Heavy Duti

About 90% finished, for the time being anyhow, this is my 1967 Schwinn Heavy Duti cruiser bike. I bought the frame (and some tires,) at a garage sale and have restored it to what is called "Period Appropriate" for the genre. Besides an extensive clean up, lube, and tune-up, there are new pedals, a new Schwinn seat and seat post, sparkle grips, "dice" tire valve covers, a mini-license plate, and a rear hub-shiner with red reflector.

It rides incredible smoothly. But it weighs a ton, and frankly with those fat tires, it ought to be smooth



These Heavy Duti cruisers, built by Schwinn in the 60s and 70s (as near as I can tell,) were used mostly in factories and oil fields to haul parts around, say from one end of a factory to another. Some paperboys rode them, but there were so many other choices of fancier and lighter bikes at the time, that it was a rarer occurrence.

I've thought about fenders, but kind of like the stripped down, rat-rod look. Plus the fenders would only add weight. Looking for a Schwinn head-badge that is age appropriate, and I'm done. I think.

I like the cruiser mentality about bikes. I like old things and this fits in with my interests. There is a culture around these bikes that is based on the idea that we're saving elements of our history. I have a road bike, but i don't ride it very often. I don't particularly care for the road bike culture. It's based on athleticism and speed, which is more than kind of antithetical to the cruiser bike culture. Which is about going slow. And making use of the cup holder on your bike. Preferably for beer. Not that drinking and driving is encouraged.

In Colorado where I live, the cyclists, those road bicyclists in their logo-covered, lime green Spandex, with their $5000 carbon fiber whatevers, seem to feel a sense of entitlement about the right of way. I've had packs of them literally force my bike off the road without so much as a "How do you do?" They are in some part, large or small depending on your point of view and mine tends toward the large, douchebags. They swarm here. And are a growing lobbying force, recently having forced the passing of laws favorable to their cause, e.g., that cars must stay three-feet away from them, and that they can ride two abreast. They demand more and more space on the roads, yet pay no share of the taxes. Sadly, they won't be going away any time soon. The fact that their heroes, the pro riders, are being proven to be craven, doped up cheaters, doesn't surprise me in the least.

And so I ride my $700 road bike to post office. And ride my cruiser on the bike paths, happy to have pulled a piece of American history out of the dust bin. And to have gotten its shiny chrome rims spinning again.

Here's an earlier pic, just when i got it running.

Style Icon

My daughter and I started to blog, for one reason among many I'm sure, so that we could kind of track each other while she lived in Florida, while I was still here in Colorado, some years ago. She started writing about thrifting clothes (the apple not falling far from the tree there,) and taking pictures of the outfits she put together and wore everyday.

She's since been picked up by style aggregators like Chictopia.com and Weardrobe.com and her photo has been even lifted by The Gap.com. She gets god-knows-how-many hits everyday. I'm not surprised. Her style is completely her own and her writing is top-notch.

And now (or last month anyway,) she was voted Style of the Year by 303 Magazine, Denver's style, fashion and clothing magazine for the modern hipster.

Yeah, you could say I'm pretty proud. Mostly because she just did something she wanted to do, something that came from her heart and was about who she is as a person. She wasn't trying to monetize it or count the hits or link here and there, though that came later. She just wanted to show the world what she did and let it hear what she had to say. So I'm proud that she's Style of the Year. But mostly I'm proud that she's smart, and beautiful, and witty, and thoughtful, and that she's my kid.

Till There Was You

I played at the Beatles Tribute Night tonight at Oskar Blues in Lyons. My partner Nancy who is in my uke band Gadzukes!, and I performed "Till There Was You" from the first Beatles album, "with the beatles" on ukes. That album came out in late 1962, and of course everything in the world changed. But what really changed the most for me was I learned, from that album, what a good song was.

My parents and sisters loved musicals and played them endlessly around the house. I hated them, mostly because I loved rock and roll and they were not rock and roll. But mostly, I hated the sound track from "The Music Man," a huge Broadway hit that was currently a hit movie. I liked the Kingston Trio. The Beach Boys. Wilson Pickett. The local Minneapolis cover bands that specialized in rhythm and blues. Bob Dylan was a year away.

Then the Beatles (insert cliche here) exploded into the world. The singles started coming. "I Want to Hold Your Hand." "I Saw Her Standing There." "Please Please Me." I waited impatiently for the album. And when "meet the beatles" came out with its now classic noir cover, the half-shadowed pictures of the haircuts I studied for every detail, there was the ecstatic moment, the pleasure of ripping the plastic covering off and laying the needle down on the first groove. And what a record it was. But to my amazement, there on side two, cut nine, was "Till There Was You." From the dreaded musical, "The Music Man." What the fuck?

So what I learned from that track, with it's gorgeous classic guitar solo, claves and cha-cha beat was that it isn't about the haircut. Or the electricity. Or the beat. Or the culture. Or me versus my parents. It's about good songs. "Till There Was You" is a good song. A great song, maybe. And John, Paul, George and Ringo knew it. And once I listened to it, without the wall of the times and the culture, and my teenage anger, I guess I knew it too. And I'm proud that I recorded it on my CD. And that I copied George's guitar solo, note-for-note. And that i play it at every Gadzukes! gig. And that I played it tonight. Because it's a good song. And that's what counts.

I'll Tell You What's Stupid

What's stupid is to have a recipe that works, that you've done a bunch of times, but reading a different recipe for the same thing and saying, "Hey, I think I'll try that," and then failing miserably. Waste of time, waste of food, waste of money. Jeez.