Thursday, December 31, 2009

54cm Guerciotti Blue Columbus SLX Frame SOLD

54cm seattube center to top.
Guerciotti built with Columbus SLX tubing.
The blue color is amazing!
In excellent condition, look at the pictures. Some chips and scratches here and there. keep in mind it is a bicycle not the Mona Lisa.
Campagnolo headset.
127mm rear spacing, for 6 or 7 speed gear setup.
takes a 27.2mm seatpost, not included
frame is straight. no dents or misalignment. No cracks or damage. I bought used and never did anything with it. doesn't look like it has too many miles as the paint condition is excellent.

$sold





Monday, December 28, 2009

Bilenky, maxicar

here is some very nice pin-striping done by Simon Firth at Bilenky cycles in Philadelphia. I didn't take note of what the bicycle was, just took this closeup shot. I really like the seat collar treatment.


nice fork crown seen at Bilenky.

2 rear Maxi-Car hubs. One bolton and one quick release.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Bilenky Junkyard CycleCross Race this sunday

Come join the Bilenky Cycle Works crew at the annual Junkyard Cyclocross!!!

Cycle, sprint, and slide through the course designed and built by the BCW and junkyard staff. The course adds plywood ramps, hollowed out vehicle carcasses, and yard obstacles to the junk landscape and oil slicked pathways!!!!

Lots of prizes from White Industries, Chris King Precision Components, Dirt Rag Magazine, and more!!!

Don't want to race? Come for th party! Other festivities include good eats courtesy of Honest Tom's Tacos, FREE beer from Yard's Brewery, and a bike toss event!!

$5 to participate!!

Please contact BCW at 215-329-4744 or e-mail marketing@bilenky.com

Click the link below to see a video of last years event at The Junkyard!!


More info on the Bilenky Website here-

and on Facebook---


Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Random pictures off my phone

Sorry for the cheap posting, but I have been rather preoccupied, but pictures are better than words, sometime. but i will include words, to make the pictures even better.
My Rebour drawings, with a few pages of the Rene Herse catalog, on my wall.
Close up of the Porteur rack.
Cool Prior like hub.


Not taken by my phone, but I found it one there, so someone must have emailed it to me. Very nice Schwinn Paramount. Maybe it is Tam Phams??

At a Swap meet, buying bicycles.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Sam Fitzsimmons, the day after 9/11/2001

photo by Michelle Gienow
(article is from Baltimore City Paper, funny date.. . )

by Tom Chalkley | Posted 9/12/2001

A friend in Pigtown says, "I've got a Charmed Life for you. There's this guy who lives down here who fixes up old bikes. He's a real character." His name? "Sam Fitzsimmons."

"Sam Fitzsimmons!?"

"What, you know him?"

Maybe. I bumped into a guy by that name 20 years ago and I still have dents in my consciousness. The Fitzsimmons I remember lived outside Annapolis in a house that boasted a stack of 20-some TV sets salvaged from curbsides; the idea was to turn them all on at once, for entertainment. His bathroom displayed a crowd of Fred Flintstone shampoo bottles. The hallway was papered with correspondence between mail-order businesses and fictional persons with names like "Bill Melater."

And Fitzsimmons himself was famous (to me, anyway) as the co-creator, with artist Wes Goodwin, of the Crank Boys comic books, inspired by Fitzsimmons' Annapolis crowd, a small tribe of post-hippie motorheads. The same gang gave rise to several punk-era bands, notably the Oral Fixation, a group that played fake instruments (including a penis-shaped guitar) while vocalizing the music ("neer neer neer" and so forth). I'm pretty sure Fitzsimmons played the penis-shaped guitar.

So I call this bicycle guy, and of course it's the same Sam Fitzsimmons. Turns out he's been living in Southwest Baltimore for a decade or so. I had no idea. My notion of Small Town Baltimore is shattered.

