I woke up this morning thinking I should write this down, so I did. It is far from complete, but it tells the story of Northwest frame building from my perspective. If you have anything to add, let me know and I'll add it. I didn't intend for it to be a tome, just kind of an outline of what has happened mostly here in the Northwest in the last 50 or so years. It's been a long fun journey, and it continues.

Short story about Northwest Frame building..docx (18.61 KB)

Bob Freeman

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It's just a word file. I thought everybody could open one of those. Opens up just fine for me with the link I gave, but maybe that's because I wrote it. So here's the full text.

A Short Story about the Long History of Northwest Frame Building
By Bob Freeman
In the 60s, there were no handmade bicycle frames being made in the Pacific Northwest. There weren’t many made in the US at all. A few New Yorkers like Alvin Drysdale were busy making frames, and Schwinn had their Paramount works in the Chicago factory, which began in earnest in 1958, and after that, there were a few English and Italian frames being imported here and there, and that was about it. The racing scene was just getting started, in various parts of the country, including Seattle, Portland, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York. There were many new customers for lightweight racing bikes.
In Seattle, several Pro Shops sprang up in the late 60s. Principally Wheel Sport in Bellevue run by enthusiast Frank Nashland, Velocipede in Seattle by the Tamura family, and Greggs and Aurora Cycles in Seattle which were longtime Schwinn dealers. And Baker’s Bikes run by bike racer Jerry Baker, arguably the first real pro-only shop, run out of his house in the U-District. Jerry was importing frames from England from Holdsworth and Hugh Porter, and building up nice racing bikes with Campagnolo parts, and expert racing wheels.
In the early 70s, a young Bill Davidson, another bike racer and enthusiast who worked at Pine Street Cycles, the second shop of the Tamura brothers, made a trip to England and Europe and spent some time learning the rudiments of frame building from Harry Quinn in Liverpool. When he came back, they said, You should make us some frames. Thus began Davidson Cycles, in the back of Pine Street Cycles. The first frames were pretty crude, but well designed and well brazed, and they rode nicely. Bill had a knack for it. Jerry picked up Bill’s frames too, to add to his lineup.
About the same time, enthusiast Angel Rodriguez spent some time with Alex Singer learning the rudiments of the craft, and when he came home, he partnered with bike racer Glenn Erickson to open R+E Cycles, at first just making Rodriguez frames, and importing a few French and English frames.
These were Seattle’s first two frame shops. Portland also had a bit of a renaissance in the early 70s, with Strawberry Cycles, run by Andy Newlands, Merz Cycles by Jim Merz starting up. Merz’ friend Bruce Gordon had learned from Albert Eisentraut and also started making frames in the mid-70s in Eugene. All these shops were gaining a reputation for building top quality racing and touring frames, as nice or better than anything that could be had out of Europe. The Bike Boom of the early 70s had fueled a lot of interest in nice bikes, and two large clubs started up then too, the Cascade Bicycle Club in Seattle, and the Portland Wheelmen in Portland. Along with a number of racing teams. Velocipede and Wheelsport in Seattle out of those two shops, L’Equipe out of R+E. A couple of Portland Teams too.
I should mention Calfornia too. A number of notable builders started out in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, including Albert Eisentraut, Tom Ritchey, Steelman, Moulton, and of course Masi USA, started by Faliero Masi in 1974 to produce frames for the US market. Mario Confente was his first and best talent, and many who later came into their own like Brian Baylis, got their starts there. Medici was kind of an outgrowth of Masi, but that’s a story all by itself.
Growth was still slow. Angel used to tell stories about him or Glenn riding their bike down to RH Brown to pick up the parts they needed for the day’s repairs. Bill Davidson moved out on his own and built a frame shop on his property in Kent and by 1977 had one helper. Glenn visited Bill Davidson a few times while Angel was visiting Singer, to learn how to make frames too, so both Rodriguez and Erickson frames were made in their shop by 1979.
I moved to Seattle about that time, a burgeoning bike racer and experienced cross – country tourist, having led a successful group across on Bikecentennial in 1976. I wandered into Sekai Bicycle Company in early 1977 and got a job there, in the Sekai warehouse which was in the process of separating itself from the Velocipede Bike shops, though it had not quite happened yet. So I joined the Velocipede Team, which was a powerhouse team in those days with the young Mark Pringle, Bill and Debbie Turina, Kay Henshaw, Merwin and Linda Peters, Graham Garcia, Dennis Palmer among its ranks. I also joined the Cascade Bicycle Club, and got involved in running the club, being Vice President, then President, then Special Events coordinator, which in those days involved running the Seattle to Portland ride, and the Chilly Hilly.
