Caught In Hipster Hook

Yesterday I was riding up and down Hipster Hook.  As far as I know , it’s not an official designation. Roughly,it extends along the waterfront from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to the  Socrates Sculpture Park, about a kilometer from my apartment.

Along its length, an interesting combination of bikes are parked on its streets.  Some were inherited from parents or other family members.  Others were bought in yard sales, retrieved from basements or have more mysterious or unspeakable provenances, if you know what I mean.  Then there are the Dutch city bike- shaped objects and objects shaped like imitations or mockeries of vintage bikes.

In the latter category, I saw this on Franklin Avenue in Greenpoint, near the dead center of the Hook:

It looks like a Motobecane mixte from the ‘70’s, sort of.  Emphasis on the “sort of”:

Fortunately, a really nice vintage bike was parked just a few sign posts away:

Miyata has long been one of the mass manufacturers I respect most.  This particular bike is interesting because it alsobears the Koga name on its head tube.  To my knowledge, only in Europe were Miyatas sold as “Koga-Miyata.”

You Never Know Where You'll Find One

Here's another example of a bike that, as I rode by it, caught my eye for a reason I couldn't discern until I stopped to look:

It's a Motobecane mixte from the early 1980's--the "Nobly" model, I believe.  I assembled and sold a few of them back in the day. This one is a basic model, made from carbon steel tubing and with stamped dropouts that don't have a threaded "ear" to mount a derailleur.  If I recall correctly, it came with a Huret Eco derailleur, mounted with a "claw", as derailleurs often were on low- to mid-level ten- and twelve-speeds.

One thing I know, though, is that it didn't come with this component:

By the time this Motobecane was made, very few (if any) off-the-shelf bikes came equipped with the Specialtes TA Vis-5 (commonly called the "Cyclotouriste") crankset.  By the 1980's, even European touring bikes were coming with more modern triple cranksets from Stronglight, Sugino and Shimano, which didn't require as many mounting bolts--and, by which time, offered just about the same range of gears--as the TA. 

It's also incongruous to see the crank on this particular model because it was intended as a "sport" or "ville" bike.  While a few Rene Herse city bikes were equipped with TA Cyclotouriste cranksets (particularly if the owner lived in a hilly city), a bike like the one in the photo was more likely to have a double or single chainwheel in front.  

(For the record, I'm almost entirely sure that the bike in the photo originally had a Japanese-made Sakae Ringyo (SR) crankset.)

What I find really incongruous, though, is the fact that the TA crankset, which is intended for triple and wide-range double chainwheels, used as a single-speed.  It's a bit like using a Swiss Army knife to open a candy bar wrapper.

I wonder whether the bike's owner, or whoever installed the crankset (the same person?), realizes that he or she could sell the crankset on eBay for more than what he or she could get for the rest of the bike.