I find him hunkered near the door of his shop in Pigtown, which occupies an old B&O machine shop. The face that I remember has weathered (he's 52 years old); his expression is an alert deadpan behind wire-rimmed glasses. He wants to set me straight: He is not the old guy in the neighborhood who fixes bikes. "It's a pain in the ass to fix bikes," he says--although he's worked in bike shops on and off since 1965 and still does repairs for friends. No, these days, he's mainly a trader. "I live off my stuff," he says. "I'm constantly selling, and constantly improving, the nature of my collection."

Step into his shop, if you can. The entire space, the very air, is thick with glinting metal. Bicycles ancient and modern, whole and fragmentary, stand hub to hub on the floor and on chest-level racks; frames, forks, chains, and sprockets hang on the walls and dangle from the rafters. It appears that there used to be walkways between the rows and racks, but most of these have been jammed up with still more bikes. The only way to get from the door to the rear of Fitzsimmons' shop is to pick your way, almost on tiptoe, between two rows of two-wheelers, easily numbering in the hundreds. These are just part of his collection. He has three more floors full of bikes in storage near Hollins Market.

Yet there's method to this madness. When a fellow bike freak calls from Texas, Fitzsimmons sidles into a dark corner, squints toward the ceiling, wrestles a ladder from a nearby thicket of chrome, and clambers up two rungs to locate the precise item his caller wants. "It's a computer nightmare," Fitzsimmons says, "Thank God our brains are much more complex."

We go upstairs, past several framed examples of original bicycle advertising art and a stack of wooden skateboards from the 1960s. Fitzsimmons' living space, above the shop, is what you'd expect of a pop-culture hunter-gatherer: books, tapes, posters, knickknacks, scraps of anomalous art, literature, and junk. Bikes are his abiding passion, but he has also amassed and sold collections of comic books and records. Does he have any insight into what drives him to collect? "No," he says. He gets some coffee, and we talk about his involvement in rock bands, poetry jams, and the surreal pseudo-cult called the Church of the Subgenius. I know I'm just scratching the surface.

Back downstairs, I keep scratching. Fitzsimmons shrugs indifferently when asked about a bike with a unique hexagonal-tube frame--a gimmick, he explains. A bike with wooden fenders catches my eye. "1894 or '95," he says. "I found it on a farm in upstate New York. It's still got chicken stuff on it."

Then he touches a red bike frame that hangs near the stairs. This, he says, was one of several ridden by Alfred LeTourner, the French champ who was the first bicyclist to break 100 mph, in 1941, riding a specially designed Schwinn racer just like this one. He segues into a brief discourse on the golden age of bicycling. "Up until World War II," he says, "bicycling and baseball battled it out for what would be the No. 1 sport in the country. . . . Top professional bikers made more money than Babe Ruth in his prime."

I keep expressing amazement at the sheer extent of his accumulation, and Fitzsimmons gives me a sharp glance. "I'm not the only person like this, you know," he says. He adds that the bikes jamming the aisles aren't supposed to be there. "All of this is moving out," he says with a wave of one hand. The shop's normal ebb and flow was rudely disrupted last fall when Fitzsimmons was diagnosed with cancer. Although the illness is now in remission, he spent the first half of 2001 preoccupied with therapies. Now there are parts of his own frame that need work. "The worst part about it is I can't ride every day," he says matter-of-factly, although he still does some low-impact biking.

The brush with mortality has also affected Fitzsimmons' perspectives on life and collecting. Poker-faced as ever, he gazes through his hanging gardens of chrome and says, "It's all just stuff." But great stuff nonetheless--stuff with stories. And for a guy who lives off his stuff, that ain't bad."



(editors note- Sam is a collector friend of mine and fellow historian. He still has a shop in Baltimore, not the same location though, and continues to unearth and sell some awesome bicycles. He has quite a collection of awesome bicycles.)

