Hasta La Vista, Esquire!

Yesterday, I mentioned Vista bicycles.  If you became a cyclist around the time I did--or were in junior high or high school when I was--in the US, you probably saw a lot of them, if you didn't have one yourself.

Vista Esquire, circa 1972

I got my Schwinn Continental just as the '70's Bike Boom was building up steam.  At that time, shops routinely ran out of Schwinns, Peugeots and Raleighs, which were the most popular brands in bike shops.  I had to wait three months for my Continental, which was not unusual.  But not everybody was willing to wait for one of those brands, and dealers knew that such customers would buy pretty much any ten-speed that resembled, even in the most superficial ways, bikes from those companies.  

Head badge from early Vista bicycle.

Some accused Schwinn of suppressing production in order to create such a demand and, consequently, drive up prices.  Truth was, they, like most other bike manufacturers, simply couldn't keep up with the demand: US Bicycle sales doubled from 1970 to 1972.  Even the boatloads of bikes that arrived daily from Europe and Asia weren't enough to satisfy consumers.

Schwinn Collegiate, circa 1972

Schwinn, however, did something else that made their bikes--and, by extension, other ten-speeds--more difficult to find, especially in rural areas.  On the eve of the Bike Boom, in the 1960s, Schwinn tried to eliminate from its dealer networks the small-town stores that sold tractors, feed and fertilizer, hardware, guns, cars or whatever else alongside Schwinn bicycles. (Some kept only a couple of bikes in the store and if the customer wanted another model or color, or needed a different size, the shop ordered it.)  The company wanted their bikes sold in showrooms devoted to their bikes and that stocked a sizeable number of Schwinn bikes and accessories.  Jake's Feed and Seed or Rick's Rifles couldn't or wouldn't make the investment in showrooms and inventory and were thus shut out of what would become a lucrative enterprise.

Vista Esquire, circa 1971

In response, a group of manufacturers and suppliers formed the National Independent Dealers Association and put together a line of bikes.  It's long been rumored that one of those manufacturers was Columbia bicycles of Westfield, Massachusetts:  Early Vista bicycles, for all of their attempts to look like Schwinns, had the style of everything from welding to graphics seen on the Columbia bicycles found in department stores.  

I knew more than a few kids--and a few adults--who rode them when they couldn't get Schwinns.  Vistas sold for about 20 percent less and were lighter than the Schwinn models they were designed to compete with.  From my limited experience with them, they clattered in that same clunky way as department store bikes like Columbia and Murray.  

The early Vistas had the same components as Columbias of the time:  Huret Allvit  derailleurs and steel one-piece cranks-- which were also found on Schwinns-- and cheap sidepull brakes.  Around 1972 or 1973, however, Vista began to equip their "Cavalier" and "Esquire" with their own brand of derailleur.  At least, that's what a lot of people thought.

Made-in-Japan Vista 15 speed bike with 64 cm(!) frame, circa 1975

In-the-know cyclists, however, soon realized that Vista had simply rebadged the SunTour GT rear and Spirt front derailleurs, and the ratcheted "power" shift levers bolted onto the handlebar stem.  Folks like me who had the chance to ride those Esquires and Cavaliers simply couldn't believe how much easier, and more accurately, their gears shifted than the ones on our Continentals and Varsities--or even on some of the more expensive European racing bikes.

Made-in-Japan Vista Elite with Shimano 600 components, circa 1978

That move probably did as much as anything to popularize the Vista brand and to keep sales even after the Bike Boom died down.  Some time around 1975 or so, Vista began to offer a line of "professional" bikes made for them in Japan.  Those bikes resembled the mid-level ten (and later twelve) speed bikes from Takara, Azuki and other Japanese marques, with their lugged frames made out of high-tensile (and, in a few cases, straight-gauge chrome-moly) steel tubing outfitted with components from SunTour, Shimano, Sakae Ringyo,Takagi and other well-known manufacturers from the Land of the Rising Sun. By the early '80's, Vista was even offering an "aero" model with flattened chrome-moly frame tubes, early "deep V" rims from Araya and Shimano's 600 EX "aero" components.

Head badge from Japanese-made Vista

Those Japanese-made Vistas were good, but mostly indistinguishable from other bikes from the by-then-more-familiar Japanese brands.  Thus, thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds who bought American-made Vistas weren't, if they were still riding, buying Japanese-made Vistas when they went to college and beyond.  Instead, they purchased ten- (or, by that time, twelve-) speeds from such iconic brands of the 1970s and '80s as Fuji, Miyata, Motobecane and Raleigh.

The Vista brand seems to have disappeared some time around 1984 or 1985--a couple of years after those "aero" bikes came out.  By that time, Schwinn was making a series of missteps that would cost much of the market share it once enjoyed.  (As an example, the company's management acted as if mountain bikes were just a passing fad at a time when other manufacturers were making their mark in that discipline.)  And the quality of other American mass-produced bikes (with a few exceptions like Trek), which wasn't very good to begin with, fell off precipitously and, within a few years, nearly all production shifted offshore.

American Style

A few posts ago, I talked about the 1970's  "Bike Boom."  One phenomenon related to it is the rise, for a time, of a sort of cottage industry.  For the first time since the Six-Day Races of the 1930's, a number of American artisans were building frames in the US.  At the same time, a few notable framebuilders emigrated to the US and set up shop here.

