While we've lost count of the classic bikes we've repaired and restored here at the shop, our sense of wonder at the unusual and beautiful products of the last century is far from dead. When this 1959 Apollo rolled through the door, we realized early on that under all the surface corrosion and cracking rubber we'd find a gem. Some might call it an antique, but this classy old roadster has a new lease on life and a new chance to get out there onto the pavement. We had a great time working on it, and thought we'd share a little!

A shot of the bike before any work was done.

Steel wool, if you didn't know, is excellent at removing corrosion from chrome.

Left = pre-polishing, right = post-polishing.  So shiny!

The finished product.

Check out those sweet rod-actuated stirrup brakes.

They really don't make them like they used to.

Time and leather treatment and more time.

Shiny means smooth braking.

So clean you can see me in it!

Padraic Swanton of Chicago's Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce sent Stephan these questions in anticipation of publishing a story about the Dutch Bike Co. in The Source summer 2010 edition.

LPCC:  How long has Dutch Bike Co. been in business? Personally, how long have you been working for them?

SS [StephanSchier]:  Dutch Bike Co was founded in Seattle by David Schmidt in the spring of 2007.  I became involved as a partner in October of 2007.  We decided during the Summer of 2008 to open a Chicago store and I moved to Chicago in September 2008.  We opened for business a few weeks later in the middle of October. I am now back in Seattle.

LPCC:  What sets you apart from your competition in Chicago or across the country?

SS:  Right from the start we decided we were going to become the Dutch bike experts – so we import ourselves, directly from Holland and focus on classic utility bikes – the bikes most typical to Amsterdam residents.  Many of us live an everyday bicycling lifestyle, so we understand the needs of families and individuals who might never consider themselves “cyclists” in the sporting sense of the word, but want to ride a bike.  We were the first to set up multiple locations (including warehousing bikes in NY) so that we could serve customers across the nation, and we have customers from coast to coast.  We specialized in shipping fully assembled bikes all over the USA – typically getting to our customers in less than a week.  We also have an online store at which people can purchase bikes and accessories.

Q: I need a bike.  What should I be looking for?

You should look for a bike that is comfortable and meets your goals and  needs.  Are you training or are you commuting; do you want to shop or carry children; will you ride in inclement weather or at night?  Answers to these questions will inform the types of bikes and accessories we would recommend.  From there it's a question of how much money would you like to spend.  We would always recommend buying the highest quality bike you can afford..  Our best WorkCycles bikes will last you a lifetime.

LPCC:  What’s the most common question clients ask you?

SS:  Because of our Dutch bikes' size and heft: “Aren't these hard to ride up hills?”  In Chicago (unlike Seattle) hills are not much of an issue, but our most popular WorkCycles all have the smoothest shifting, 8-speed internally geared hubs which will get most anyone (if they take their time) up most any hill.

LPCC:  Why Chicago?

SS:  Mayor Daley and the high level of cycling advocacy going on in Chicago was and continues to be a big attraction. The hundreds of miles existing bike lanes.  The flat topography and neighborhood oriented lifestyle create a perfect climate for incorporating cycling into our everyday lives.  In example, in Lincoln Park everything is within ten minutes by bike, from Trader Joes, to Whole Foods, to the gym, to the lake, to the post office and bank – there is little need for a car.

LPCC:  How has your company changed over the years? Have you seen changes in the LPCC or the Chicago community?

SS:  We grew quickly, took some early risks (coming to Chicago) and we've consolidated (closing our NY warehouse during the economic downturn) and now we are more cautiously moving our original shop to a new location in Seattle's historic Ballard Ave district which will include a cafe. Chicago continues to be an anchor.  We are happy to have survived a rough period in which it seemed there were far too many empty storefronts in our Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Q:  What are today’s trends in your business?  