Saturday, December 12, 2009

52 cm Motobecane Grand Record sold

Original paint and decals.
the decals are worn, not in the best shape. usual nicks and scratches for a 30+ year old bike.
bike is ridable, but I would recommend an tuneup.br> as the bike is over 30 years old.
Campagnolo Dropouts.
Reynolds 531 double butted tubing.


Campagnolo-
  • 1975 Nuovo Record rear derailleur
  • Nuovo Record front derailleur
  • Nuovo Record high flange hubs
  • Nuovo Record shifters
TA Professional crankset with rare chainguard and bottom bracket, the threads are excellent.
Weinmann centerpull brakes and levers.
Stronglight Competition headset
Brooks B-15 leather saddle. no pedals.
Philippe CTA stem and Philippe Franco Italia handlebars
the handlebar wrap is some kind of rubber. it is stamped Motobecane. I was told by someone that it may be a little newer for the bicycle, as it might be from the late 1970s.Seat post is SR Custom.
700c Super Champion clincher rims(straight), the tires are replacement newer ones.
No rust.
52cm center to center seattube.
$sold






Friday, December 11, 2009

Benotto campagnolo Cambio Corsa bicycle SOLD

Late 1940s Benotto Campagnolo Cambio Corsa equipped bicycle. Complete with Benotto pantographed parts, such as cranks and stem. Corsa leather saddle that is rather dry. The bicycle should be repainted as the finish is rather rough, I can include correct decals for the bicycle. It can be left unfinished for a nice rider, get practice shifting before refinishing, so you will have it understood and won't be too worried about riding.

The bicycle is currently in riding condition. 57.5cm seattube center to center. 56cm toptube. It is harder to find a larger frame like this, most that I have seen have been 54cm or so.














Sunday, December 6, 2009

Jack Rose- RIP

I had the privilege to meet and see and talk with jack numerous times and he was extremely gifted and will be definitely missed. My thoughts go out to his family and glad to have his music as a testament to one of his many gifts.
I usually listen to him when I am down or contemplative, the irony is thick now.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

A very tall Nicola Barra frameset

I could I be 6 inches or so taller! this frameset was found on Ebay and it is a 65cm frame. The lateral stays were added to combat frameflex due to the size. I figure the bicycle sometime in the 1940s?? That is a lot of aluminum. Looks like something my friend Yann could ride, well if he got a real job so he could afford this beautiful bicycle. I even contemplated on buying it so I could maybe use it as trading stock toward one that might come my way, but after thinking about it, I realized that I might have a bicycle collecting problem. Patience is a virtue.




Thursday, December 3, 2009

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Forgotten Daniel Rebour drawings

At the Milan Exhibition, drawings of Daniel Rebour
Oh, what a life I live. Not to sound like an arrogant bike collector, but I somehow forgot that I had these Daniel Rebour drawings. I bought them a couple years ago and they had been sitting in a folder upstairs in my office, along with other paper that I want to get framed- including original MC5, Stooges, Hellacopters, Sonic's Rendezvous Band,etc Posters. Just with other art. I found them last week and that prompted me to want to get the "World of Daniel Rebour" books that were published a long time ago and are out of print. Jitensha Studio offers some rare Japanese published books- like the Rene Herse book, and the book on Toei bicycles- and they also list Volume 3 & 4 of the world of Rebour. The website prices were not accurate, the price was more than listed, but I wanted the books bad enough that the increase in price did not matter. If you are interested in the books, they are all awesome additions to any library. (and if you do order, tell them Joel from Philadelphia referred you to them!)

Also, if you have Vol. 1 or Vol. 2 I will pay you good money for them, or I have many items I could trade for them. please email if you have any leads.

If you are a little less extravagant than I am, you can purchase from Velo Retro a photocopy of Vol.1 of the World of Daniel Rebour. I am a book collector, so I want the original printing.

The
Rebour note above is cool as I believe it is in his handwriting. I have written about Rebour before, but as long as I keep looking at cool vintage bicycle parts, his name will continue to be mentioned.