Today was an unusually warm day for this time of year. Because of a scheduling oddity, I didn't have classes today. So, I took Tosca out for a ride through some of the landmarked areas of Woodside and Jackson Heights, as well as the promenade along that starts near LaGuardia Airport and goes to the World's Fair Marina.
Then I had an appointment in Manhattan, to which I rode Vera. I changed bikes because I changed clothes: from sweats and trainer shoes to a skirt, blouse and dressier shoes.
After my appointment, I took a quick swing down to Bicycle Habitat, from which I ordered Tosca, Arielle and Helene as well as some of the components I hung on them and other equipment I use with them. Hal wasn't in, but I did see two employees I hadn't seen in a while: Aaron and Sheldon.
Sheldon is an old riding buddy whom I didn't see for about a decade or so until I bumped into him in the shop not long before my surgery. I don't think I'd seen him since some time in the fall: I think I showed up on his off-days or -hours.
Aaron, like Sheldon, has been working in the shop for some time. He doesn't want me to publish his photo. However, he said I could publish photos, and write about, of one of his bikes, of which I'd only heard before today.
It's a nice Bob Jackson from, I believe, the '70's. He's outfitted it with contemporary components: The only "period" pieces are the SunTour ratchet shifters and Cyclone rear derailleurs. I can understand using those: I used them myself, back in the day.
I remember, as a teenager, seeing Bob Jacksons, Mercians, Ron Coopers and the frames of some other English builder--I don't remember which, except that I don't think it was Jack Taylor--in a catalogue somewhere.
I knew that the best racing bikes were believed to be those from Italy and a few American custom builders. The English made some excellent racing frames, too; in my heart of hearts, I really wanted one of those--or one from a French constructeur--even more than an Italian bike. I would eventually ride, and race, on a couple of Italian bikes, but I really liked the ride qualities of those English frames (I got to try a few that belonged to customers in shops where I worked.). Plus, the Italian racing frames always seemed gaudy to me, even in my youth; I always felt that my "bike for life" would have the meticulous lugwork and other detail of those English builders. Their workmanship impressed me more than what I saw on the Italian bikes.
The only braze-ons the frame has are for the water bottle cage (on the downtube only) and a "stop" for the shift lever band. That was typical on bikes of that time: at least a couple of bikes I owned were so made.
That frame is at least thirty years old, and it's not hard to imagine Aaron--or somebody else--riding it for another thirty years. I think Bob Jacksons are still being made--although, by this time, I rather doubt Bob Jackson himself is building them. I don't know whether Ron Coopers or Jack Taylors are still being built: I haven't seen references to them in recent catalogues or magazines. At least it's nice to know that Mercian is still keeping up the flame they, and those other builders, kept burning for decades.
I forget who told me that there's no idea so bad that nobody will try to revive it.
Here's a case in point: low-normal rear, and top-normal front, derailleurs.
On the bikes most of you ride, pushing the right lever forward shifts you to a higher rear gear (top-normal), and pulling the lever brings you to a lower gear. Conversely, pulling on the left lever shifts your chain to the larger front sprocket, and pushing it drops your chain to the smaller, or lower gear (low-normal). The derailleurs I'm going to talk about do the exact opposite.
It seems that every generation or so, someone tries to revive the idea. Why, I don't know.
This is an early example of the genre: the Simplex Champion de France, circa 1935. Believe it or not, it was a technological marvel for its time, even though it couldn't handle much more than a 22 tooth rear cog and a difference of 8 between the largest and smallest cog.
It is, I think, rather elegant: In particular, the cage shape makes me think of a part of a piano rather than a bicycle. However, the shifts of single-pulley derailleurs are inherently imprecise; low-normal operation only exacerbates the problem.
As one might expect, World War II halted derailleur development and all but stopped their manufacture altogether. The 1950's would see new innovations and experiments, including the pull-chain mechanism (which Shimano briefly revived on its mountain bike derailleurs during the late 1990's) and, most important, a derailleur with a parallelogram mechanism rather than a single arm or cam. However, Simplex and other companies also revived low-normal rear derailleurs.
