Mike, you're very correct, I meant '70's. I was in Tigertown from '72 through '76. Used to do the Saturday morning training group rides. There were some juniors from one of the prep schools down the road toward Trenton - Hun School, I think -- who rode fixed gear up and down the Washington road? or Great Road? hill. We would go north to Blawenburg and a bit more, then east to the Canal and loop back to Princeton.
I still remember the little hole-in-the-wall shop on John Street. Fritz and Dick loved to see people get interested in bike riding.
If I show up in any pictures, it would be on an orange Stella. Black wool shorts with chamois; I had some jersies with wide horizontal bands. One was probably a facsimile of a Belgian team jersey, another yellow with red and white, the third brown with white. And a blue and white hairnet helmet.
I had a Suntour frewheel that the retaining ring backed off on and it self-destructed out on the canal road. Found a stick and poled myself along. Dick took one look at it and told me if I had a real freewheel like a Regina that it never would have happened. Made a nice paperweight after that.
Great place to ride a bike at the time. I've been back, and traffic is much worse, and so were the road surfaces, even in a car. -Joel - Still in Snohomish.
________________________________
> Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 23:49:24 -0800
> Subject: Re: [CR] Cinelli B lore
> From: emeneff@gmail.com
> To: bberryacres@hotmail.com
>
> Joel, you mean the mid - 1970's. I worked at Kopps in the early - mid
> 1980's (When they moved to 43 Witherspoon St.) and the mod. b's were
> long gone, except when they came in for repair work. I did work (and
> accompany) quite a bit with Dick, tho. What a character (epic
> understatement). I don't remember Dick ever talking about the color
> that most people found contentious, it was the steel cottered
> cranksets. I heard Dick repeatedly talk about how he would try to
> convince people that steel cranks were good enough for Fausto Coppi,
> good enough for them. Even in the early - mid 70's, I think people
> expected better on a Cinelli.
>
> I think I now remember seeing you in some of the old Centurian's I
> have.Tom Lederer let me xerox a large pile of his old ones and I still
> break them out occasionally when I feel old. Were you one of the
> youngsters who used to ride in the plaid pants and/or bermuda shorts in
> some of the pictures ? I started riding around 79-80 and I feel lucky
> to have experienced the semi-rural roads around Princeton at the time.
> There was still a dairy farm at the bottom of Rosedale Road not even a
> mile out of town. I rode the last two Littlebrook races. Such a fun
> time and a fun place. So many good Fritz / Dick / Marie stories. I only
> caught the tail end of the 14 John St. days, but I wish I been there a
> bit earlier.
>
> Regards,
> Mike Fabian in San Francisco
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 11:08 PM, Joel Niemi
> > wrote:
>
> This may be a rehash for some, but Viktor Kapitonov won the road race
> at the 1960 Rome Olympics
>
> http://www.youtube.com/
> (helmets? who needs a helmet, other than maybe the one rider being
> carried off bodily)
>
> and the story I've read elsewhere is that the soviet team rode cinelli
> B's. They visited Cinelli on the way home, and all were given
> Supercorsas -- the story being that Cinelli didn't want the world to
> know that it was possible to get a gold medal on the second-tier bike.
>
> As I recall, in the mid-80's Kopp's Cycle in Princeton, NJ sold quite a
> few of them. Dick Swan told people who wanted a color other than red
> that the color didn't make the bike go any faster.
>
> - Joel Niemi / Snohomish, Washington, USA