Some bikes look right only when they've got half of their paint missing and look beat right down to their inner tubes.
Well, all right, I didn't see the inner tubes on this one. But I imagine that they have, if nothing else, the feel and scent of a pair of flip-flops swished and slogged through curbside puddles during a summer rainstorm.
But, really, can you imagine this bike--from Worksman Cycles--new? The paint job may have been rather attractive, if in a utilitarian sort of way. Somehow, though, it wouldn't have looked right.
I must say that in my more than three decades of cycling, I've seen only one "virgin" Worksman. One shop in which I worked was an official Worksman dealer. Highland Park Cyclery did a brisk business inside a ramshackle building (which was torn down after HPC moved to fancier digs) at the foot of a commercial strip across the river from the college (Rutgers) I attended as an undergraduate. Some of the stores and restaurants offered deliveries, some of which they made on bikes. Those shops and restaurants already had their delivery bikes--Worksmans, mostly--before I started working at HPC.
So it was something of a surprise--to me, anyway--when I found myself assembling a brand-new Worksman. I didn't mind that: Although it wasn't a bike I'd've bought for myself, it was easy to work on. Plus, one could not deny that it was suited about as well as any product could be to its purpose.
What surprised me, though, was that it wasn't a business that bought one. Rather, he was--as I recall--a married middle-aged man who ran a "consulting business" from his home. He never consulted me about what his business consulted on, but he seemed prosperous and his family harmonious.
He said he'd wanted his Worksman to use as his "human powered station wagon." Later, I saw him hauling groceries, building supplies, books, and even furniture on it. Another thing I find interesting, in retrospect, was that he was looking to become less dependent on his car (which he sold not long after buying the Worksman) at a time when gasoline prices were falling, at least relative to what they were in the days around the Iran Hostage Crisis.
Although I saw that man on his Worksman nearly every day, it didn't seem to wear much. Granted, Highland Park wasn't as harsh an environment as New York or other urban zones for a bike. Plus, I'm sure he didn't subject it to the same kind of abuse as most delivery people did to theirs.
Apparently, in spite of the fact that the bikes never seem to die, there's enough of a market for new ones that the company is thriving, and did even during the leanest of times in the American bike market, and before the current vogue for "cruisers". I guess that disproves the notion that if a product is so well-made that it never needs replacement, the company making it will lose sales and stop making it, or even go out of business. (Some old-timers claim that was the story of Weinmann concave rims and Sun Tour V-GT derailleurs.) In any event, the bikes are being made in the Ozone Park area of Queens, NY, about seven miles from my apartment and just off the route of a few of my regular rides.
Afterword: I was looking up Highland Park Cyclery. Apparently, they've moved up the road into neighboring Edison and have renamed themselves Joyful Cycles, in a reference to 1 Thessolonians 5:16-18. Ironically, Frank, who owned HPC while I worked there, and his wife Wendy were about as antithetical to religious fundamentalism as any two people could be!
Well, all right, I didn't see the inner tubes on this one. But I imagine that they have, if nothing else, the feel and scent of a pair of flip-flops swished and slogged through curbside puddles during a summer rainstorm.
But, really, can you imagine this bike--from Worksman Cycles--new? The paint job may have been rather attractive, if in a utilitarian sort of way. Somehow, though, it wouldn't have looked right.
I must say that in my more than three decades of cycling, I've seen only one "virgin" Worksman. One shop in which I worked was an official Worksman dealer. Highland Park Cyclery did a brisk business inside a ramshackle building (which was torn down after HPC moved to fancier digs) at the foot of a commercial strip across the river from the college (Rutgers) I attended as an undergraduate. Some of the stores and restaurants offered deliveries, some of which they made on bikes. Those shops and restaurants already had their delivery bikes--Worksmans, mostly--before I started working at HPC.
So it was something of a surprise--to me, anyway--when I found myself assembling a brand-new Worksman. I didn't mind that: Although it wasn't a bike I'd've bought for myself, it was easy to work on. Plus, one could not deny that it was suited about as well as any product could be to its purpose.
What surprised me, though, was that it wasn't a business that bought one. Rather, he was--as I recall--a married middle-aged man who ran a "consulting business" from his home. He never consulted me about what his business consulted on, but he seemed prosperous and his family harmonious.
He said he'd wanted his Worksman to use as his "human powered station wagon." Later, I saw him hauling groceries, building supplies, books, and even furniture on it. Another thing I find interesting, in retrospect, was that he was looking to become less dependent on his car (which he sold not long after buying the Worksman) at a time when gasoline prices were falling, at least relative to what they were in the days around the Iran Hostage Crisis.
Although I saw that man on his Worksman nearly every day, it didn't seem to wear much. Granted, Highland Park wasn't as harsh an environment as New York or other urban zones for a bike. Plus, I'm sure he didn't subject it to the same kind of abuse as most delivery people did to theirs.
Apparently, in spite of the fact that the bikes never seem to die, there's enough of a market for new ones that the company is thriving, and did even during the leanest of times in the American bike market, and before the current vogue for "cruisers". I guess that disproves the notion that if a product is so well-made that it never needs replacement, the company making it will lose sales and stop making it, or even go out of business. (Some old-timers claim that was the story of Weinmann concave rims and Sun Tour V-GT derailleurs.) In any event, the bikes are being made in the Ozone Park area of Queens, NY, about seven miles from my apartment and just off the route of a few of my regular rides.
Afterword: I was looking up Highland Park Cyclery. Apparently, they've moved up the road into neighboring Edison and have renamed themselves Joyful Cycles, in a reference to 1 Thessolonians 5:16-18. Ironically, Frank, who owned HPC while I worked there, and his wife Wendy were about as antithetical to religious fundamentalism as any two people could be!
