An Emblem of Bicycle History

 Believe or not, bicycle manufacturers were major, or at least significant, employers in the US until World War II.

I’m not talking only about Schwinn.  A few years ago, I wrote about the Shelby Bicycle Company, which took its name from the Ohio community in which it was based.

Another example of such a relationship between a town and a bike-maker is that of Emblem Bicycles and Angola, a New York Stare village 3.3 kilometers (2 miles) from Lake Erie and 50 kilometers (22 miles) from downtown Buffalo.

Unless you are even deeper than I am into pre-War bikes, you probably haven’t heard of Emblem bicycles.  Apparently, they began making bikes during the first Bike Boom in the late 19th Century and continued until the eve of World War II. During the 1910s, Emblwm, like some other bike-makers, began to make motorcycles, which hadn’t evolved into their own category. As a matter of fact, Emblem, like other fabricators of two-wheeled vehicles, were identified—and identified by the public—as a bicycle company even when their production of motorized bikes exceeded that of traditional pedaled bicycles.

So, yesterday, when a fire burned in the historical building that the company called home, local media reports identified it as the “historic Emblem Bicycle building “—even  though Emblem bicycles haven’t been made there, or anywhere, in about 80 years.

Two dozen fire companies fought and contained the blaze.  Fortunately, no one was hurt.

Pedals Worthy Of His Bike: He's Making Them

I first became serious about cycling as a teenager in the mid-1970s.  It seemed that every minute, I was learning about some brand of bicycle that wasn't Schwinn, Raleigh or Peugeot, and components--yes, I learned that most bicycles are made from components manufactured by other companies!  So, of course, I encountered all of the traditional European names like Weinmann, Mafac, Huret, Simplex--and, of course, Campagnolo.  Hey, Campy even made parts for high-performance race cars and NASA space vehicles!

Not long after, I would find out about Japanese makers of high-quality equipment like Sugino, Nitto and SunTour, whose derailleurs became my "go-to".  Nitto, Sugino and Campagnolo, of course, survive:  All except one of my Mercians is equipped with Nitto bars and/or stems, and Sugino cranksets.  Negrosa, my black 1973 Mercian Olympic, sports the same-year Campagnolo Nuovo Record gruppo (and Cinelli bars and stem) that came with it.

Sadly, the SunTour name lives only in mostly low-end suspension forks under the SR-SunTour brand.  Weinmann is a marque for mostly heavy and low-end rims made in China or Taiwan, and Mafac, Huret and other classic names are gone altogether.

Another name I encountered in my early cycling days is Chater-Lea.   By the time I learned about them, four decades ago, they were on the brink of extinction.  They would file for bankruptcy in 1987, and seemed to live on only in the memories of those of us old enough (in my case, just barely) to know about classic British bike parts.

Now, I have only seen a few Chater-Lea parts:  sturdy bottom brackets for those pencil-thin cottered cranks that found their way onto beautiful old English (and other) frames before cotterless chainsets (yes, that's what the English call them) took over the peloton and market--and, some beautifully-made pedals.  Their "rattrap" design was something like Lyotard's, but better, in materials, workmanship and aesthetics.

It seems, though, that Chater-Lea suffered the fate of Lyotard and other old-line bicycle component makers in the 1980s:  designs and market preferences changed, but companies like C-L and Lyotard didn't.  With the advent of mid-priced cotterless cranks and clipless pedals, the market for high-quality cottered bottom brackets and traditional cage or platform pedals all but disappeared.  In the meantime, companies that changed their designs and product lines, as often as not, shifted their production to low-wage countries. That is how nearly all of the British bicycle component (and a good part of the country's bicycle) industry, along with many of its counterparts in France and the rest of Europe, disappeared in the 1980s. 

Well, it seems that us old folks (OK! OK!) aren't the only ones who remember Chater-Lea.  Andy Richman, a Brit who lived and worked in Washington, DC, for a number of years, has returned to his native country to  resurrect the Chater-Lea name and oversee the design, manufacture and launch of its first product in more than three decades--and its first new product in more than half a century.  

