Clever Cycles

Retrovelo is a small bicycle company in Leipzig, Germany, who in 2003 introduced a new style of bike: the Balloon Racer. These bikes are part city bike, part zero-generation mountain bike, and part, well, a whole lot of other elements borrowed from bikes over the last century. While “retro” in aesthetic, these bikes are not warmed-over anything, but new designs executed with exacting vision and technical innovations never before seen in production bikes. Clever Cycles is the first North American dealer.

They are stunning, easily among the most beautiful bikes I’ve ever seen. The step-through models could be pieces in a gauzy photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe. Confectionary or cupcakes with buttercream frosting come to mind, but those are sticky, weak and ephemeral, while these are timeless lugged cro-mo steel, tough and purposeful. The guys’ ones evoke lumberjacks and German shepherds and underwear (maybe that’s just me).

There’s almost a danger in this prettiness: you might think looks are their strongest point. In fact they ride marvelously. Weighing about 10 pounds less than similarly outfitted Dutch utility bikes, and supporting a sportier posture, these bikes scream fun, with wheelies and jumps feeling as natural as just gliding along. More than any other single thing, it’s the tires. Many people with a little knowledge of tires take one look at these fatties and assume that they must be slow. You know what they say about a little knowledge? Schwalbe re-introduced balloon tires in 2001 with the “Big Apple” after decades of obsolescence, and they did it really right, starting with light, supple casings that result in lower rolling resistance than many narrower, higher pressure tires (the data is buried). You can run pressures as low as 25psi, and just float over crummy pavement, rails, even the odd curb or flight of stairs. They are fast. Really. Take a test ride!

Context

Retrovelo designer Frank Patitz, for whom Schwalbe named the signature “Fat Frank” tires now appearing on a number of Retrovelo-inspired bikes, loves mid-20th-century American industrial design with a zeal found more often outside America than in. On his visit with us in Portland recently he’d stop at every old Nash Rambler, Ford Falcon and the like on the street to photograph them. (We were riding, of course; my eventual eye-rolling produced assurances that he doesn’t actually own a car, but just that he admires them as design objects.)

The bikey parallels of these old cars are the balloon-tired “clunkers” that, after 30-40 years of service (or sitting in people’s garages) got reborn as the first mountain bikes in Northern California, in the late 1970s. Retrovelos are partly an homage to these bikes. Hub gears, drum brakes, Brooks saddles and those distinctive swept handlebars are back! Here’s mountain bike pioneer Joe Breeze taking a Retrovelo down Repack, the legendary Marin County run:

I confess to a certain curmudgeonliness about mountain bikes, or at least about the gap between how they are designed and marketed and how they are most often used. Mountain bikes are presented as toys you load up on cars to drive someplace free of cars, to escape. In reality, mountain bikes are the dominant utility bikes of America. Older, unsuspended ones especially, retrofit with lower-profile tires to bring down the bottom bracket, a rack, fenders, maybe some more comfortable bars please, clamp-on lights: these are the tough, lovable mutts of the American street. The proudest few ascend the karmic spiral of Craigslist and methamphetamine reincarnations to become Xtracycles. You have to love the punk-rock frankenstein aesthetic, or you don’t. What if bikes like this could be designed?

I see Retrovelos as a brighter, less ironic ending to the mountain bike story, or another fork of the story picking up from that same start, thirty years later. They take the essential fun, toughness, and comfort of archetypical mountain bikes, but instead of leaving all the useful, transport-oriented stuff to be bolted on haphazardly by the second or third owner, it’s designed in, gorgeously.

Models, specifications, prices

Our first shipment consists of models Paul and Paula, Max and Maxi, in 7 colors: black, olive, ivory, dusty rose, grass green, stone gray, and dove blue. All are complete with Nexus hub generator lighting front and rear, Roller (drum) brakes, rack, fenders, kickstand, bell. Paul is $2099; Paula $2149; Max $2399; and Maxi $2449.