Until that time, about the only high-quality custom bike built in the US was the Schwinn Paramount.  Nearly all of the bikes ridden by US Olympians until 1984 were Paramounts; one urban legend of the time said that company founder Ignaz Schwinn and his sons and grandsons built those bikes--on which they never made any money--out of patriotism and their desire to ensure that Schwinn was the Great American Bike Builder.

But by the 1970's, a small but growing number of cyclists wanted high-quality lightweight bicycles.  Most people don't realize how labor-intensive building bicycles, especially those with hand-built frames is. That accounts for their high prices and why Schwinn could not keep up with the demand, as small as it was.  So, a few builders thought it was a good time to enter the frame.

Colin Laing came here from England, Falliero Masi from Italy and Francisco Cuevas from Argentina (He began his career in Spain) and set up shop.  Around the same time, Albert Eisentraut, Tom Kellogg, McLean Fonvielle and other US-born framebuilders began practicing their craft.  

One such builder was Brian Baylis, who built this bike:

I am sorry that this isn't a higher-resolution photo.  The details of this frame are just amazing.  And, of course, the color scheme is something I might have ordered.  But it's not a "fade"; even though this frame was built in the '80's, Baylis--or whoever ordered this frame--didn't get sucked into that unfortunate trend.

He just recently retired from framebuilding.  Others from his generation stopped building or were hired by larger bike manufacturers to build "custom" bikes for them.  The reasons why they did so were mainly economic:  In spite of their high cost to the consumer, most custom-built frames make very little money for those who build them.  It's also hard on the body:  that is one reason why Baylis has retired and Peter White, renowned for his wheelbuilding and his eponymous shop in New Hampshire, stopped building frames.  
 

A Parade of Bicycles for the Fourth of July

Today, in parades all over the nation, we will see bicycles decorated for the occasion.  Some are embodiments of patriotic fervor, like this bike:

From It's Overflowing

I'm not sure what brand it is, or whether it's even made in the US.  It has an American flag on its seat tube, but it looks new enough not to have been made here.  Still, it looks like an old American cruiser; it even has an Ashtabula crank--unlike the retro-repro models, which usually have cheap three-piece cotterless cranks.

But I'm not going to quibble.  For contrast, here's something with a more contemporary flair:

From Jersey Knitter

"Jersey Knitter" decorated those bikes a few years ago for the parade in the Garden State community of Montclair.  I would imagine that when those colors spin, the visual effect might be like a pinwheel firework.

In contrast to those examples of patriotic pedal power, here's a Dutch-style city bike decked out for the most American of holidays:

From  Detroit Mommies

In some weird way, this bike makes sense. If nothing else, the white bike makes a good "canvas", if you will, for the color palette.  Also, in a weird way, it makes sense historically.  After all, were it not for the Dutch (and French, Spanish and Poles), the American colonies might not have gained their independence from the British crown.  In fact, the Netherlands was the first nation to recognize the United States of America as a sovereign country.

Plus, the Dutch gave the world Mondrian. What would Look bicycles and the LaVie Claire team used for their logos if they didn't have Mondrian's compositions of lines and primary colors?

A Mixted-Up Free Spirit

This bike was parked on West 14th Street, near Sixth Avenue, in Manhattan:

It's a rather odd mishmash of bike design.  On one hand, it's a traditional American women's frame with a swooped-down top tube.  Another aspect of traditional American desgn is the mini-stay connecting the top tube with the down tube, which is also curvy in the manner of traditional American women's frames.

What I found interesting, though, is the top tube consists of twin parallel tubes, not unlike what we see on French-style mixte frames.  And those tubes are welded together, as they were on lower-priced American bikes of the time, rather than lugged and brazed or filet-brazed.  

This bike also has an Ashtabula (one-piece) crank, which was also typical of lower-priced American bikes of the time.  

The bike is a Free Spirit, which was a line of bikes sold by Sears during the 1970's and early 1980's.  Most of those bikes, as you might imagine, weren't the sort of things bought by high-mileage cyclists or entusiasts.  Most of them, like the one in the photo, were made by one of the lower-end American manufacturers like Murray or Huffy, although there were a couple of "lightweight" models--including one with Reynolds 531 straight-gauge tubing in the main triangle--made in Austria by Steyr-Puch, the same company that made Puchs and Austro-Daimlers.  Later Free Spirit bikes were made in Taiwan, before bikes from that country gained respect from dedicated cyclists.

They, and other sporting goods sold by Sears, were endorsed by none other than Ted Williams.  He was a great player, but somehow I don't think of him as a free spirit.  (I never saw him play, as he was a bit before my time.  However, he has my respect because, in his Hall of Fame induction speech, he advocated for the induction of Negro League players, none of whom were enshrined in the Hall at that time.)  

I'm sorry I couldn't take a better photo.  I was squirreling in between the few inches (I ain't as skinny as I used to be!)  between the bike and the scaffold for a building that's under removation.  So I couldn't get into a much better position to take a photo.  Also, I used my cell phone, as I didn't have my camera with me.  I  had gone to my doctor, who monitored the healing of the conjunctivitis I came down with, and I wasn't riding or thinking much about photography.  

The bike looks as if it was ridden once or twice after it was purchased, then it was holed up in a garage or basement before its current owner found it in a thrift shop or garage sale.  Although it's a bike I wouldn't buy for myself, I'm glad it's getting use,  And, even though I never liked the paint jobs on this or any other Free Spirit, I think this one is kinda cute, if in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way, with that basket on the front.