SS:  Cycling fashions that look like everyday clothes.  More practical everyday bikes for non-”cyclists”, that come equipped with baskets, racks, fenders and chain guards.  Cargo bikes (which we love), electric assisted bikes and more specialized (and expensive and trendy) bikes for sports and recreation from cyclocross, to downhill, to bmx, to fixed-gear.  Cycling is more hip across a wide range of ages, occupations and lifestyles.  Visit progressive Portland Oregon for a day and you will see the signs of the revolution.

LPCC:   What do you look forward to most on a day-to-day basis?

SS:  In Chicago, a grinning new customer riding away on their new bike.  Seeing customers riding through the neighborhood taking their kids to school, shopping or going to work.  Knowing that a bike can greatly improve the quality of someones life.  In Seattle, I look forward to sunshine.

LPCC:  What’s one thing you’d like everyone to know about Dutch Bike Co. or yourself?

SS:  More than just being technical experts on Dutch and other bikes used for transportation and cargo, we  live with bikes as our primary means of transportation.  We love our bikes, but more importantly, we strive to love our city lives.  Our beautiful and practical Dutch bikes support our view of an urban American utopia, where public transportation, pedestrians and cycle-friendly neighborhoods are king.

Q:  Anything you’d like to add about your experience with the LPCC?

SS:  Thank you for being advocates for our business and those of our peers in the Lincoln Park community.

