A year or so ago Oscar Mulder of My Dutch Bike in San Francisco commented that he’d periodically heard from his family that his great grandfather had a bicycle shop in Amsterdam and was the “inventor of the bakfiets”. Perhaps this was never a particularly notable factoid until Oscar and his wife Soraya began a shop dedicated to supplying bakfietsen and other Dutch bikes last year.

Needless to say I’m always skeptical about anybody who’s supposedly the inventor of anything as straightforward as a bicycle with a box. But also being fascinated by the history of such things, and bikes in particular, I was also very curious to learn more. Was he known for developing a particular style of transport bike, or a special bakfiets for a particular purpose much as Maarten van Andel is much more recently the “spiritual godfather” of the 2-wheeled family bakfiets? Such stories often get twisted, misunderstood and mistranslated as they get passed through generations and languages so such an explanation seemed fairly plausible.

I forgot about the incident until Oscar sent me a note with a number of scans of photos he’d received from his mother (who still lives in Holland). None of the photos are dated but a little archive research as well as some technical features of the bikes seems to puts most of them in the 1910-1915 range. Making the task a little easier is the fact that the shop was in the Jordaan district just a few blocks from both my home and WorkCycles Lijnbaansgracht location where my office is. Much of the Jordaan looks much like it did 100 or actually even 250 years ago… aside from the cars (yes, even here there are some, though mostly just parked), some rather tasteless new buildings from the 1960’s and 70’s, and a few of the bigger canals that were filled in.

Concerning the photos and archive info we first see that great grandpa did indeed have a bike shop at Rozengracht 49 (and maybe also 40 though that’s disputable). It was called “Bergreijer” which is a play on words. Bergmeijer was the family name but “rij” is the first person form of “ride” or “drive” and “berg” also happens to mean “mountain” so in a punny sort of way it means “mountain rider”. The Dutch, incidentally, have a thing for funny names. Even when other countries were busy with dead-serious names and advertising the Dutch were naming companies with puns and other humorous approaches. It’s a history that goes back at least to when Napoleon became ruler of the region in 1810 and forced everybody to take on a family name which wasn’t at all universal at that time. Either out of spite for their ruler or figuring the names would disappear along with the ruler many people cose silly names. I actually know people who’s names directly translate to “Fountain pen”, “Short knees” and “Born naked”… seven generations later. Napoleon’s bones must be laughing in his grave.

This week Herbert Kuner of the excellent rijwiel.net website sent a couple emails to Oscar chock full of additional information. Kuner found a Bergreijer advertisement in a 1919 trade magazine listing also a separate factory at Laurierstraat 134-142. This is around the corner from the Rozengracht 49 and presumably the factory location was just for production since I don’t think the Laurierstraat was ever a street for retail shops. There are still a number of light industrial outfits there, for example our offset printing firm a few doors down from where Bergreijer stood. This location is also not listed in the 1915 phone book, which inexplicably we both found digitized on the Internet.

Another picture, though shows yet another bike shop called J. Cruiming right next to Bergreijer in the Rozengracht. Cruiming apparently also called themselves a bicycle factory and in fact a sign notes that their shop was not open to the public. This combination of retailer and fabricator is not so strange; many bike shops in this period made their own frames and other parts. I was able to find the same buildings in Google Street View. The two buildings in the right of the photo are essentially unchanged but the facades of numbers 49 (Bergreijer) and 51 (Cruimer) have unfortunately been changed.

The photos include a number of bikes, most of them fairly standard models for this period. Inside the shop are two rows of bikes, many of them with rod-operated rim brakes and none with lights fitted. A carbide lamp fitted to the bracket at the top of the headset was the standard nighttime solution then though none are visible here. Barely visible in the lower right corner seems to be a child sized bike.

There’s a gentleman in uniform, I’m guessing police though I suppose it could also be military or some other official function in which case he was very happy that the Netherlands remained neutral in WWI. His bike has a front fender that ends behind the fork crown as was the practice then. It’s a fixed gear since I see no sign of either hand brakes or even a reaction arm for a coaster brake. The chainring is a work of art and we can see it since none of the bikes in the photos have any kind of chain covers. Apparently the enclosed chain case became a defining feature of the Dutch bike later on.

Here’s a rather dashing fellow looking ready for the start of the next Portland Tweed Ride or other costume themed bicycle gathering. I’m guessing he’s physically challenged since his stylish tricycle is hand driven through a very simple pair of levers that also serve to steer the machine. It looks like it would ride fine in a fairly straight line but sharp turns could be difficult, especially for somebody who’s partially paralyzed… or maybe that’s not really the purpose of this trike. There aren’t many streets this wide bordering large rivers in Amsterdam so I’ll venture a guess that this photo was taken on the west side of the Amstel river.