Paul and Max frames are 56cm only (32” standover), suiting riders from about 5’8” to 6’2”; Paula and Maxi fit from about 5’2” to 5’11”.

Paul and Paula feature Shimano Nexus 8-speed “red band” (premium) hub gearing and an elegant chain guard. A first in production bikes, models Max and Maxi feature the Swiss Schlumpf High Speed Drive to extend the range of the 3-speed gearhub to 466%, comparable to some 27-speed drivetrains. You shift the Schlumpf by tapping the button in the middle of the cranks with your heel:

Want more pics?

Please help us end the freak snow, hail, and record low temperatures we’ve had here lately by stocking up on wintry clothing. We’re having 20% off clearance sale on select Ibex woolens, and on rain gear from Showers Pass and [sale over] Puddlegear. Showers Pass makes the best-reviewed cycling outerwear, filling the gap left by Burley’s exit from the market a few years back. Puddlegear is for kids, PVC-free, and tough. It’s not cycle-specific, but then neither are most of the clothes we carry. This sometimes causes confusion about whether we are a “real” bike shop or an eclectic clothing boutique that happens to have a lot of bikes, maybe as “lifestyle” props. We think there’s nothing so real as bikes that get ridden and clothes that get worn, every day year round and for all errands, instead of just on weekends or during “commute” hours. If it breathes well, doesn’t stink or bind, and keeps you warm in cold and cool in heat, it’s bike clothing in our book.

Which brings us to wool. My own conversion to wool occurred over a decade ago under the influence of Rivendell Bicycle Works’ Grant Petersen, whose writing on the subject convinced me to ride down the Pacific coast wearing basically nothing but scratchy fisherman’s underwear. It was awesome. Surly knows it too. Now I’m in wool from October to May as a rule, and occasionally even in the hottest weather. The scratchy part is usually overstated for macho value and often completely untrue, especially the superfine merino stuff that’s great for next-to-skin use year round. The initial cost of fine woolen clothing is often higher than other fibers, but its anti-stink qualities mean you wash it less, and the good stuff remains colorfast with good drape and no pilling for years and years: it’s good value.

In anticipation of some free money being sent to most Americans to try to shake the US economy back into fizziness, we were joking in the shop with lines like “Save the economy: buy a Chinese plasma TV” or “Rescue America: buy a Dutch bicycle!” We think the last one, while ironic, at least wouldn’t represent blowing a bigger bubble as, for instance, the “patriotic” gas-guzzler buying spree that followed 9/11, back before oil had hit $100 a barrel and sprawled-out housing valuations tanked harder than urban. Well, then we saw an incoming link from peak-oil writer and subsistence farmer Sharon Astyk, to whom we have linked once before. Item #17 in Sharon’s Economic Self-Stimulus: Ideas for One Last Financial Orgasm amounts to “get a Dutch bike.” So get busy, consumatrons!

In the comments to Sharon’s post are a couple suggestions to get an Xtracycle instead. Same difference: we love them too. I’ve said before that dollar for dollar, pound for pound, inch for inch there’s no better way to carry lots of stuff or people on a bike than with a longtail like an Xtracycle. The word continues to spread. In Portugal, at a clever new bike business called Cenas a Pedal co-founder Ana Pereira has written the most comprehensive overview of longtails I’ve seen, tying it back in the end to Dutch tweelingfietsen. I don’t read Portuguese, but Google offers an intelligible translation. Good luck, Ana!

Sheldon Brown died last night of a heart attack. He was 63.

I can’t think of anybody so generous with his knowledge in any subject. I doubt a month has gone by in the last dozen years that I haven’t learned something useful from Sheldon, either from his site or via email or even the phone. I also bought quite a few hard-to-find parts from his shop, Harris Cyclery. Most bikey people I know hold him in similar esteem: the man gave and gave and gave, with unflagging enthusiasm, humility, and goofy geek humor; he was a real mensch.

