2007 – 2009 Bainbridge Classic Cycle
We outgrew our small high school road operation in 2007, so we moved onto Winslow Way and added Kevin, Gavin, and Zach. All of the extra square feet meant more bikes, more museum bikes, and quite a bit more fun.
We outgrew our small high school road operation in 2007, so we moved onto Winslow Way and added Kevin, Gavin, and Zach. All of the extra square feet meant more bikes, more museum bikes, and quite a bit more fun.
Sometimes, it’s best to leave a famous bike in “as used” condition.
This is a stainless steel Ritte Snob road bike, a prototype built by Russ Denny in 2011.
The bike looks like it has been through hell. The pictures may not convey the use, but in person you can smell smoke. It sits smoldering like an ashy husk after a fire. The tubing is peppered with surface rust spots. The Shimano Ultegra 6700 components are still functional but they groan and protest when you touch them. The bike has a Ritchey wheelset that is still round, but the braking surface is worn paper-thin and the brake pads are nonexistent.
In other words, it’s perfect.
Just like the muddy bike taken from Tom Boonen after winning the cobbled classic Paris-Roubaix, broken spokes and race number intact, this road bike is a preserved trophy, but of a more important part of the bike world than any old race or racer.
This Ritte survived the most grueling bike magazine or website review in history, and it was reviewed by the best. BikeSnobNYC.
The gear side of the sport has always had the greatest draw for us, and professional bicycle reviewers let us experience the best equipment without having to pedal (or pay) for all this stuff ourselves.
Giants of the sport include Mike Ferentino of Bike Magazine, a columnist and equipment reviewer who brought late ’90’s mountain bike culture to life and once fended off a grizzly attack with a Campagnolo peanut butter wrench. James Huang of BikeRadar narrowly avoided insanity drawing comparisons amongst two dozen identically equipped 2017 matte black carbon fiber racing bikes. The staff at Mountain Bike Action once used so much scientific vigor that they were able to declare a winner in the “Raddest Gel Saddle Shootout Ever”…. But nobody beats Eben Weiss.
Writing for his BikeSnobNYC blog, Eben is a fearless reviewer. Wanting to clear Outside Magazine’s “To do” board, he personally finished their review of a 1917 Meade touring bike. Unafraid to try $500 Assos cycling shorts with something called a “KuKu Penthouse” sewn into the crotch, he completed the review aboard a $200 Scattante city bike, and later machine washed the shorts on “warm”. Eben was the first bike reviewer unwilling to allow the use of a sepia filter when he was photographed in Rapha clothing, and in one harrowing review he managed to escape enslavement at the Brooks saddle factory, making his way back home to his family after a daring escape aboard a stolen Brompton folding bike.
These reviews were mere marketing press releases compared to the Ritte test.
Long after human civilization collapses, bronze statues and stainless steel household items will still be around. Naturally Eben wanted to find out if the Ritte would be the best choice for surviving cyclists.
Compressing 7000 years of bike neglect into only 7 proved daunting, but doable. New York City weather and road chemicals actually begat rust on the stainless steel. Maintenance performed with simple bronze tools kept the Ultegra equipment running (barely). Thousands of laps around Central Park proved that the bike would hold up as long as humanity could pedal. The bottom bracket creaked a little.
In a long-term series of reviews where the term “rust bucket” was used more often than Bicycling Magazine uses “carbon hoops” to describe wheels, the road riding public knew that we all had to buy a Ritte Snob. It was a solid choice.
Read the magic for yourself here: https://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/search?q=Rust+bucket
It might take an extra second or two, but I’d bet that people who are color blind can still figure out where this racing bike was built.
This is a very Italian Torelli racing bike built in 2002 to commemorate the 20 years that had passed for Torelli in the bicycle design and import business.
Would you believe that Fausto Torelli, a wizened old hermit living in the Dolomite mountains forged the bike frame from spent shell casings left over from World War II?
No? Good. That kind of mythology does nothing to convey the fabulous blend of new technology, refined materials and decades of experience that went into the construction of this bike.
Antonio Mondonico silver-brazed the Columbus EL nivacrom steel tubing into custom lugs following a trip to Torelli dealers in the United States. While on the trip, customers for this limited batch of 100 bikes were sized up, their component preferences were noted, and their tolerance for flashy Italian flag-themed paint jobs was measured.
Torelli, an importer dealing with any bike related items that are particularly fantastic, helped with the parts. The drivetrain is all Campy Chorus. The Campagnolo Chorus parts kit eschewed carbon fiber, instead proudly boasting the cold-forged aluminum construction that made the Italian brand so iconic.
The hubs, built in Italy and re-labeled as Torelli, are amazing. Besides spinning smoothly and holding the wheels together like good hubs are supposed to, these things have flanges that screw off so that colors can be changed and spoke counts can be different without buying new parts.
The rest of the parts are a showcase of the great stuff that Bill McGann (the Torelli founder) could source from Italy and other cycling hotbeds. There are Torelli-badged tires (probably made by Vittoria), Torelli saddle (Selle San Marco or Selle Italia), and Cinelli bar tape. The wheels are made with Torelli rims (made by Ambrosio), and a stem that looks an awful lot like a Ritchey to us.
A Schwinn Sting-Ray “Krate” bike from 1970. This one is always a crowd favorite.
It’s an iconic bike. So iconic that we use a silhouette of a similar bike on the back of our T-shirts and nobody has to wonder what it is. When you look at this bike you probably feel waves of nostalgia for your youth even if you never had one of these bikes as a kid. The Sting-Ray has that effect on people.
Now, a cursory glance and you may think that this bike is all about form over function. All style, no substance. That’s your glance backwards as an adult, not seeing it for the first time as a kid.
If you were transported to 1970 and had the chance to ask a 10-year-old about his new bike, it would be clear that Schwinn nailed the design here. It’s all about function.
First, the banana seat. The great thing about it is that there’s enough room on it for your best friend to “buck” a ride with you on the bike. Then there’s the handlebars and small front wheel, which besides lending the bike a chopper-like appearance makes riding wheelies really easy. The springer front fork and sprung sissy bar that supports the saddle means that you can bounce up and down on your bike or repeatedly ride over curbs just for fun. The stick shifter? It’s just like the one in your brother’s car and you can make cool revving sounds as you change gears. The ineffective 4-pound drum brake on the front wheel? It just makes rear tire skids all the more frequent and awesome.
The fact that Schwinn designed this bike to resemble a muscle car of the era does not mean that they made a style decision at the cost of performance. The design made dad and older siblings jealous. That was enough.
A note about the rarity of these bikes and the somewhat racist name & color combination: The Cotton Picker was made for only two years and was built in only slightly larger quantities than the 1971 Grey Ghost. While apologists would like to think that the folks at Schwinn realized their gaffe of making an expensive white bike while conjuring up images of poor black farm workers and stopped production, but the real reason that these bikes are rare is right before your eyes.
Color. Ten year old kids rarely choose a white or grey color option when faced with bright yellow (the Lemon Peeler), green (Pea Picker), vivid orange (the Orange Krate) or red (the Apple Krate).
The color choice is all form over function.