I am new to the list, and still very much shaking my head over my love-at-first-sight moment a few months ago, when I stumbled on a photograph of a mid-1950s Rene Herse, and fell wholly under the spell of the refinement, intelligence and grace of this particular mid- century French answer to daily town & country solo transport.
Since much of my life, I've worked as a feature journalist in the US and abroad, and often written about high end 20th European century design, I am both sheepishly appalled by my total, 100%, how-could-I- not-know ignorance, and absolutely delighted to have a vast new subject to throw myself into. With regard to the latter, I already feel a great debt and gratitude to the many KOFs on the list (among them, Jan Heine-- whose Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles has been the perfect introduction, but also to the contemporary builders here in the US and in many other countries who've quietly created a renaissance of extraordinary machines-- breathing life into a grand tradition, and saving it from becoming yet another lost art).
This said, I do not intend to remain an armchair randonneur for long, and even if a flawless vintage Singer or Herse is well beyond my means, and I am unlikely to sign up for the 2011 Paris-Brest-Paris, I'm already actively laying the groundwork for my own first diabolical effort at a reasonably coherent frankensingerherse or perhaps a fauredaudontoei. I am far from new to bikes, and use a Brompton to get around New York almost every day, year round (snow permitting)-- but since the Brompton was made long after 1983, and I've already said so much, I will say no more.
Guy Lesser
Brooklyn, NY
USA