I finally met him at Interbike last year. I waited in a small huddle of people waiting to shake his hand, and thank him. I waited 40 minutes at least. I told him what we were doing with Clever Cycles. Surely this lover of internal gearing, Brooks saddles, and general steely goodness of the sort common to older English and most Dutch bikes would like to hear, but he began to look alarmed. All wonderful stuff, he agreed, but his experience had been that Americans associate utility bikes with yard-sale/stolen/dumpster-dive prices. Surely few were buying these gravity-enhanced bikes that cost more than $1000! I was happy to contradict him, and felt renewed gratitude to be living in Portland where, indeed, enough people “get it” for a shop like ours to do well. I wish he could see us now and later.

This was the second Interbike he needed an assisted wheelchair to get around. An uncommon form of multiple sclerosis made bicycling impossible for him in his latest years, but he bore even this cruel irony with dignity and grace.

Last weekend we loaded up a 22” truck full of bikes and delivered them free of charge to their owners in the San Francisco area. It went well, mostly.

We made this trip because, frankly, our inventory of bakfietsen had become rather large just as the initial very hot sales rate in Portland cooled off with the weather. We figure that most any major metropolitan area has at least several dozen households who will leap for these things, at least once a few get rolling, and the “how can I get one of those?” referrals kick in. We wanted to jump-start that process.

We don’t think we’ll do this again, primarily because we’ve accomplished our goals of inventory adjustment and seeding future sales to the area. We delivered several bakfietsen to Jim in Chico, which he will sell. So now within a day’s round-trip drive of San Francisco are a limited number of bakfietsen available for test rides and purchase. Ask and we’ll hook you up. If this works well, perhaps we’ll form a lasting partnership.

Another reason we’ll not likely do this again is simply that it was a lot of work, and stressful. I had naively believed that I could leave early one morning in Portland and sleep that night in Berkeley, making a significant delivery and acquaintance in Chico on the way. (That’s like Amsterdam to Milan with a stop in, what, Strasbourg?) It turns out I spent two nights in motels on I-5, with associated distress from fast food, poor sleep amid dreams of snowy mountain passes and stolen trucks, and general exposure to the monocultural vacuity of the interstate highway system. I’ve driven maybe a dozen hours a year average in recent decades. Driving 4 days with a giant truck full of costly bikes on a tight itinerary has left me pretty done. I have a new appreciation, or should I say sympathy, for those who truck for a living. It’s hard.

Handing over the keys to the bikes was rewarding, as usual. The award for most enthusiastic bakfiets reception goes to C.B. in Palo Alto, who took a “pro forma” practice loop with one of her children before coming back and loading up four more people, including her husband off the back, making six in all. Much whooping and similar signs of glee ensued. I love to watch this stuff, and submit it as exemplary of the incredibly easy handling the van Andel bakfiets design offers even with the biggest loads. (We’ve ridden superficially similar designs and, really, this one’s in a class by itself.)

After C.B.’s delivery, with great relief I dropped off the empty truck after dark in a deserted industrial area. What then? Deploy the trusty personal jetpack: a Brompton folding bike! A Brompton is the hero of so many of my travels. With iPhone providing navigational support, I rode to the nearest Caltrain stop and headed north to San Francisco. On the train I assessed some bad news from a customer in the preceding day’s drop: an egregious mechanical problem, our fault. Customer lived near the Oakland airport I would be biking to in the morning, so I planned to stop to make things right on the way.

iPhone said I would need to wait at the Caltrain stop for a bus to connect further to BART that would take me back to Berkeley where I was staying. See, the Bay Area has many overlapping layers of independent, ill-coordinated transit systems, which means sometimes you have to buy 3 tickets, wait 3 times to go just a few miles. Nuts to that: I had Brompton! The bike creaked softly under my heavy load of smugness as I flew past the bus stops of SoMa to BART, feeling a little like Spiderman in street clothes flicking skeins of web between truck and train, train and tube, tube and dinner under the full moon.

