New Englad Bike Bloodline

[BroDeal]

From Angles and Poise.

 

[Giuseppe Magnetico]

Nice timeline. I'm turning 40 soon, Firefly please..

 

[ustabe]

Where's Tanguy?

 

[avanti]

Was Witcomb USA related to the UK company?

 

[BroDeal]

Was Witcomb USA related to the UK company?

From Richard Sachs:

"Witcomb Lightweight Cycles was a small (4-5 people) family business in Deptford London SE. They were a neighborhood retail shop that made frames in the rear of the building. That several of us ended up there is easily explained: the company was one of the very few that would say "yes" when asked by Americans if it would accept free labor in return for the experience of being there. It was not an apprenticeship at all. It was not a center of learning. It was work. Whatever needed to be done - pack boxes, make coffee, sell a Raleigh Pixie (a children's bicycle) out on the showroom floor - all of these also made up the daily grind. Folks continue to romanticize it, or assume it was a true, dedicated environment nurturing the trade's future. It was a Dickensian era-ish shop with no bathroom, no fixtures, and the no power tools used in the framebuilding process. None of this diminishes the experience or the quality of work carried out there, or the dedication that the elders had to the craft and to the sport. I was there some 10-11 months. Peter arrived after me by two months. We became very close friends from the beginning because we were the only two Americans there at that time. During our stint there, at least four others came and went and never took the experience to another level. The Witcomb USA thing is a separate entity completely and we ended up there for reasons that had nothing to do with framebuilding at all. It was a division of another larger company owned by a man who made a small fortune in sporting goods sales but who always secretly yearned to be a manufacturer of something - anything at all. After the original business plan failed as a result of a dispute between Witcomb USA and Witcomb Lightweight Cycles, Ed (the owner) told me and Peter to start making frames in the basement. This all happened almost a year after we both left London and had already lost touch with most of the tasks we had observed while there. While Ben may have had his own parallel experience in London, my recollection is that the Serotta brand started after the Witcomb USA brand did, so the timeline shown is a bit misleading atmo."

 

[Giuseppe Magnetico]

Old school Chance womans MTB. Saw this last week at a local Denver Shop.