Scribner’s

Volume 17, Issue 6, June 1895

By Marguerite Merington The collocation of woman and the bicycle has not wholly outgrown controversy, but if the woman’s taste be for the royal pleasure of glowing exercise in sunlit air, she will do well quietly but firmly to override argument with the best model of a wheel to which she may lay hand. Never did an athletic pleasure from which the other half is not debarred come into popularity at a more fitting time than cycling has to-day, when a heavy burden of work is laid on all the sisterhood, whether to do good, earn bread, or squander leisure; no outdoor pastime can be more independently pursued, and few are as practicable as many days in a year. The one who fain would ride, and to whom a horse is a wistful dream, at least may hope to realize a wheel. Once purchased, it needs only to be stabled in a passageway, and fed on oil and air. The first women cyclists of New York City seemed to rise in a heroic handful from the earth near Grant’s Tomb, on Riverside Drive. That was years ago. To-day, on the broad western highway of the city a dotted line of riders, men and women, forms a fourth parallel to the dark band which the Palisades stretch across the sky, the Hudson’s silver width, and the white thread of flying smoke from the trains beside the river. They ride from the first day of spring to the last privileged days of frosty winter. They ride from morning to high noon, and their lanterned wheels purr by with the gleam of a cat’s eye through the dark. A moon sends hordes of their queer cobwebby shadows scurrying over the ground. In the revolving years, to the eyes of those whose windows overlook the wheelways, the woman cyclist has ceased to be a white blackbird. The clear-eyed, vivified faces that speed by give no clue to the circumstances of the riders, but inquiry shows that many callings and conditions love the wheel. The woman of affairs has learned that an hour, or even half an hour, may be stolen from the working day, with profit to both woman and affairs. Now and again a complaint arises of the narrowness of woman’s sphere. For such disorder of the soul the sufferer can do no better than to flatten her sphere to a circle, mount it, and take to the road. An hour of the wheel means sixty minutes of fresh air and wholesome exercise, and at least eight miles of change of scene; it may well be put down to the credit side of the day’s reckoning with flesh and spirit. The eye of the spectator has long since become accustomed to costumes once conspicuous. Bloomer and tailor-made alike ride on unchallenged; tunicked and gaitered Rosalinds excite no more remark than every-day people in every-day clothes. No one costume may yet claim to represent the pastime, for experiment is still busy with the problem, but the results are in the direction of simplicity and first principles. Short rides on level roads can be accomplished with but slight modification of ordinary attire, and the sailor hat, shirt waist, serge skirt uniform is as much at home on the bicycle as it is anywhere else the world over. The armies of women clerks in Chicago and Washington who go by wheel to business, show that the exercise within bounds need not impair the spick-and-spandy neatness that marks the bread - winning American girl. On the excursion a special adaptation of dress is absolutely necessary, for skirts, while they have not hindered women from climbing to the topmost branches of the higher education, may prove fatal in down-hill coasting; and skirts, unless frankly shortened or discarded, must be fashioned so as to minimize the danger of entanglement with the flying wheel. Knickerbockers, bloomers, and the skirt made of twin philabegs, all have their advocates; Pinero’s youngest Amazon has set a pretty fashion for the cyclist, and many of the best riders make their records in a conventional cloth walking-dress with cone-shaped skirt worn over the silk trousers of an odalisque, or the satin breeks of an operatic page. This sounds costly, but it need not be. Here and there a costume strikes the spectator as an experiment, but the sincerity of all is unquestioned, for absence of self-consciousness has characterized the woman cyclist from the outset. The pastime does not lend itself to personal display, and in criticism the costume must be referred, not to the standards of the domestic hearthrug, but to the exigencies of the wheel, the rider’s positions to the mechanical demands of the motion; accordingly, the cyclist is to be thought of only as mounted and in flight, belonging not to a picture, but to a moving panorama. If she ride well, the chances are she looks well, for she will have reconciled grace, comfort, and the temporary fitness of things. Regarding bicycling purely as exercise, there is an advantage in the symmetry of development it brings about, and a danger in riding too fast and far. The occasional denunciation of the pastime as unwomanly, is fortunately lost in the general approval that a new and wholesome recreation has been found, whose pursuit adds joy and vigor to the dowry of the race. Having reached these conclusions, the onlooker is drawn by the irresistible force of the stream. She borrows, hires, or buys a wheel and follows tentatively. Her point of view is forever alter changed ; long before practice has made her all expert she is an enthusiast, ever ready to proselyte, defend—or ride! There is full opportunity in and about New York City for the daily hour with the wheel. From Christmas to Christmas Central Park is a favorite haunt of the cyclist when the weather is kind, and indeed a fine frenzy once set rolling the eye of a poet, who told of a wintry flight among snow-laden pine-trees over sheets of frozen snow. It sounded like a Norse Saga, but the scene was Central Park, the steed a wheel, and the story true. Riverside Drive and the Boulevard offer fair roads and a breeze coming fresh from the sources of the Hudson, untainted as it sweeps by Albany; the historic ground of Washington Heights is practicable as well as picturesque, for the Father of this country outlined a clear march for the city’s gigantic stride; Washington Bridge is a fine objective point where the rider will surely dismount to rest in the embrasure of the parapets, and admire the view up and down stream where the little Harlem wriggles along between its high green banks. For the longer ride, by crossing Madison Avenue Bridge a wheel-worthy road leads to Westchester and Mount Vernon. There is a ferry at Fort Lee, and a good road even in New Jersey, skirting the trap-rock battlements at whose base the Hudson lies like a broad moat. People who return from Tarrytown speak rather boastfully of the hills. Far-reaching dreams of summer may bear the traveller of the wheel through clean stretches in time Berkshires, on sunny lanes of Normandy, among Welsh mountains, or down Roman roads between English hedge-rows, but all the workaday year there are highways radiating from the heart of the city to the borderland of the country, where one may breathe new inspiration for the world—the world that we persist in having too much with us in the getting and spending efforts that lay waste the powers. SPINNLIED FOR GRETCHEN ON THE WHEEL Good health to all, good pleasure, good speed, A favoring breeze—but not too high— For the outbound spin! Who rides may read The open secret of earth and sky. For life is quickened and pulses bound, Morbid questioninng sink and die As the wheel slips over the gliddery ground And the young day wakes in a crimson sky. Oh. the merry comradeship of the road With trees that nod as we pass them by, With hurrying bird and lurking toad, Or vagabond cloud in the noonday sky ! Oh. the wholesome smell of the good brown earth When showers have fallen for suns to dry ! Oh. the westward run to the mystic birth Of a silver moon in a golden sky ! Good health to all, good pleasure, good speed, A favoring breeze—but not too high— For the homeward spin ! Who rides may read The open secret of earth and sky.