To be fair, the first modern rear derailleur (and, some would say, the first that shifted well)--the Sun Tour Gran Prix of 1964--also was low-normal. But within two years, Sun Tour abandoned that operating principle, realizing that the slant-parallelogram design (which is found on every derailleur of any quality made in the last quarter-century or so) did more to improve shifting than any other idea or innovation.
However, Sun Tour continued to make front derailleurs that were "top normal" well into the 1970's. I had one such derailleur. It shifted well enough until the spring started to lose its tension. With a low-normal front derailleur, you can sometimes adjust the cable tension to make up for the lack of spring tension. That's not an option with high-normal front derailleurs.
It's also not an option with low-normal rear derailluers. I briefly rode one on my mountain bike about fifteen years ago: a Shimano XTR. Luckily for me, the shop from which I bought it allowed me to trade it in for a more conventional XT rear. The owner of the shop reasoned that the amount of wear I put on the XTR made it depreciate enough to warrant an XT as a replacement.
I'd say that was an example of addition by subtraction: I was happy with the XT, as I was with an earlier version of the same derailleur. On the other hand, I never liked the low-normal XTR, which was one of the most expensive derailleurs made at the time. It never had the firm, postive feel I like when shifting: Even when the gear engaged smoothly and silently after a shift, it always felt as if the chain would slip or jump off the gear at any moment.
Other cyclists with whom I rode--who included hard-core mountain bikers as well as roadies like me who went off-road for a change of pace--felt the same way about that derailleur. And, in looking back at some old magazines and books, it seems that every time low-normal derailleurs come out, the high-mileage and hard-driving riders don't like them. Even less-experienced riders who thought they were the newest and latest thing soon soured on them.
I see that Shimano has given up on low-normal (or, in their lingo, "rapid rise") rear derailleurs, at least for now. I wonder whether they, or any other company, will revive them. Maybe they will in a decade or so, when there's a cohort of cyclists who didn't use rapid-rise and who don't heed this gem of wisdom from Ecclesiastes: There is nothing new under the sun.
Now here's some real old-school lugwork.
There's a "mirror," if you will, of the front fork pattern on the rear stay, near the seat cluster.
I tried to get a better image of it, but it's in a display window. That window is long past displaying anything, with all of the clutter in it.
The shop behind that window isn't much bigger than my living room, so they have to use every available space.
Gray's, on Lefferts Boulevard in Kew Gardens, has most likely been in business for longer than I've been in this world. Bernice,the proprietess is a very sweet woman who's probably a decade or two older than I am. Her husband passed on a few years ago.
One thing that makes the shop interesting--and a reason why I stop in from time to time--is their stock of older parts. Bernice knows what they are, and what they're supposed to fit, but she's not a cyclist herself and doesn't claim to be any sort of bike enthusiast.
She is one of those old-time shopkeepers who, on slow days, chats with people in the neighborhood. Today, a woman who seemed to be a couple of decades older than her was there, and they were just talking about family, the passage of time and such.
It's one of those shops that opened when the neighborhood around it was very different. At one time, Kew Gardens--in which George Gershwin lived and Paul Simon and Jerry Springer were born and raised-- was full of neo-Tudor houses and had an almost-suburban feel. I suspect the shop opened during that time. Later, Kew Gardens was nicknamed "Crew Gardens," for all of the airline personnel who lived there.
Many of the private houses have been torn down and apartment buildings have risen in their place. Now, Kew Gardens is mainly a community of Orthodox Jews and emigres from Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan. Among them, there doesn't seem to be very many cyclists: Just about everyone I see riding comes, as I do, from other parts of Queens or from Brooklyn.
What seems to keep the shop in business is that it's near Forest Park. And the shop is one of the few in the city that rents bikes. A few cyclists I know are familiar with the shop; apparently, they go there for the old parts and the pleasant atmosphere, even if it's in cramped quarters.
Gray's isn't what some cyclists would consider to be a "pro" shop, and doesn't try to be one. It's, more than anything, an old-fashioned family business that happens to deal in bikes. In a way, it's fitting to find an old-school Hetchins there.
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