Appropriately enough, it's a pedal.  But it's not any old crank appendage.  Even someone who's not a cycle enthusiast can see that it's made with better materials and more care--and purely and simply looks better--than your typical "rat trap", with all due respect to MKS (whose pedals I use).  The new Chater-Lea "Grand Tour" pedal is made from marine grade 316 and hardened 17-4PH stainless steel studded with polished brass rivets.  

Oh, and it's made in the UK--in Bristol, to be exact.  "This stuff needs to be made in the UK," says Richman.  It's "high-end, beautiful, artisanal," he explains.  "If jobs are going to come back to the UK, it's got to be for making this kind of stuff."

The new Chater-Lea Grand Tour pedal

Chater-Lea made "this kind of stuff" that was the class (along with BSA) of the bicycle component world.  Begun in 1890, it would branch out into motorcycle and car parts, and complete motorcycles and cars.  During World War II, it made parts for the Mosquito Fighter Bomber.  After the war, Chater-Lea returned to its bicycle roots and enjoyed prosperity during the 1950s but started to falter, along with many other companies in the British cycle industry, during the 1960s.  (Little did we know that all of those Raleigh and Dawes bikes we saw during the 1970s Bike Book were the shadows of companies that would "give up the ghost" a decade or two later!)  

Richman is himself a bike enthusiast who knew of the brand before his quest to revive it.  What motivated him, though, was a shopping trip in Brighton that took him to Condor, one of the premier bicycle shops in Britain.  There, he eyed a 1948 Condor frame and persuaded the shop's owner to sell it to him.  As Richman left the store, the owner remarked, "You do know there's really only one set of components worthy of going on this bike?  Chater-Lea."

Someone, I forget who, once said, "If I want to read a good book, I write one."  It seems that Richman knew that if he couldn't find "worthy" components, he'd have to make them.  And he's begun, with his Grand Tour pedal.

These Wheels Are Returning To Their Roots

Henry Ford was a bicycle mechanic.  His first car was basically two bicycles connected to a carriage and a motor.  But, even though he made four-wheeled motorized vehicles available to the masses, Ford never abandoned his pedaled two-wheeled.  Even after he became one of the world's wealthiest individuals, he took a three-mile spin every day after supper.  Time magazine showed him on one of those rides, which he took on his 77th birthday.

Around the time Ford was fixing bikes, two brothers in Detroit were doing the same. They would patent a dust-repellent hub and bottom bracket and found a company that manufactured some of Detroit's earliest bicycles.  Later, they would enter the same line of business that would make Ford--and Detroit--famous.

The siblings in question are John and Horace Dodge.  

Then there was a bike mechanic and racer from France who, like Ford and the Dodges, would turn his energies from two wheels to four and add a motor.  He achieved renown as one of the early auto racers and, like Henry, John and Horace, would start his own auto-making company.

I am referring to Louis Chevrolet.

Of course, if you have too much time on your hands and idle brain capacity, you can speculate about what bikes might be like if the companies Ford, the Dodge brothers and Chevrolet made them.  

Actually, we might get an idea of what Chevrolet Cycles might be by looking at what's on offer for 2019.  Chevrolet, of course, became one of the most iconic marques of General Motors.  

Yes, GM is going to make and market two models of bicycle for the coming year.  But they won't be like the offerings of Shinola or the Detroit Bike. Instead, the company's two-wheelers will be pedal-assisted e-bikes.  General Motors CEO Mary Barra said, in a press conference, that the new e-bikes would be "designed to help people stay mobile in an increasingly difficult-to-navigate urban landscape."

There is a kind of irony or poetic justice in all of this:  GM, Ford, Chrysler and other auto companies helped to make the "increasingly difficult-to-navigate urban landscape."

Oregon Handmade Show Cancelled: Will Portland Remain "Bicycle City?"

In January, I wrote about an Ohio town that was best known for the bicycle company that, from 1925 to 1953, manufactured its wares right in its center.  The Shelby Bicycle Historical Society was recently formed to commemorate the role bicycle-manufacturing played in Shelby, about 150 kilometers southwest of Cleveland.

Other communities have been defined by bicycle manufacturing.  Although Raleigh is associated with Nottingham, the center of the British bicycle industry was Birmingham, where a company bearing its name--Birmingham Small Arms, or BSA--made the most sought-after componentry in the peloton, as well as some fine racing bikes.  

