Bike Shop

It's just a 1957 sales receipt from a bicycle store on Coney Island Avenue, but it told a little story. I remember the shop only vaguely, wheel rims hanging  from the wall, a distinctive smell of rubber and bike grease, a laconic old guy named Bill.  The amount paid, $15.04, was no small change. I asked my in-house bike expert, Monte, if he could interpret what it had bought.

"Well, 12 inches is the giveaway clue here," he said. "The right size for a tricycle. Velocipede...looks like your dad bought someone a tricycle."

Next, applying my own impressive skill at typing words into search boxes, I unearthed a website about popular toys of the 1950s, and discovered this beautiful Deluxe Velocipede, which retailed for about $14.95.

The date on the receipt, July 17th, would have been my sister Marlene's third birthday. It must have been a happy one for her.

Sea Schwinn

It got me to thinking about bicycle shops, those fixers and purveyors of such important machines. And since Monte worked in a bike shop, Sea Schwinn, for many years, I asked him to tell me a little about its atmosphere and characteristics.

"First of all," he said, "people come into a bike shop to buy something that they are anticipating with pleasure. There's something intrinsically wonderful about a bike. It's not just utilitarian.  Also, newness permeates the place, the good smell of new bikes."

"But another distinctive thing about a bike shop is the clutter," he added. "Bikes are only elegant when they're out in the world. When they're in an enclosed space like that, there's never enough room. You always feel like you're going to knock something over."

Because Monte met some lifelong friends at Sea Schwinn, I asked him about the social dynamics there. It was one of the busiest bike shops in southern California, and it sounds like everyone worked long hours assembling bikes in record numbers but also joking around, flinging balled up shop rags at each other in sleep-deprived silliness. You might be there in the back trying to get caught up before business hours and customers would rap insistently on the window, no matter how early or how late it was.  These guys worked hard, but they laughed a lot…and they were seriously good mechanics.

I understand that John Wayne was the most famous customer at that particular shop, but what interests me most are friends of ours who practically grew up in there, and for whom the bike shop is like a school they all attended, and bicycles an enduring bond.

I once stopped by a bike shop in San Francisco where they sold bumper stickers that said, "Rosebud was a bicycle." My feelings exactly. Anyone who's seen Citizen Kane knows that if Kane's childhood sled is the symbol of the security, the hope, the exhilaration of motion, and the innocent pleasures of childhood, it might just as well be a bicycle.

Or a 12-inch Velocipede trike.

Mike Hewitt, another bike shop graduate and lifelong bicycle friend, kept a camera at hand and was always quietly documenting. He took the bike shop photos shown above during his time at Sea Schwinn in the 1970s.

Bike friends and aficionados, you might also be interested in this post or this one.