***Correction: A sharp-eyed, bike loving friend of Herb Kuner in Amsterdam points out that the above and below pictures look like they were taken along the Nassaukade. Silly me! That’s right around the corner from my home and I didn’t recognize it. Of course it is about 100 years later, but still… This morning I looked more carefully while riding Pascal to his daycare center and sure enough I found a spot where the trees (aside from being much thicker) and buildings match the above photo.

This is our first bakfiets of the bunch, and it’s a remarkably ornate one. Check out that laquered box, the beautiful ironwork that seems to support both the loooong leaf springs and the handlebar, and the carbide lamps missing from the bikes in the shop above. The bike almost looks like more of a showpiece than a utility vehicle but who knows what its function was: selling cakes or household goods perhaps? Whatever it carried wasn’t heavy given the light-duty leaf springs. Though this is a very old bakfiets I’ve seen many pictures of similarly old bakfietsen from England and the Netherlands. Nope, this is not the bakfiets Mr. Bergmeijer invented.

Now, THESE last two are the bikes in question. They’re vaguely “Long John” type bikes from at least 20 years before anybody called them “Long John”. Actually they differ from Long Johns and all of the more modern variations in that the frame also runs above the load carrier along with the steering mechanism. On Long Johns, van Andel’s Bakfiets.nl Cargobike and the legions of bicycles these two have inspired the front wheel is steered via a rod linkage below the load carrier. The two photos show two different versions o the Bergreijer transportfiets. The photo with the delivery boy is probably an earlier model or prototype with no steering linkage; the handlebar has simply been extended back to reach the rider. The other bike with “G. Goes, Hemonystraat 18″ (an address in Amsterdam) has a longer box and is steered via a rather complex system of bevel gears on a shaft. They seem to have gone from the simplest system possible to the most complicated… or maybe the other way around. The bike is clearly marked “Bergreijer” and “Model D” along the top tube.

I have seen a few other bikes that looked like these. One of them I almost purchased a few years ago but the owner decided not to sell it after all. This bike with its much more robust construction and dynamo lighting is much more recent, possibly from the 1930’s. The owner told me it was a Maxwell, a very well regarded Amsterdam builder of transport bikes, quite a few of whose big trikes still can still be on the streets. Another very similar (but still different) bike is displayed at a bike repair shop near Amsterdam Central Station.

Looking more recent than the Bergreijer bikes but older than these two are these slick-looking Veeno’s shown on rijwiel.net. It is worth noting that ALL of the bikes described here are older than the 1938 I’ve seen proposed as the beginning of the Danish Long Johns, though I imagine somebody, somewhere in Denmark was also experimenting with long wheelbase transport bikes before then. This repeating of history and reinventing of wheels I discussed earlier in “What’s really new in the bicycle world?”.

So did the Bergmeijer brothers invent this type of bike? It’s possible and their “Long Johns” are the oldest I’ve seen yet. However I’m only a dabbler in antique bikes and this was a time of incredible innovation and experimentation with bicycles (and cars, motorcycles and trucks too). There were several thousand little bike companies throughout the country so quite likely somebody else was also working on such bikes as well. Some day somebody else’s grandmother might pull a few worn photos of even older examples from a shoe box. For now though, I think it’s safe to say we’re at least approaching the beginnings of the Long John type bike.

Does anybody have any more good clues to help fill in the puzzle?

Every fan and promoter of urban cycling simply needsмаси a copy of Shirley Agudo’s “Bicycle Mania”. You can regard it as a photo book, with probably the best collection of Dutch cycling photos ever assembled. Even as an Amsterdam resident and amateur(ish) photographer I marvel at the shots in these pages. Have a peek at a few examples here at the Eduard Planting gallery.

But “Bicycle Mania” goes much deeper. The photos are accompanied by well-informed and thoughtfully written text covering in sections covering the how and why the Dutch have achieved (and continue to build upon) the world’s best of nearly everything in transportation cycling: broad popularity, amazing infrastructure, safety, fun and pure variety on wheels. The text is in both English and Dutch, handy learning for those anglophiles who want to delve deeper into Dutch cycling culture than English can take you. Numerous authorities are interviewed, hyperbole and abuse of statistics is thankfully avoided and and it’s just a good read. In a nutshell: Recommended.

Read more about it at the Bicycle Mania website.