Likewise, for most of the 20th Century, the nexus of France's bicycle industry was St. Etienne, a gritty industrial city about 50 kilometers from Lyon.  Many editions of the Tour de France have included a stage that began, ended or passed through the city, and a French rider winning such a stage is a point of pride for the nation.

For much of the time Birmingham and St. Etienne dominated their respective country's bicycle industries, a certain bike-maker was a major employer on the South Side of Chicago.  I am referring to Schwinn which, as Sheldon Brown pointed out, was the only American brand with even a pretense of quality during the "Dark Ages" of cycling in the US.

Chicago, Birmingham, Saint Etienne and Shelby all had their heydays as centers of bicycle (and, in the cases of Birmingham and Saint Etienne, component) making.  But, like empires, those enterprises fell.  Cheaper imports, mainly from Asia, are often blamed (less so for Shelby than the others).  But the biggest reasons for their demise are their failures to keep up with changes in demand as well as innovations.  Schwinn, like other companies, sponsored racing teams, but limited their efforts almost entirely to the US, until it was too late.  So, the Paramount line, begun in 1938, was, by the 1960s, a dinosaur (its fine craftsmanship notwithstanding) compared to racing bikes from Europe.

More recently, the US city most commonly associated with bike-making has been Portland, Oregon.  One difference, however, is that in the Rosebud City's bike-building scene has more closely paralleled its "craft" beer milieu than it has reflected trends and practices in mass-production bicycles.  During Portland's frame-building heyday, from about 2005 to 2010, it was claimed that over a hundred builders practiced their craft in a city of about 600,000 residents.  

It was during that time that the Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show began as an annual event in 2007.  Builders enthusiastically set up booths to show their creations to ever-appreciative audiences.  How much those exhibits translate into orders is, however, a topic of debate:  Many people go to "ooh" and "aah" at frames they will never be able to afford, or simply don't feel a need to order, their fine artistry not withstanding.  

Framebuilder Joseph Ahearne at the 2017 Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show

The phenomena I've described are being blamed for the cancellation of this year's show.  Some builders said it simply wasn't worth the time and money it took to, not only create and set up an exhibit, but to actually get to the show.  Portland and Oregon are more spread out than, say, San Francisco or any number of East Coast cities one can name. That means it's harder to entice people to attend when an event is scheduled to be  held in an out-of-the-way place, as this year's show was.

But other factors were chipping away at enthusiasm for the show.  One is that more people are buying bikes and equipment online.  Another, though, is the builders themselves:  Some have had to scale down their operations, move or simply leave the business altogether.  While the bicycle industry is trending larger--think bigger conglomerates selling more and more merchandise at lower prices--builders who make their frames by hand work in the opposite direction:  They sell less, and for higher prices.

What that means is that in spite of the high price tags for such frames, most builders don't get rich.  In fact, many barely make a living at all.  All it takes is a major rent increase in their workspace to put them out of business:  Building bikes requires a lot of space, and if builders are forced out of their loft or wherever they're working, they have can have a very difficult time finding a comparable amount of space for a rent they can afford.  

Especially if the city is gentrifying, as Portland is.  The things that made it so appealing--its roots as a blue-collar town, its scenery and its edgy arts and social scene--are attracting trust fund kids and other people with money.  It's more or less what happened to places like Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which is now just as expensive as Manhattan but now manages to be as much a theme park as Las Vegas but with all of the character of Davenport, Iowa.

Now, I've never been to Portland, so I can't say whether it's becoming as dispiriting as Williamsburg is to me now.  (A few years ago, I felt differently.)  But from what I'm reading, the city sorts of folks depicted in "Portlandia" are changing their careers or lifestyles, or moving out.  So are the kinds of unique and unusual businesses--including custom frame building--associated with the city?

Could it be that Portland is ceding its place as the bicycle capital of the United States?  If it is, perhaps the change was inevitable: Small, labor-intensive enterprises with niche audiences generally don't last when the real estate becomes expensive.  How many bike shops, craft beer breweries, fabric weavers or tatoo artists are on 57th Street in Manhattan?