Un Volte, Un Pezzo Di Cartone E Solo Un Pezzo Di Cartone

The riders and collectors of vintage bikes and equipment seem to fall into two categories:  those who like scratches, patina and other signs of age, and those who want the "showroom" look.

Those who are in the latter category and take their obsession to an extreme need these:

If you think you're looking at two little oddly-shaped pieces of cardboard stamped with a classic Campagnolo logo, trust your perception.  Even if you do, though, you may not be able to believe what you read next:

Those two pieces of cardboard--which measure no more than about 15mm by 10mm each--are now selling for $6 USD.  If you want them, go to Boulder Bicycle. 

Now, of course, there are always people who will pay utterly insane amounts of money for the most mundane items if said items are emblazoned with logos the pre-eminent component maker in Italy (and, some would argue, the world) used while its founder, Tullio Campagnolo, was still alive.  I confess that I was one: I bought handlebar plugs and toe strap end buttons that cost twice as much as they would have without the Campy logo.  I thought they were "musts" for my Campagnolo-equipped Italian bikes.

However, the items you see in the photo were not, to my knowledge, made or sold by anyone else.  In fact, they weren't sold by anybody, at least not a la carte:  They came with new sets of Nuovo and Super Record, and Gran Sport, brakes from the mid-1960's,when Campagnolo first introduced their brakes, to the mid-1980's, after Tullio died and Campy discontinued their old NR, SR and GS gruppos.
 
The pieces of cardboard you see in the photo were used as packing material.  They were intended for removal after the brakes were installed on the bike, but manufacturers and dealers often left them on.  They didn't impede the function, as they fit over the acorn nuts on the outside of the brake mechanism.  As Boulder Bicycle points out, leaving them on gave the impression that the brakes were "factory fresh". 

I guess if you're trying to evoke or recall the feeling of seeing the brand-new, Campy-equipped, Colnago or Cinelli you saw for the first time (and despaired of affording) in your youth, six bucks is a bargain.
 

Taliah Lempert's Vintage Rollfast

I recently came across Taliah Lempert's website.  She is a Lower East Side artist who is known for her "bicycle paintings."  She's a cyclist herself, and she owns and rides a stable of bicycles that includes everything from a folding bike she rescued from the street to a nice Bob Jackson track bike.  (It's definitely not a "hipster fixie.")


Actually, I'd seen some of her paintings before.  But, until I found her website, I knew--as many other people know--her only as the "bicycle painter."  I don't mean that to dismiss or pigeonhole her:  I thought of her that way simply because, somehow, I managed not to know her name.  


I like her work because it actually manages to capture both the aesthetic pleasures as well as the dynamic beauty of bicycles.  That, I believe is a result of her deep love of bicycles and cycling.  


Among her paintings, I was most taken, oddly enough, by this one:

I say "oddly enough" because it's a bike I've never ridden.  In fact, I've pedaled astride a tandem exactly twice in my life.  Each time was pleasant enough.  But it's difficult to find good partners and situations for riding a tandem.  Plus, the care and feeding of one is difficult and expensive, not to mention that storing one in a one-bedroom apartment isn't easy.


So, living in New York, one doesn't see many tandems.  And one is even less likely to see the one in the painting, for it hasn't been made in at least thirty years.  That was about when I saw the only specimen I've ever seen of this particular tandem, which was made by Rollfast.


I saw a fair number of Rollfast bikes when I was a kid.  That's not surprising when you consider that I grew up in Brooklyn and New Jersey, and Rollfast was a locally-produced bike.  They were first made during the 1890's by the D.P. Harris hardware company, located just three blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center.


At that time, that part of Lower Manhattan--which includes, in addition to the former World Trade Center site, parts of what are now known as Tribeca, Soho and slices of what would become Chinatown-- was known more for grimy factories and musty warehouses than fashionable stores and trendy bars.    If you saw Tribeca or Soho today, you'd have trouble remembering that those were once gritty manufacturing districts. Fifty years ago--before much of the neighborhood was cleared out for construction of the World Trade Center-- there were factories that made everything from ladies' hats to construction machinery.   One out of every four books purchased in the United States was printed and bound in that part of town.  And, of course, Harris was making Rollfast bicycles --and later, parts, after Harris entered a partnership with the H.P. Snyder Company of Little Falls, NJ and Snyder took over the manufacture of the bikes.


Although Harris wasn't driven out by the World Trade Center, most of the other manufacturing companies were.   What seemed to cause Rollfast's decline--and retreat--was the ten-speed bike boom of the early 1970's.  All of Rollfast's bikes were heavy, and most of them  had balloon tires.   Plus, they were sold through department stores like Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penney, though often under those stores' private labels.  So, even if the quality of Rollfast was equal to that of, say, Schwinn--which, in fact, it wasn't--they never would have had the same cachet as Schwinns or other bikes sold by bicycle dealers.  But Rollfasts were sturdy and sometimes quite lovely.


Perhaps one day they will have the status of an old Schwinn, or possibly a Ross.  The latter brand will probably be the next "hot" vintage bike because they were well-made, if heavy, and because it's now all but impossible to get a vintage Schwinn at anything like a sane price.  Rollfast's  day will come, too, I believe.