In related news a bike photo contest is being held in conjunction with the launch of “Bicycle Mania” by The XPat Journal magazine. First prize is (yep, you guessed it)… a custom built WorkCycles Secret Service bike.

Think you can take this one home? Well, you’d better act quickly since the deadline is 20 January. Photos must be emailed as jpeg’s of maximum 3Mb to: editor@xpat.nl. One photo entry per person and include your full name and phone number.

Wanna check out the bike first to see if it’s worth the trouble? It’s at the Eduard Planting Fine Art Photographs gallery where a number of Agudo’s photographs are on display. I also “borrowed” the above image from their site.

Some Danish guy on a WorkCycles rental bike in Amsterdam, originally uploaded by Amsterdamize.

I usually flip through the “VogelVrije Fietser” (literal translation: “Birdfree Cyclist”) in about 30 seconds and then pass it to my toddler son for shredding but this issue (January 2010) had a few bits worth sharing… before Pascal gets his way with it. The first interesting piece is the latest salvo in the imaginary Copenhagen-Amsterdam war of cycling supremacy. The Copenhagen ambitions to achieve or already have achieved the coveted, self appointed title of World Cycling Capitol are already all over the Internet and the BirdFree Cyclist even made the trek up there to the great white north to see what all the fuss was about. In a nutshell they made the great revelation in the previous issue that the crafty Copenhageners were just as busy improving cycling facilities in their city as in most Dutch cities, and that they’re being more vocal about promoting this fact. Whoopee, the Danes also see value in a city where many people cycle!

Now after a flood of backlash from indignant and competitive Dutch cyclists the BirdFree Cyclist interviews a number of Dutch lawmakers about the Great Copenhagen Question. Amongst other things they ask about the Copenhagen ambition to have 50% of all commuters on bikes by 2015. Being an Amsterdammer (OK a transplanted New Amsterdammer…) I’ll focus on and translate some comments from Hans Gerson, Amsterdam city Alderman from PvdA (Labor Party):

Hans Gerson (who’s sitting on a bike while carrying a folding chair in one hand in he accompanying photo):

“I know Copenhagen a bit. I think there’s much less cycling there than with us. But fine, let’s assume they want to compete with us. Fifty percent is completely no task. In the center of Amsterdam more than 50% of all trips are already by bike. I would want to set the bar higher. For the entire city already more than 38% of all trips are done with the bike. I find fifty percent a nice challenge for 2015.”

Gerson’s emphasis here seemed to have beeen missed by the interviewer: The Copenhagen goal is to have 50% of commuters cycling. This is certainly a worthy goal but commuters represent a relatively narrow segment of the population: working adults in their prime years. Thus we’re comparing apples and oranges. Which translates to more cyclists: 50% of commuters or 38% of all trips within the city by all people. I’d guess the latter but…

a. I’d have to dig through the CBS statistics to prove it.
b. Who cares anyway? The Dutch and the Danes are hard at work improving what are already the best cycling facilities in the world by an enormous margin.

But just because it’s fun to poke our Copenhagen friends I’ll add some more of Gerson’ comments:

BirdFree Cyclist: You totally don’t see Copenhagen as the winner?

Gerson:

I was there recently. It’s a really pretty city OK, but the number of cyclists there could be counted on one hand. Thus I can’t imagine that it even comes in the neighborhood of being a our competitor. And wherever I go in the world we’re always prized for our bike policy. But we’re not resting on our laurels. Lots must still be done.

Ooh, ouch Copenhagen! That hurt, and then to think that Amsterdam is only one of dozens of Dutch cities that take cycling so seriously. Darn, now I’m getting all into this competition thing too. Sorry folks.

But for those not so into this international intrigue there was also something fun for the tech weenies. The BirdFree Cyclist used an SRM power output meter to test the effects of various maintenance and component choices on the effort required to cycle. I’m assuming the test wasn’t executed to nano-precision standards but a few of the results are nonetheless interesting:

What can we learn from this?

Well, fixing flats in cold rain sucks so racing tires aren’t practical for urban use but pumping your regular tires up is worth the effort. Also the considerable difference between the tires suggests that smooth running tires such as Schwalbe Marathons are worth the small additional cost.

Ride a bike with a full chain case because not only does it not cause drag, your chain stays clean, lubricated and happy inside. But don’t pull that chain too tight. Still, I suspect that the chain test would have shown a much greater difference had he compared the new chain to a real Amsterdam chain.

