Free from the burden of being fast or fancy, the cruiser bike need only be cool and curvy.
By Scott Sutherland
Artist Von Franco, otherwise known for his wild T-shirt airbrushing, with the Ultra Glide Kustom Kruiser that he detailed for GT. (photo: Simon Cudby, Courtesy GT Bicycles)
During the first great bloom of American suburbia, from the end of World War II through the 1950s, garages in freshly minted communities from Levittown to Orange County sported a trio of objects that defined the era: a lawnmower, a large automobile, and a cruiser bicycle. Each held its design place. The lawnmower was strictly utilitarian, while the car, depending on your point of view, was either an optimistic expression of the nation's prosperity or a grotesque symbol of its burgeoning consumerism. The appeal of the cruiser bike, however, was undeniable. True, cruiser design borrowed much from the outsize automobiles of the times, but the bikes--with curvaceous frames, balloon tires, sweeping handlebars, and elegant fenders--managed to convey an unspoiled sense of fun and whimsy, a promise that adventure lay only as far away as the next cul-de-sac.
The cruiser was the country's dominant style of bicycle from the early 1930s into the 1960s, and even after it faded from popularity it retained a strong iconographic appeal, due largely to its uniquely American design. Before the cruiser, bikes were angular, upright contraptions that used narrow pneumatic tires. But during the Depression, after Arnold Schwinn & Co. phased out its motorcycles, bicycle design took several significant steps forward. Schwinn reassigned its motorcycle engineers to its bike division, and the designers, perhaps pining for their old jobs, created bikes strongly influenced by motorcycles, with curvy frames, a lower center of gravity, and fatter tires that offered a smoother, more comfortable ride.
Cruiser design reached its apotheosis in bikes like the 1941 Special Streamline Motobike built by Columbia (recently reissued as the 1941 Columbia Superb Replica), which sported whitewall balloon tires, full-wrap chrome fenders, a faux gas tank tucked beneath the top tube, a speedometer/clock combo mounted to the longhorn handlebar, and a chain guard that suggested a racing locomotive. Mechanically simple cruisers like the Streamline were heavy--often weighing more than 50 pounds--and slow, but they proved that style, not swiftness, was what Americans coveted in their bicycles.
Despite all that flair, the single-speed cruiser eventually fell prey to advancements like the three- and five-speed bikes that became popular in the 1960s. By the time the 10-speed craze hit in the early 1970s, the older models had been mostly consigned to the junk heap. But the past several years have seen a resurgence of the cruiser, in part as a backlash against the bicycle industry's proud techiness, and in part as a way for mountain biking to reconnect with its roots on the pavement--its role as transportation as well as recreation. "Mountain bikes were still incredibly popular in the mid-1990s, but a lot of people were finding that the complexity of the bikes was taking some of the fun out of the sport," says Dean Bradley, senior product manager for Schwinn, who oversees the company's cruiser line. "They were intrigued by the cruisers' retro style and simplicity. They were saying, 'Give me a bike I can ride to the beach and not worry about.'"
Bike companies obliged, and many now offer entire lines of the established favorites, from single-speed beach rovers to multispeed hot rods modeled after custom cars. Because the cruiser's practical applications--two wheels to go from point A to point B--don't call for technical bells and whistles, these bikes are aesthetically driven, as only optional recreational goods can be. "I see today's cruiser as an answer to a question no one has asked," says Dave Levy, owner of Ti Cycles in Seattle. "Consumers see cruisers as really cool, but do they need them?"
What the cruiser has to offer--nostalgia for aging boomers and a cachet of clout for budding velo-hipsters--transcends functional concerns, but that hasn't stopped contemporary designers from adding a few subtle updates. Top-end cruisers often feature four- or seven-speed rear hubs, hand-controlled roller brakes instead of old-school coaster brakes, lighter wheels and tires and, in some cases, lighter frames made of steel alloys, aluminum, or titanium. For the most part, though, contemporary designers are honoring elementary cruiser ingredients used by the original Schwinn designers, from low-slung, motorcycle-influenced designs to no-nonsense high-tensile steel. The cruiser's three-part principle remains the same as it was nearly 70 years ago: that simplicity and durability can be achieved with style, that the best steel tube is a curved steel tube, and that it is more important to be good-looking than fast.
Cruiser 7Schwinn Bicycles, Boulder, Colorado | $490 Dean Bradley describes the genesis of Schwinn's Cruiser 7 as a "what if": What if he took a standard, single-speed, cantilever-framed cruiser, a bike that has been in continuous production at Schwinn since 1955, and added a seven-speed internal rear hub? "What we ended up with is a simple, clean presentation that has the feel of the original cruiser, enhanced by the modern hub," he says.
The understated Cruiser 7 sports a dignified, buttoned-down look, with its black-and-cream body, painted fenders, burgundy pinstriping, and black sofa saddle. The long, sweeping lines of the frame, made of high-tensile steel, are an original Schwinn design, engineered to offer a springier, more compliant ride than the so-called camelback frames from the 1930s and 1940s. Bradley doubts that the rider can discern the difference in responsiveness, but emphasizes that, in any case, it was the look of the bikes that held, and continues to hold, the attraction. "There will always be a certain appeal to a curvy frame," he says.
In its straightforward materials and design, the Cruiser 7--with the exception of the fancy hub--represents the cruiser ideal in its purest form, an approach Schwinn plans to con-tinue with the rest of its cruiser line. "The idea is to adhere to that heritage, but with a few modern amenities," says Bradley, 42, who got into the industry by creating cutting-edge mountain bikes under the tutelage of Bob Haro at Haro Designs. "I think of these bikes in terms of Volkswagen's new Beetle. Vintage styling doesn't necessarily have to mean a vintage ride."
