Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
LOS ANGELES – As a man with an inborn instinct for riding a bicycle without even touching the handlebars, it seems fitting and proper that I should make an investigation of the bicycle situation.
That I have just done, and I wish to report to the nation that the bicycle situation is bad. In fact, so bad that there is almost no situation – or bicycle either.
My probings haven’t covered other parts of the country, but in Los Angeles it is almost impossible to buy a bicycle. Sears-Roebuck has a few left, which will doubtless be gone before this appears in print. If you’re lucky, you might just happen onto one at some small store. But as a general rule you can’t buy a new bike in Los Angeles today.
Shops that rebuild bicycles are running two weeks and longer behind on rebuilds, and they won’t even take your name and address in regard to a brand-new one.
I’ve just had a long bicycle gabfest with Mr. Charles Mullen, who runs the Atlas Cycle Co. here. Mr. Mullen has seen as many as 28 bicycles leave his shop in one day, and his yearly sales are more than 600.
In the first six weeks of this year he sold 116 bicycles, and could have sold dozens more. But he has even stopped taking orders now, for frankly he doesn’t know when he can get any more bicycles.
With this new wartime demand for bikes, you’d think being in the bicycle business would be a very nice little thing. And, indeed it would be, if you could just get the bicycles to sell. But since you can’t, it’s a very bad business to be in.
Victory bike ready in April
Bicycles are soon to go on a quota basis. Three of the nation’s 11 factories have already shut down completely. Others are curtailed. Even spare parts are hard to get now.
Before long production will start on the new “Victory” bicycle. All bike manufacturing will be limited to this one model, for the duration. I couldn’t find out whether it would be made in several factories, or turned over to just one factory while all the others were converted to direct war production of something else.
At any rate, the new Victory bicycle is due out in April. It will not have balloon tires. Its tires and wheels will be smaller than regulation. There will be no chain guards on the new Victory, no chrome plating, no kick-stands, no doo-dads whatever. Even the handlebar grips will be made of wood.
The price of the Victory hasn’t been set yet, but it may be around $40. There won’t be enough of these to supply the demand, for dealers are to be limited to 40 per cent of what they sold last year.
And that is what will cause many bicycle shops to go out of Business – for even a big shop like Mr. Mullen’s cannot exist on 40 per cent of last year’s business.
However, outside of the dealers themselves, the diminishment in bicycle shops probably won’t hurt anybody much. Because bicycle mechanics are such a super-breed (according to Mr. Mullen) that they can get new jobs immediately.
Mr. Mullen says a real bicycle mechanic has to know 10 times as much as an auto mechanic. He says that in 20 years in the business he has found only three really good mechanics – and two of them have now gone to defense jobs.
Bikers easily spot women drivers
Practically all of Mr. Mullen’s sales since the first of the year were to people who figured on laying up their cars and riding to work. He sold one to a dentist who has blocked up his auto and rides into the city every day from Whittier – some 15 miles. One-fifth of his sales were to women.
I have a friend on The Daily News here who has just managed to get hold of a bicycle, and has started riding to work. He has to come 11 miles, and not being very bicycle-wise he allowed himself two hours for the trip on the first morning. He made it in an hour, and arrived at work one hour early, long before daylight.
Another rider tells me that cycling has convinced him beyond doubt of one thing – and that is that women drivers don’t think as fast as men. He says that out on the highway he can pick every woman driver a quarter of a mile away, just by her reactions at meeting a bicycle. (My friend rides the left-hand side of the road, like a pedestrian.)
The new army of bicycle riders has created a new business in Los Angeles – the parking of bicycles. It’s on a minor scale so far, but is likely to grow fast. One downtown garage is parking bikes at $1 a month.
That’s all I know about bicycles. Anybody want to ride on my handlebars?
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