dbakl

My wife and I spent a week in the country outside of Treviso, home of Pinarello. Even in the city, you see very few racing bikes, nothing old and cool. What you see are these city bikes, labelled in all sorts of brands you never heard of. Typically they are 1, 3 or 5 speeds, with nice paint and chrome and cheap Campagnolo components, steel cranks and full chainguards. I even saw a rod brakes Pinarello.

I realize now, these cheap city bikes were the basis of the gaspipe Italian 10-speeds that were all around in the bike boom. Add a pair of drop bars and some Valentino and instant Italian racer! Nice looking, but low on quality.

The villa we stayed at had a couple modern city bikes, my wife and I took a ride in the country almost every day. Its pretty much all flat except when you have to go under a road crossing, and we'd go further and further every time to a few close by towns. They've labelled a network of the smaller roads as a bike route, not too many cars but you run into a lot of tractors and farm machinery. Though the roads are really narrow with no shoulders the drivers are really respectful of bikes; not at all like the US. You can see old ladies and men tooling down the major roads and roundabouts on their citybikes, doing their shopping and errands. The stepthrough design is most common, even for men.

One picture of my wife as we entered the town closest to where we stayed. Even though the bike was functional junk, the idea of riding a bike in Italy brought joy to me every day! Now my wife wants one of those...

vjp

dbakl,

Thanks for sharing, this was my experience in Italy also. I have seen pics of old pro bikes that have become city bikes and they are cool!!

rootboy 

Me too. Didn't see one nice old road bike while in Italy. But maybe they're kept inside. Those city bikes have their charm though.
Are you going to make it up near the Alps, Dbakl?

dbakl

I'm already back. No, I think Madonna del Ghasallo was as close as we were to the Alps.

Now if United could just find my luggage...

non-fixie 

Yes! Good thread. Brixen, a while back:

JohnDThompson 

I spent some time in Cremona several years ago. Bikes are real transportation in the rural Italian towns, and although they may be gaspipe, they're very practical bikes.

dbakl

Yeah, I'm thinking of turning my Pinarello into a citybike with 15-speeds...

gomango

In Cecina.

About the same view everywhere for city bicycles, but I did find a few shops that were outstanding.

Some of the bicycles above have lots of charm.

iab

I just got one myself.

dbakl

Cool!

shnibop 

We have a winner!

marley mission

i love this bianchi - amazing color

blilrat

That's gorgeous! A rolling piece of art.

Gallo

two weeks from now the square will look like this in Treviso

non-fixie 

damn, iab, you're good at this!

* note to self: I really gotta improve my scavenging skills! *

smontanaro 

I have a Bianchi Rekord who is in the process of donating his componentry (at least temporarily) to my Medici Pro Strada. If all goes according to plan, I hope to convert it one day into a city bike (though it will never be as lovely as iab's!). To that end, I will need fenders, condorino bars, and perhaps most importantly, a chain guard with the necessary bulge for a front derailleur. I'm sure I can get a SOMA Condorina bar and Nitto quill stem with an open bar clamp if I can't find a real condorino bar/stem/lever combo. Fenders of various kinds are available. The chain guard throws me though. Does anyone know of a source for chain guards which will work with front derailleurs?

Thx,

Skip

iab

I have never seen a chain guard with a bulge you describe. Not to say they don't exist, just never saw one.

Why do you need an FD for a city bike? In Chicago?

dbakl

They turn up on ebay a bit. I have one labeled Simplex and there were Huret ones, maybe others; not sure what else they'll mount to:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-LJ-S...#ht_500wt_1331

Someone here posted a link to this cool Bernardi catalog of parts too:
https://asp-it.secure-zone.net/v2/in...09/1033&lng=it

Chombi

Call me a Europhile but I really loved Italy, France, Spain and the UK when I first visited those countries this last Christmas season!
Everything and everyone was so nice and I cannot wait for when I can go back and visit again! I was also expecting to see nice C&V bikes, but as mentioned the the OP, there's none to see on the streets at all. And thinking that Europe is so "bikecentric", it was really a surprise for me. Yes, there were enough bikes to see in cities like Rome and Barcelona, but they were 99.9 percent, all "grocery getter" townie bikes with local but unfamiliar names of all sorts, with a very few forgettable, beat up MTBs mixed in. You see a lot more of nicer old bikes in SF streets everyday.Only racy/cool stuff I saw were modern CF bikes being ridden by club racers doing winter training.
So,...where are all the nice C&V race bike being hidden in Europe??! Could there be a few master hoarders out there buying them all up and stashing them away in warehouses??

Chombi

smontanaro 

Well, yeah, I don't need it. I probably don't need five bikes either, yet somehow I manage to have that many.

My picture of an Italian city bike is one that used to be a racer (front and rear derailleur), but has been given a second life with fenders, a chain guard and condorino bars. I could certainly skip the front derailleur for practical purposes, but this isn't necessarily just about practicality. It's as much about a somewhat impractical, idealized image in my mind's eye of what these bikes are "supposed to" look like as anything. The Bernardi catalog dbakl posted has a promising looking chainguard on pg 310, labeled "CAR 02". CAR 15 on p 311 might work as well. Both have the little derailleur bump.

Aside: Don't you wish the Performance Bike catalog was more like the Bernardi catalog? That thing's kind of like the biking equivalent of the Sears Wish Book! (Can you believe somebody has scanned those Wish Books???!!! But I digress...)

norskagent

I have a zeus road bike I'm restoring into a city sort of bike, I was warned today that with swept back city bars the steering would be compromised. I'm not too worried since this will be an easy rider / cafe' bike. I'll post pics in the "zeus in the rough" thread I started a while back, whn I finish the build.

Reynolds 

I'm surprised the OP didn't spot any manubrio condorino.

Citoyen du Monde

Here is my daughter's bike. Check out the chainguard.

rootboy 

this thread still going? Italian city bike, sort of....

iab

Neat.

And neat bike.