In the 60's and 70's, if you weren't old enough to drive, or if you were, but didn't have a car, odds are you got around on a bike. And if you had a bike, the odds were also great that you had customized it in some fashion.
The coolest bike I ever had was a Stingray knockoff (I think mom got it at Sears) in 1971, when I was 11 years old. This bad boy was green, my favorite color. It had a 36" sissy bar with a top cover, high-rise handlebars, and a cheater slick. I could do some monumental jumps on that bike. But that long sissy bar discouraged riding wheelies.
I remember my earliest bike customizations. They involved clothespins and baseball cards, some of which could have been very valuable had I squirreled them away somewhere. Clipping the card with the clothespin to the frame so the spokes would whack against it made your bike sound like a motorcycle.
There was a bewildering array of accessories you could put on your bike to pimp it. I always liked the klaxon-styled horns with the twist in them. That made for a deeper honk. Bikes on Leave It to Beaver always had bells instead of horns. That must have been a 50's thing. No self-respecting kid on my block circa 1966 would have been caught dead with a bell on his bike.
Then there were the streamers. The streamers would look best dangling from a set of high-rise bars. The idea was to make them go perfectly parallel to the ground as you zipped along as fast as you could go.
You could also put a speedometer on your bike. They used a little rubber wheel to rub against your wheel rim to calculate your speed. I'm not sure how accurate they were. Going as fast as I could generally peaked my speed out at about 30 miles per hour.
A headlight might be affixed to your trusty banana-seater. It would either be powered by a couple of d-cell batteries, or by a generator turned by your wheel. The power unit would goof itself up in short order, by the rubber stripping off the wheel that contacted your rim, or by simply locking up. Even if you managed to get a better-quality unit that would last longer, it still added a noticeable drag to your bike, very bad when there was a need for speed.
One of the funkiest customizations you could perform on your bike was installing a steering wheel. These were pretty popular in the 70's, although I was unable to locate an image of one. The wheel was smaller than a car's steering wheel and lightweight. They were adept for spinning your front wheel around rapidly while riding a wheelie, very impressive. The less talented could hold their front wheel up while standing stationary and do the same thing.
You could also wrap metallic tape around your frame, put reflectors on your spokes, or attach a basket (yeah, right! Only if you wanted to get beaten up). Customizing your bike could take many forms indeed. The important thing was that you do SOMETHING to distinguish it from the rest of the bikes with their front wheel stuck in the stand in front of the school.
Comments (10)
I think it was '72 or'73 when I got my Miss America Bike. I was 11 or 12. I thought it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen! Red,white and blue, banana seat, tassles hanging from the handle bars, and then of course I had to go get a basket with a flower on it. I remember putting cards in the spokes with clothes pins, but I also remember there were these neon looking hot pink, orange and yellow plastic strips that you could attach to the spokes that made noise when the wheels turned. We would have bike washes in the front yard with all the neighbor kids. Oh, those were the days!
Posted by Rhonda | April 11, 2007 7:21 PM
Posted on April 11, 2007 19:21
I remember a kid turned his bike into a chopper motorcycle.....no motor,
just an extended fork in the front....also had a kid that attached a motor to the back wheels, but kids tried in vain to steal it, and he couldn't take it too many places.
Posted by scott | July 17, 2007 2:54 AM
Posted on July 17, 2007 02:54
When I turned 7 years-old in 1972, I got a Ross Banshee bike for my birthday. It was finished in metalflake green with a white metalflake vinyl banana seat and green and white streamers with metal flecks in them hanging from the ends of the handlebars.
I recall seeing some of these types of bikes with something that looked like a gearshift with a number such as a 3 or a 5 affixed to it to indicate how many gears the bike had. I thought that was really cool. These types of bikes faded around the mid 1970s when 10-speed bicycles suddenly became the rage and later moto-cross style bicycles in the late 1970s.
Posted by Mike | December 30, 2007 5:46 PM
Posted on December 30, 2007 17:46
The most coveted bike when I was a kid was a banana seat bike! I never got one...my darn sister got one. Complete with tassles and all kinds of girlie stuff. So I never rode it! :( whimper, sniff!
Posted by Enrique S. | January 30, 2008 9:29 PM
Posted on January 30, 2008 21:29
hey i remember all that stuff cards on the wheels sissy bars banana seat schwin stingrays! wow that brought back memories, what i used to do is find all the bikes in the garbage and hack saw off all the forks i could get, and bang them on and extend those forks as far out as i could get em, then put on a small wheel like from a little kids bike, sometimes id do this on a ten speed frame and use like schwin long monkey bars, oh those were the days of care free liven!! i loved the blue schwins with that beautiful spakel blue banana seat
Posted by Roger | July 15, 2008 12:08 AM
Posted on July 15, 2008 00:08
I recall my cousin had a non-schwinn(i.e, another brand) bicycle called "sundog"(or "sundoc"). it was yellow and had a black banana seat with silver ribbed horizontal stripes across it, and it had brakes on the handlebars. the bike eventually became mine, since I rode it so much. I don't know what eventually became of it, but I miss riding it.
Posted by Robby | January 28, 2009 7:42 PM
Posted on January 28, 2009 19:42
I had a stingray knock off too from Montgomery Ward! It was a maroon paint scheme with Banana Seat and long sissy bar. A red reflector was attached to it. It was a pretty neat bike. I even had it registered with our local Police Department. They gave a neat little sticker you could put on it. Hand brakes and upright handle bars! Maybe an occassional baseball card to attach to the spokesso it would make that clicking noise!
Posted by Rivers End | June 10, 2009 9:52 AM
Posted on June 10, 2009 09:52
How many of us "borrowed" dad's spray paint to do a custom paint job. (with a seat we couldn't sit on for 3 days ouch!)for painting against the side of the house.
Posted by David Chapman | June 13, 2009 12:41 PM
Posted on June 13, 2009 12:41
I remember us kids tying balloons to the front forks so they would rub the spokes to make an engine noise. The tall stick shifts and the 4 foot sissy bars on the Schwinn bikes were the coolest if you could get one. My Mom an Dad couldn't afford one for me so, right now I'm trying to piece together a 1967 Schwinn Fastback in Schwinn blue just like the one I dreamed of owning back in the day. Who knows, maybe I'll tie a balloon to the forks when I'm done :)
Posted by Ralph Cole | August 29, 2009 10:17 PM
Posted on August 29, 2009 22:17
my neighbor had a stingray and i whinned so much my parents bought me a....damn knockoff!! it was a turd brown "renegade". i cried for what seemed like forever until i came up with a surefire way to give my parents a second chance. i put the turd-bike behind the neighbors 65 chevy truck and bingo!! well im now 50 years old and still have never owned a real stingray!
Posted by daryl tanner | September 24, 2009 6:55 PM
Posted on September 24, 2009 18:55