The Holland Bike Invasion
The German exchange student staying with us this year is also an avid cyclist, so it’s natural that we talk about bikes and cycling in the US -vs- in Germany. He says that there aren’t a lot of daily cyclists where he’s from (in the North), and most of them do it for sport rather than transportation. The few that do ride for transport or leisure though, ride what they call Holland bikes. They’re the typical roadster/english 3-speed-style bikes a lot of our parents and grandparents had, but haven’t been sold here new in 25 years. Well, they’re coming back. Here are a couple of interesting ones i’ve seen pop up in the last few months.
KHS Green
$270, 3-speed with coaster brake, includes fenders, rack, kickstand, bell and chaincase. It even uses the same tire size as the old Raleigh 3-speeds (ISO 590), but with a Shimano geared hub. This is the one that most recently caught my attention and made me realize that it’s becoming more of a trend.
Electra Amsterdam
(Not a direct link, stupid flash-based website. BTW, damn i hate flash websites that resize my browser. sheesh already)
Announced last year, now available, though i haven’t seen on in person yet. $550, with some nice additional features over the KHS, like alloy wheels and a generator-powered light. It’s a more modern approach in some ways, using 700c wheels, and a little more style-oriented, (I wonder know how long ‘leatherette’ grips will last) but it looks like a pretty solid deal overall.
I couldn’t help but also add this one:
Clever Cycles Bakfiets
From the clever folks who brought you the Stokemonkey. These will apparently be more in the $2500 range, but a whole lot more useful for the small family. Not a bad price when you consider it would replace a decent bike + Burley trailer or Xtracycle. Those are good solutions too, but the unified bakfiets design seems better for a dedicated bike.
There are other good commuter bikes coming out too; the new Specialized Globe, the Bianchi Castro Valley (they should have kept the drop bars), Novara Fusion, and most of the Breezer models. Most of those city bikes try to be more sporty though, and what i find interesting about the couple of bikes pictured above is that they are simple and functional, with really no pretense to be fast or sporty. This is probably what will doom them in the US market, but this is the sort of bike that anyone who is bike shopping at Target or WalMart should be buying instead. People, $270 is CHEAP for a bike - a $90 bike from a department store is simply cheap, and it simply won’t work well or last.
2 Responses to “The Holland Bike Invasion”
I haven’t had the pleasure of finding ’50s hubs in my low-budget S-A hunts, but that matches my experience. I have found plenty of hubs from the ’70s that feel like they’re full of wet cement, if they turn at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if by the ’70s people treated 3-speeds as essentially maintenance-free, since they seemed to last forever anyway. Still, a couple of decades in the leaky corner of the garage will do in any bike.
I have heard 3-speed aficionados say that 1950s vintage Sturmey-Archer hubs tend to be in really nice shape, while 1970s vintage hubs are often solid rust on the inside. The most likely difference is that the 1950s hubs were better cared for, while the 1970s hubs were neglected. When you consider the history of American cycling, an English 3-sp was considered a nice bike in the 1950s, but twenty years later it was a clunker compared to the seemingly more elegant European 10-speeds that became popular during that time. That perception is still evident today in marketing campaigns that promote commuting bikes that are really little more than racing bikes with flat handlebars, or at least bear fast-looking decals, etc.