Old-School

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.

Pancake Rides

This is the time of year for the "pancake ride."


You've probably been on one:  You ride to someplace where pancakes (and foods that go with them) are served.  And then you spend the rest of your ride burning off what you just ate.


In two of the clubs in which I rode, Pancake rides were hugely popular and, certainly, the winter rides that had the biggest turnouts.


The club to which I belonged when I was in college (Rutgers) held those rides every other Sunday in January and February, if I recall correctly.  The rides took us from the urban confines of New Brunswick, New Jersey into the rural areas of western New Jersey.  Actually, many of the club's rides did, but the Pancake ride had a particular destination:  a firehouse that served pancake breakfasts during the winter. I think the proceeds were used to fund the volunteer fire department located in the firehouse, and that everyone who cooked, served, seated people and did all of the other work were family members or friends of the firefighters.


One of the greatest draws of that ride, apart from the complete lack of traffic outside of New Brunswick on a winter Sunday morning and the bucolic countryside, was what we called The Bottomless Plate.  Yes, it was an all-you-can-eat affair.  In addition to the pancakes, the house served hash browns, sausage, bacon and scrambled eggs, as well as coffee, tea and hot chocolate.  It may not have been the best-quality stuff, but when you're cold and hungry, just about anything edible is delicious and hearty.  


As I recall, that firehouse was very welcoming to us.  That's particularly surprising given how much we ate:  Those of you who are better than I am in math can calculate how much Bis-Quick it took to feed thirty to forty cyclists who'd just cycled twenty  or so miles in twenty-degree weather with a wind-chill of about five or ten degrees.  Also, I should add that some of us were young (i.e., college age) males, who typically had bottomless stomachs and empty wallets.


These days, of course, I'm not a young male.  But all of my changes don't seem to have filled in the bottomless pit in my stomach!  


Anyway, I decided, just for the heck of it, to type "pancake rides" into a Google search box.  It seems that they're going on everywhere, and they're not confined to winter.  Still, I'll probably always think of them as winter rides.   I mean, how many other foods feel warmer and cozier after a ride on a cold day?

As Good As A Tree...Or A Colnago?

One of the most parodied (and most eminently parodyable) poems in the English language is Joyce Kilmer's "Trees."


Hmm...Even though I know it wouldn't have fit the meter or rhythm of the poem, it might've been better if he'd written, "I think that I shall never see/A bikestand as good as a tree."

Certainly a parking meter isn't quite as nice a stand--although it's a lot easier to loop a chain around it:

The paint job tells me someone was trying to make that bike unattractive to thieves.  However, if that was the owner's/rider's intention, something else on the bike counters it:

Now, if you're going to so much trouble to make the bike unappealing, why would you announce, in screaming red letters, that it's a Colnago?


Of course, the bike is not a Colnago. (I know; I owned and raced on one and have seen many others.) Could it be that it's some kind of post-modern irony (translation: a joke)?  Could this cyclist be saying, "Ha, ha, it's not a Colnago?"

Who'd've thunk it--putting the Colnago name on a bike would make it less valuable?  What if people put Mercedes-Benz stars, or blue-and-white BMW shields, on their 10-year-old Hyundais?  Would that make them less of a target for car thieves?  

Actually, the basket almost made me wish it was a Colnago. It reminded me of the bike someone I met once in Williamsburg (where else?) about ten years ago: a vintage Cinelli track bike (not the ones sold today with the Cinelli label), with equally vintage Campagnolo Pista components and Mavic SSC rims--and a flowered basket strapped to the handlebars.


None of those bikes, though, will ever have a stand as good as that tree on which I leaned Tosca today.