By late 1979, Sekai was faltering, a victim of poor planning and dramatic swings in exchange rates, and I went looking for other opportunities. At first I landed a job with the new Protec Helmet company, but that didn’t pan out, as they ran into a financial bind and had to put off starting me. Then a couple moved to the area from Ann Arbor Michigan, Mike Kolin and Denise de la Rosa. They were both strong racers in the Wolverine Sports Club, coached by the legendary Mike Walden. Mike was an executive for Ford Motor Company. They were also published authors, with their first two books being The Ten Speed Bicycle, and The Custom Bicycle, published by Rodale (Bicycling Magazine). They started a new bike racing team, Rainbow Cycling Club. Denise had run a bike shop in Ann Arbor, and they decided to open one in Seattle called Northwest Cycle. Mike tapped me to be their first manager, which I happily accepted. We were a big hit. Many of my teammates at Velocipede, and some from other teams in the area, jumped to the new team. We sold Italian frames from Pinarello, Colnago, Cinelli, De Rosa, Viner, and Grandis, in addition to our Scwhinn and Raleigh lines. I suggested that first year, 1980, that we add Bill Davidson, and they agreed. We were soon selling as many Davidsons as all the others combined. In 1983, after my trip to England, we added Jack Taylor frames as well. Bill was quite happy with the exposure his bikes got in our shop, and in the summer of 1983, I mentioned to him that I thought Seattle needed one more pro shop, and we should do it. So we began planning Elliott Bay Bicycles. We didn’t know what we didn’t know, and no one told us we couldn’t, so we just did it. We found an unlikely spot near the Pike Place Market and moved in in November of that year, opening up December 5. We spent the next few months configuring the back of the 7200 square foot space to make frames in it, and moved the frame shop up from Kent in early summer 1984, and adding a paint facility shortly after.
Again, an instant hit, and I’m sorry to say we stole a lot of thunder from Northwest Cycle, and they struggled after that. We were soon hiring new frame building talent, among them Mark Bulgier who had started at Bud’s Bike Shop making Santana Tandems before moving north and working at R+E cycles for a few years. Mark made a lot of our custom frames in his years with us, called Davidson Signature. We built several lines of stock frames too. Still made by hand and with top quality materials including our own investment cast parts. By the late 80s, we were making 700 frames a year in our shop, and selling them through a network of dealers all over the US, with Spokane, Portland, San Francisco, LA, and Denver being our big markets. We also sold a number of Italian and English frames in our shop, and even some custom Japanese frames from Nagasawa. We were the only shop in the US that ever imported Masi Prestige frames, but that didn’t last long, as the new Masi USA owners wanted to focus on their own Masi Nuova Strada frames, rather than the Prestige still made by Alberto Masi or the Gran Criterium frames that had been made in California since 1974. It was a tense relationship between them.
Things were cooking along nicely, but by the mid-80s, the big manufacturers, notably Trek, Cannondale, and Specialized, noticed that people would spend a lot more money on a bike than they used to, so they started making bikes that competed with our stock bikes, but with their buying power, they could out-compete us easily, so sales of those started falling off. Nevertheless, we soldiered on. Our stock lightweight Impulse frame, made with Tange Prestige tubing and all investment cast parts, made a superlative bike, with Dura Ace or Campy parts, and we sold hundreds of them. We made it in sizes from 46 to 66 cm, to fit nearly everybody.
Business continued to get harder. Glenn left Angel about 1987 to go off on his own, and then Angel sold the business and moved back to his native Panama. It had a rocky few years under the new owner, and failed after 3 years, so Angel came and took it back and turned it over to Estelle Gray and Dan Towle. The shop is still making frames today, nearly 54 years in the same location, but Dan sold out and retired a couple years ago too. The advent of titanium and especially carbon bikes saw the business for handmade steel bikes fade considerably, and that’s where we are today. A number of new builders tried to make a go of it in Seattle and Portland in the 90s and 2000s, and some have succeeded, but none have ever achieved the numbers of us pioneers of the 70s and 80s. A lot of them got their start at the United Bicycle Institute’s Frame Building School first in Ashland and then Portland, but many found out that a good way to make a little money in the frame building business is to start out with a lot of money.
It’s a whole new sport and a whole new industry. Most business is done online now, and many of the old shops are gone. Many of the old guard are gone or retired too. I still fuss with classic bikes. Bill Davidson went out on his own again in 2014 making titanium frames only, after we closed Elliott Bay Bicycles, but sold his interest a couple years ago, and still works for the new owner of his business, making Mischief frames. He’s been at it 53 years now!

