
> Please note... I'm not against the collecting of unaltered
> bikes. There's a huge streak in me that fully appreciates
> the historical record fullfilled by such bikes and I full
> heartedly agree they should be maintained and showed in
> their original state. But, I do live with this duality.
> The collector and historian in me enjoys the originals.
> But the rider and mechanic in me loves, loves, loves bikes
> that bear the marks of their riders.
>
> On the third point on categories for shows... I've never
> been to a show yet. Hope to get Larz Anderson this year
> with no conflict in family vacation. I will suggest a
> third category to those suggested as "original" and "restored"
> and that would be "open" or "hot-rod". This get's back
> to my mentor's assertion that the bike is the frame.
> For me, if the frame is vintage, I'm interested in it.
> And, I see any incarnation of a vintage frame as being
> interesting, in the spirit of hot-rodding, so long as
> it's understood as it's own, separate class of art.
>
> Two examples... My mentor (to my knowledge) still rides.
> His bike is Raliegh Clubman from the 50s. It sports a TA
> crank with 62/42/22 rings shifted with suicide levers. To
> make this work, he's made his own RD with a massively long
> swing arm. Hi fenders are made from spiral cut soda bottles.
> I think the bike (and the rider) is stunning. The bike and
> the rider are in harmony and the Clubman continues to have
> life and vitality. I could study that bike for hours.
>
> I have a picture on my harddrive downloaded from flikr.
> Wish I could refind it and find the owner. It's of
> a beautiful old maroon Mercian. It's decked out in
> all black modern cockpit parts, modern drive train and
> blacked out bladed spoke wheels. It's stunning.
> The mixture of old and new is like an old T-bucket
> with a tricked out Chevy small block and massive blower
> sticking out.
>
> Maintaining/restoring bikes as original (whatever that means)
> is one kind of art. Hot-rodding is another. I'm interested
> in both. If/when I make it to "vintage" bike show, I
> want to see both. If the shows don't have an open
> or hot-rod category, I think they should. The cut off,
> imo, should be the frame. If the frame is vintage,
> it should be shown.
>
>
> On the last point... The geomtries of these old bikes are
> largely undocumented. I fear the cycling industry and
> community at large has forgetten more about bike geometries
> than is currently and collectively known.
>
> I would love it if shows could collect and display the frame
> geometry data for these older bikes. It takes only a few minutes
> and can add so much to the understanding and appreciation
> of the bikes. I get so incredibly frustrated when I see
> great old bikes. I ask myself, "What are the angles? How
> long is that chainstay? How much rake is that?" This
> information should be required to show a bike.
>
> ...And it should be sent to the Bike Geometry Project!!!
> That way others can learn about them too!
>
>
> -Dave Mann, Boston, MA
> -------------------------
> THE BIKE GEOMETRY PROJECT
> A community effort to document and compare bike geometries
> http://home.comcast.net/
> -------------------------