My friends and I rode our bikes all over Lorain and beyond. I've written before how we went to Mill Hollow a few times. My first visit to Dog N Suds was on my bike. I even remember going over the High Level Bridge on my bike (along with my girl friend at the time) to go to James Day Park in Sheffield for a picnic.
We rode our bikes past the houses where the girls that we 'liked' lived. Once in a while we even ran into them on their bikes. It was a real heyday for bikes.
I rode my bike to the library a few times on a Saturday afternoon. One bike was stolen right from the rack outside (the thief cut the chain). On another trip, I was going down Oberlin Avenue and some big kid on a bike (from Lorain High) came up behind me and grabbed my bicycle chain (which was hanging around my neck) and towed me for a while. I didn't wear my chain around my neck after that.
One good friend – Scott Welko – loved to tinker with bikes. We seemed to always be taking ours apart, painting them, etc. That meant lots of trips to see Bicycle Bill at the Lorain Schwinn Cyclery on Oberlin Avenue in the same shopping strip as Willow Hardware and Whalen Drugs.
Times have changed. I rarely see kids – or anyone – on a bike. When I do see one, it's been modified with a motor so no pedaling is needed!
I have to chuckle whenever I go into Lorain these days. West Erie Avenue (US 6) was modified a few years ago, adding a bike lane, a center turning lane, and making the highway two lanes with no passing (even though it was a big deal when it was widened to four lanes in the 1950s). I have yet to ever see anyone riding a bike in the bike lane.
Anyway, bikes were part of everyday life in 1966. Remember that I mentioned "Bicycle Bill" Schetter? He didn't have his Schwinn store on Oberlin Avenue yet; he was still managing Atlas Cycle on 28th Street. Here's an ad that ran on the Journal business page on September 12, 1966.
Bikes were even promoted as a way to get to school back then. Here's a Sears ad from September 14, 1966.
I think one of the main reasons that West Erie/East Erie was turned into a 2 lane road with bike paths was to try to slow down actual vehicle traffic.Or at least that was the theory.As people still speed up and down the road,especially motorcyclists.But there is no side by side drag racing anymore.And the bikers still have to speed everywhere they go,every one of them.Gotta get nowhere fast.And loud.Bikers like to rev it up for no reason at all other than to scare a person who might actually be walking on the sidewalk.When I drive on East Erie I specifically run 35-40 and nothing more and the traffic piles up behind me.A quick tap on the brakes every now and then and the speeders back off.
ReplyDeleteI loved riding bikes, and I miss it.
ReplyDeleteIf I only had a dollar for every time I tore my bike down and repainted it. Once they opened Drug Mart on the eastside, we had an unlimited supply of good ole Rustoleum spray paint in every color. I used to have a pair of vice-grips snapped right under my bike seat for those quick on-the-road repairs. Like an old time attached toolbox. I wish I could remember the name of the bicycle shop in the Garfield Blvd strip plaza (the one that burned down several years ago). We used to stop in that shop frequently to see the new bikes or get repair parts. The guy that owned it was always pretty nice to us kids loitering in his store all the time.
ReplyDeleteThis is Dan. Was it Wheels & Reels?
DeleteYES!! Wheels & Reels was the bike shop.
DeleteWheel and Reel Center; I bought a bike there in '74.
DeletePeople do ride bikes around here, but it is the older people (like me, but not including me). The young ones exclusively use e-bikes, invariably without helmets and regard for traffic laws. Not that I obeyed said laws when I was a young bike-rider. And helmets were unknown back then.
ReplyDelete