Addendum - Here's a pic we call the "Sons of Cyclocross" Bill Davidson leading Glenn Erickson in a cyclocross race about 1972. Hope you can open it.
The Sons of Cyclocross 2 | bobbiker | Flickr

It opened just fine for me, as well. I think that you just have to register with the Classic Rendezvous ProBoards site to get access.

Thanks Bob! A lot of names I recognize but nice to see how they fit in the family tree of cycling.

Interesting read!

Cool stuff. How long do we need to wait for the expanded coffe table version with photographs?

So, many different hands went into making Davidsons. A Davidson along with the west coast builders on the Henry James frame builder list was on my list when I was still dreaming of a made-for-me race bike.

Thanks for this, Bob! Lots of memories.

BTW, by the time I met Jerry Baker (and his brother Tom) around 1970, he was still working as a mechanical engineer and running Bakers Bikes from his home on Mercer Island. Later he moved to the U-village area, as well as start his Baleno custom bike clothing/accessories operation instead of Baker's Bikes (he told us Baleno meant "flash" in Italian...). I made a short film about him for a high school project in 1972, and was honored when Spot (his wife) asked for it to be shown at his funeral.

Another PNW framebuilder to mention is Mike O'Brien. I think he started sharing some garage workspace with Glenn Ericksen in the late 80s, making a small number of frames for Gregg's Greenlake and then going alone as a limited custom-only builder. Mike is a family friend for many decades, now retired. I still rotate riding my O'Brien 1990 custom steel, updated with Ultegra 8 speed STI!

We had a fine crew. But there weren't that many. Maximum was 5 builders and 2 painters in the late 80s. In those days we had racks of frames built in every model and size and could pull one down and get it painted and out in a week. Customs took a month, or two if they got chrome. I don't know any builder who could make a frame faster. At the end of steel production in 2014 there was just Bill, one builder, and one painter. Bill hadn't done all the work on any frame since the late 70s but he was always and still is hands-on, and always had the final say for quality control, design, and finish work. A big part of our history was when Bill partnered up with Seichi Kikuchi of Takahashi Press to produce investment cast lugs of our own design. We sold these to many prominent builders, and you will see them on PDG Paramounts, Medicis, Moultons, Holland, Terry, Stowe, Serotta, Tesch, and many other builders. One set we made was unique to the industry, and was made to complement our own unique tubing set from Tange as well. It had a 30mm down tube, 28.6 top tube, and a flared and ovalized seat tube that was 28.6 front to back and 32mm side to side at the bottom. That was for our Stiletto model. Since I retired, I have acquired one of those, and also a Tesch and Serotta (made for Ochsner) with our lugs. By chance, the original owner of the Stiletto found me on flickr and contacted me recently.

1987 Davidson Stiletto | Flickr

Bob Freeman

My neighbor has an O'Brien. And don't forget Olympia's Bill Stevenson, who also learned from Eisentraut.

A nicely written memory. I hope you can find a good cycling mag to publish your story once you get it finalized with folks' additions and thoughts. The memories, names, and tales deserve to be read by both those who contributed, and those who benefitted from their labors. Cheers.

It seems to be hosted on the Classic Rendezvous Proboards site. That's the login which is required.