The gods punish such feelings, of course. The next day, riding that clever British contraption in the cold rain to the Oakland airport while imagining myself in the role of Bond, James Bond, I got a flat in a cheery glass-strewn warehouse district. Who knew it rained in California? Q really must sort this puncture business. Could I patch it? Absolutely, and then I’d miss my flight. Soggy but unbowed, 5 strokes of the iPhone later a cab was on the way, and in 45 minutes I carried the bike onto the plane as usual, like Bond, James Bond.

Jim in Chico sent this in. I love the way the kids pop out like peas from a ripe pod:

If everyday practical bicycling had taken on political significance for you by the 1990s or earlier, in the US, chances are good you saw Ted White’s 1992 film Return of the Scorcher at a gathering of like-minded souls. It claimed the expression “critical mass” from nuclear physics for people riding bikes as part of traffic. It’s a yearning survey of the bicycling societies China and the Netherlands, both of which have powerfully shaped our own aspirations for reclamation of Portland from nearly a century of automotive disorientation.

I never saw Return of the Scorcher before it made its way to the interwebs last month. Now you can too. Learn from your elders. It’s 27 minutes:

Seven years later came We Are Traffic, documenting what Critical Mass had become. I rode in the summer 1997 San Francisco Mass that made international news when the police decided it was a threat, though I admit I was just trying to ride home when I found myself engulfed in it. I didn’t inhale. It’s 50 minutes. Enjoy:

Hat tip: Bikescape. Jon and his car-free family visited us many months back and told the story in a podcast.

Yes, it’s happening even in Los Angeles, a car-head dystopia I reserve the right to disdain since I grew up at the confluence of the 57 and 60 freeways. Check out Bakfietsen to the Future!, about an expectant father whose acquisition of a bakfiets instead of a second car just as oil is passing the $100/barrel mark is “a way to live my life on my own terms” and avoid reverting to the “chubby, hateful, angry” driver he once was. Your daughter will love it, Josef.

Josef got his bak from our friends at Rain City Bikes north of the border (it’s all good, but… but did we screw up somehow?). Our own north-south aid package, the San Francisco Bakfiets shuttle is finally coming together with free delivery scheduled 19-20 January. The truck is pretty full already with bikes ready to ride, but we can disassemble a bit and pack in a few more if you act fast. We are packing only pre-sold bikes, but perhaps if you show up at the to-be-determined pickup locations you can kick the tires gently to decide if you want one.

We will be closed Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Carl sings in the bakfiets. Lately it’s been “Jingle Bells”—the “…Batman smells” variant. This is, after all, as close to a one-horse open sleigh as it gets this side of horses and snow. We need bells to complete the effect. I could use a carrot, apple, or maybe just some sugar.

The Folz family knows where it’s at, too:

Bakfiets owner Jeff Spalinger in Santa Maria, California reports that his ride has been returned! stolen. Last seen December 8, it was decorated with more than 60 Christmas lights. Please call (805) 260-3565 if you notice, say, a suspicious eBay listing or band of joyriding grinch punks.

A couple recent items found on New York’s “Streetsblog” have catapulted it into our blogroll:

OK that’s all good fun but is it ethical? What is an appropriate response to endangerment? Do we need perhaps to consult a professional ethicist? Such as Mr. Randy Cohen:

Another site we’ve been enjoying lately is Cycleliciousness, particularly for entries like 18 Ways to Know that You Have Bicycle Culture. Well, by such measures, we here in Portland don’t have it. We have far more diversity than that. Part of that diversity is the “stylish daily urban mobility” model that Clever Cycles caters to especially. This model is a ubiquitous monoculture in Copenhagen and Amsterdam. Way #13 is telling: “you don’t even know that you live in a ‘bike culture.’” A bicyclist in Copenhagen isn’t an “ist” at all, unless a dentist or flutist, but just another drop in the sea. A bicyclist in Portland, whether a Zoobomber or a Chunker, racer real or pretend, spandex commuter, bakfiets-pumping mama/papa, or uncategorized other, knows that he or she is part of a wave of change, making a statement however quiet, as part of a community and culture distinct from the norm. Someday over the next decades the wave will break and resolve into the mainstream, and we will no longer have this identity. I will miss the clever feeling.