Can They Carry Stuff On A "Muscle" Bike?

When I was a kid, "muscle bikes" became popular.  They were meant to emulate "muscle cars" like the 1967-74 era Chevy Camaro RS, Ford Mustang Mach 1 and Dodge Challenger SE or racing motorcycles.  Mainly, what bicycles like the ones from the Raleigh Chopper and Schwinn Krate series had in common with those machines were flashy graphics and stick shifters.  

One difference is that the "muscle cars" were designed to appeal to their drivers' desire to feel more powerful and virile (They didn't have Viagra in those days!), while the placement of the "stick" shifter on the bicycle imitators seemed chosen specifically to decrease the fertility rate of a generation of young boys.

Many an adult expressed umbrage at those bikes, mainly because they were garish rather than for dangers like the "stick" shifters. (Those same adults almost always expressed concern for their kids' safety!)  I think the best reason to disapprove of those bikes, though, was that they taught kids that their bikes were just "stepping stones" to the "bigger and better" machines they would drive when they became of age.

One thing I can say about them, though, is that kids usually enjoyed them:  There was no pretense to practicality about them.  Which begs the question (for me, anyway):  Can a kids' bike be whimsical and practical at the same time?

The Wheelie Bar

The eve of the 1970s North American Bike Boom was, interestingly, the heyday of "muscle" cars and "chopper" races.  So, it's no surprise that bicycles were made to evoke, in every way possible, the roaring engines and screeching tires of Daytona, Indy, LeMans and other motorized races.

The best-known of those bicycles were probably the Schwinn "Krate" series and Raleigh "Chopper".  Sometimes I think the latter name referred to what happened to bones when we attempted some of the stunts we saw on "Wide World of Sports".

Whatever our skill (or stupidity) levels, we all could do "wheelies".  We didn't need "training wheels", as we derisively called this item:

Fantasies On Speed, Not Steroids

The other day, and the day before that, I wrote about vintage bike parts that were (and, in some cases, still are) elite, if not sublime.

Now I have to balance it out with the thoroughly ridiculous.  Also, I feel an obligation to show that not all crazy, impractical ideas are being conceived and carried out (of what?) today.

Specifically, I am going to write about a totally ridiculous shift lever.  Having been a cyclist for four decades, and having worked in bike shops, I've seen some doozies, including ones longer and wider than railroad spikes--mounted on top tubes, no less.  (Could that be a cause of the decrease in fertility?)  They are in the category of, "They don't make them like that anymore--thank Goddess!"

So is this shifter I found on eBay:

I mean, in what universe is a shifter shaped like that?  Or, for that matter, in what reality does one combine it with a speedometer.

I'll tell you what milieu I'm talking about, because I spent part of my childhood in it.  It's the decade or so--roughly from the mid-1960s until the mid- or late 1970s--when bikes were designed for boys who, from atop their banana seats and behind their "ape hanger" bars, dreamed of driving "muscle cars" on the Daytona flats.   

Said bikes were designed by like-minded boys, some of them in the bodies of 40-something men.  And the boys of that time are now the 40-, 50- and even 60-something men who still are driven (pun intended) by such fantasies.

I'll bet that someone like that will buy the shift lever/speedometer I found on eBay.  I mean, who else would?