Moto GlideGT/Dyno Bicycles, Santa Ana, California | $467
If Schwinn's Cruiser 7 embodies the template of the classic cruiser, then Dyno's Moto Glide, part of the new Kustom Kruiser line of bikes made by GT Bicycles, is its chopped and lowered custom cousin, replete with swagger. "Hot rods are all about details," says Jim Stevenson, senior product manager for GT, who helped devise the line. "Every part on the car is tricked out and tied to a theme to create a complete look. Our Kustom Kruisers are based on the same idea." The Kruiser concept was born shortly after Stevenson, a serious road cyclist and mountain biker, moved to the beach. "I started to notice people on cruisers that they'd customized into low-riders," he says. "Then my wife took me to a Big Daddy Ed Roth car show, with all these wild customized cars, and I thought, 'Why don't we do this with bikes?'"
Stevenson, along with industrial designer Aaron Bethlenfalvy, began combing through hot-rod magazines and scoping out custom-car shows for ideas. GT, known primarily for its aluminum mountain bikes, had offered no-frills beach cruisers for several years, so the pair had a basic frame that they could update in a variety of ways. What they devised--in a scant 10 months from concept to production--is a line of eight Kustom Kruisers, each modeled after a specific hot rod.
At the top of the Kruiser line sits the four-speed Moto Glide, inspired by a customized 1950s Cadillac. The standard-issue cruiser frame, made of basic high-tensile steel, is covered in a "smokin' kandy purple ghost flame" paint job and features a long, chopper-style fork, high-rise "ape hanger" bars, roller brakes disguised as discs, sporty flared fenders, and blackwall Fireball tires with flame-pattern treads. It's a perfect machine for cruising the strip at very slow speeds. "We got a lot of attitude into the Moto Glide," says Bethlenfalvy, 27, whose design work before arriving at GT included a strikingly retro motorcycle for Excelsior-Henderson. "It's a somewhat aggressive-looking bike, but it's also about just rolling around and having a good time."
Ignaz XJoe Breeze Cycles, Fairfax, California | $675
In 1973, Joe Breeze, a road racer and bike junkie living at the foot of Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County, California, began scrounging old cruiser bikes out of junk heaps and curio shops. He stripped them down, oiled the chains, and joined his friends with similarly outfitted "clunkers" for rides on Mt. Tam. The single-speed bikes had 26-inch wheels with wide, knobby tires, upright handlebars, and coaster brakes, which would smoke on the 2.1-mile descents and required constant repacking with grease--hence the shorthand name, "Repack," for the whole scene. According to the prevailing creation myth, this dusty, greasy little klatch of gearheads and their old cruisers gave birth to mountain biking, the sport that redefined the world's idea of the bicycle.
One of the first bikes Breeze saved from the smelter was a 1937 Schwinn Excelsior X. "That one was part of a generation of Schwinns that had the best handling characteristics of any of the old bikes," he recalls. "The geometry, the position of your body on the frame--the whole focus when we first started riding these clunkers on Mt. Tam was on coming down the mountain, so handling was key. The Excelsior was perfectly set up." Breeze, 45, grew up in a design-obsessed family. His grandfather, William Francis Breeze, was an architect with the prominent turn-of-the-century San Francisco firm Bliss & Faville. His father Bill, built and raced high-performance cars, and was a friend and cycling buddy of architect Joe Esherick, for whom Breeze is named.
Like many of his Mt. Tam riding pals--Gary Fisher, Tom Ritchey, and Otis Guy, to name a few--Breeze went on to start his own bike company. He first offered a cruiser in 1996. The Ignaz X, named for Ignaz Schwinn, who cofounded Arnold Schwinn & Co. in Chicago in 1895, is a knockoff of Breeze's old Repack ride. The frame design matches the original, as does the handsome spears-and-diamonds paint job. Breeze has added a seven-speed hub, however, and used lighter tires and a steel alloy frame to trim the weight from 50 to 32 pounds. "This is my segue to the bike as transportation," says Breeze, an advocate of the "vehicular cycling" movement. "You can ride it off-road if you want, but you can also commute on it," he adds. "You don't need any special shoes, no special clothes, nothing. You jump out of bed, step into your flip-flops, get on your bike, and go."
Custom CruiserTi Cycles, Seattle | $5,000
Every industrial object has its dream incarnation, and the cruiser is no exception. To wit: the Custom Cruiser, built to order by Ti Cycles of Seattle, a small fabrication shop that specializes in crafting bicycles out of feather-weight titanium. "The bikes I build are like pieces of art," says Dave Levy, the company's founder, designer, and head builder. "They don't fit people's needs; they fit their wants."
Where most cruisers are designed with the past in mind, the Custom Cruiser, with its minimalist, angular styling and space-age materials, is determinedly forward-looking--a steed to park in front of Bilbao. Levy, 36, combined engineering with fine art and graphic design in college, started his company in 1990, and built his first and only Ti cruiser as an "aesthetics project" three years ago. "I wanted something with a lot of clean lines that was substantial and stable-looking. Instead of the curved tubes you usually find on cruisers, I chose tubes that would make the bike perform best."
Levy's 23-pound, post-postmodern cruiser uses mountain bike geometry and oversize tandem tubes--features, he says, that create maximum stability. It also has a titanium fork and handlebar, a front disc brake, and a seven-speed internal hub in the rear. One striking touch is the top tube that extends past the junction of the seat tube. "The top tube is about performance, too," Levy says. "That longer tube gives the bike more overall flex, but only in a vertical plane. Torsionally the bike is still very stiff."
Levy respects the integrity of his materials. "What I love about titanium is that you can get maximum results using a minimal amount of it," he says. "The cruiser is a neat example of that, because the tubes make it look so strong, even though there's very little titanium there. That illusion is part of the transformation that happens when a design works."
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