Thanks for the plain text extract.

No, Erickson and O'Brien did not share space. O'Brien had some sort of arrangement with Glenn's friend and riding buddy Peter Hiltner, I think Mike and Peter were roommates. Glenn told me about a time when Peter showed him around Mike's part of the garage or basement or whatever it was.

I visited Glenn's one-man shop many times, after he left R&E and worked out of a one-car garage. You wouldn't want to share that space, it was tiny. I don't know how he made tandems in there, maybe rolled his Park stand out in the alley? I lived around the corner from Glenn, our back yards were on the same alley. So close, I threw a pine cone from my back yard into his once.

Funny story about O'Brien and Gregg's Greenlake bike shop, told to me by Ross Shafer, who founded Salsa Bicycles and is in the MTB Hall of Fame. Ross and Bruce Gordon were on a motorcycle tour together and came through Seattle. One place they went was Gregg's, where they found a kiosk or some such, info about O'Brien frames. One of the things it said was that Mike had apprenticed under Bruce. According to Ross, Bruce blew up, started yelling about how he's never heard of this guy and he definitely didn't apprentice under Bruce, he would have remembered that! Made quite a scene until owner Stan Gregg came out and apologized, said he'd fix it, and next thing you know O'Brien and Gregg's were no longer affiliated.

Bob, this is an important contribution to our general knowledge of how framebuilding came to America. Last Monday was the 1st day of another one of the 3 week framebuilding classes. I start out by explaining how American framebuilding knowledge from the past got lost as the old guys who made bikes for the 6 day racers or whatever else retired or died after WW2.. In most of the States few Americans rode "10 Speed" bicycles. The 1st day a high schooler got his driver's license was the last day he rode his bicycle. This suddenly changed about 1970/71. When I was in Japan for a year teaching between my degrees from the department of Education, I read an article in Time or Newsweek about how American discovered the ten speed bike. When I got back home to Michigan in the late summer of 1971 everything had changed. Adults were wanting to ride bikes now for health, recreation and fun. I couldn't believe it. When I went over in 1970, my bicycling hobby was seen as strange. When I got back, everyone was asking my questions. if you wanted a Schwinn 10 speed you were put on a waiting list until one became available.

This new to Americans hobby opened up opportunities to build custom frames here. There were about 10 of us (like Bill Davidson) in the '70's that went to Europe to learn the craft. I went to Ellis Briggs in Shipley West Yorkshire in 1975. My purpose for going was to teach how to do it back here. I'm still doing that.

And Doug Fattic is also to be commended for his many years of commitment to the craft. If anyone has been involved in it for very long you know it's a labor of love, and hard to make a real living at it. But it's guys like him that have kept the reputation of American frame building as that of the best in the world. Thanks, Doug!

Ah, I see now in the link, it was from the attachment I put in my similar post to CR. I just copied the whole thing thinking it was just my same Word attachment that came along with, but somehow they had grabbed it. I'll remember that for future posts.
But doesn't everyone here also read CR? It's the best body of knowledge of vintage bikes on the planet. All the cool guys go there! We always sign off with our real names there by the way. I've literally gotten to know people all over the planet that way! Try it, you'll like it!
Bob Freeman

Interesting!

Thank you for this! The triangle of Pine St., REI, and particularly NW Cycle were Mecca when I was in jr. high school and the NW Cycle 'loft' is the reason why I have 19 bicycles today. Powerful stuff.

I have lots of stories of those days. One time at NW Cycle, a guy was banging on the door before we opened and really wanted to get in. Finally I let him in and he walked right past me, an charged up the stairs to the loft where we kept all the cool Italian frames and Davidsons. After a few minutes he came down slowly with a quizzical look on his face and said "Where'd you put the canoes?" I said, oh, they are across the street in the main store, where they've always been! (That's REI if you're not from around these parts).
Pine St Cycle was originally down Pine street about 5 blocks, then they moved 5 blocks farther down later on. But Velocipede took over the space on the corner of 11th and Pine that was formerly part of the REI store.

Bob Freeman

I bought my Miyata 912 at Pine St. cycles. Saved up for a long time for that.