Our feeling that Shimano’s Nexus 7 speed hubs are factory filled with crunchy peanut butter seems to have more scientific basis now. Early Shimano 8 speeds suffer from this problem in the 4th gear too but that’s a number of years ago now.

The last few winters have been pretty wimpy; hardly any snow and not even particularly cold. Actually that’s not entirely true since there’s nothing more bone chilling than a rainy, windy day just above the freezing point. The Dutch call it “waterkoud” meaning “water cold”, though it doesn’t prevent them from cycling like their water soluble cycling neighbors.

This winter began in November. It rained for weeks and weeks and weeks, right through much of December. It was apparently the rainiest November since the Golden Age… or something like that. Fortunately we were in Japan enjoying perfect weather. Then in late December it got colder and the rain turned to snow. Of course we’re talking about Amsterdam here so it’s never very much snow, but at least it’s been snowing regularly and the snow’s been sticking around for long enough to have some winter wonderland. Cycling in the snow is fun, especially in a city where the distances are short and you can largely avoid cars. I’ve always loved the quietness and lightness of a snowy city, I assume the result of the snow absorbing sound and reflecting light far better than most of what’s under the snow.

This afternoon poked my camera out the door to snap the above picture. Good thing those bikes aren’t spring flowers but no takers for a bakfiets rental this evening?

It’s ironic that some humble, dirty parts such as a parking stand actually have far more influence on your cycling experience than a beautiful frame or fancy, name-brand components. A stable, smooth working parking stand enables you (for example) to safely load up the kids and groceries, plop the bike onto the ground and cycle away uneventfully… just how you want it to be. But few people pay attention to such mundane things in the showroom so this is exactly where most manufacturers save a few bucks or euros. WorkCycles isn’t “most manufacturers” because we actually ride our bikes every day, carry our kids on/in them, move our stock between two shops on them… and listen to our customers who do the same.

Finding decent parking stands has been one of our most vexing challenges. During our quest for the perfect parking stand we’ve tried dozens. Most are so crappy that they don’t even deserve mention: All those Hebie copies from Taiwan and China fit poorly and then either bend under the weight of a loaded bike, quickly get scarily sloppy and break, or seize up from corrosion. The more sophisticated folding stands from Humpert and Spanninga (Sparta) have also failed our durability tests miserably. The cast aluminium Pletschers are light and pretty but not strong enough for bikes with child seats and heavy bags.

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Roughly: “It’s gonna be such a year!”

Thanks to our super photographer Martin van Welzen for the New Year’s card.

And thanks to all of you for making 2009 such a year!

Groeten,
Henry

We arrived at work yesterday figuring that the sub-zero cold, wind and snow would keep most of the customers away, leaving us with time to work on some projects. The highest priority is reconfiguring our workshop after building a massive, floor-anchored, steel frame to hang our electric bike lifts from. It’s a great improvement but not entirely our own initiative. The lifts, you see, were bolted into the 150 or 200 year old wooden beams of our ceiling… and thus the floor of the neighbors upstairs. Though the lifts are nearly new and operate very quietly they do make some vibration. Standing on the concrete (over sand) floor we never noticed this vibration but it drove the lady upstairs crazy. Actually she’s complained very vocally and angrily about a lot of things, apparently calling and writing every possible authority on a regular basis. Most of her complaints have nothing to do with our activities (there’s another bike workshop next door and several apartments have been renovated), but the vibration was a legitimate issue according to the various city inspectors who visited to investigate.

So the city ordered the building owner (a social housing corporation that manages tens of thousands of properties) to fix the vibration problem. It was decided that the only solution was to totally isolate the lifts from the floor beams, and the only practical way to do that was to build a steel frame all the way to the floor. We’re very fortunate and thankful that they took care of the job and paid for it. But it still requires an investment of several days of our labor to refit the lifts and lights. We took the opportunity to make them fully adjustable on both X and Y axis as well as angle, and now we’re adding more lights. I don’t think a workshop can ever have enough light.

Anyhow, this is all we were thinking about yesterday morning so I got busy with the scaffold, drills, plugs, screws and wiring to hang the fluorescent boxes on our ancient ceiling. And then the first snowy Cargobike and customer came in:

Customer: “My bike is almost impossible to ride. It’s really slow, and I think the brake lever might be broken.”

Mechanic: “I’m pretty sure your cables are frozen.”

Customer: “But I think there’s also something wrong with the brake.”

Mechanic: “The brakes are probably fine but they’re being locked by the frozen cables.”

Customer: “Oh wait, now it seems to be fine.”

Mechanic: “Sure, your bike is indoors so the cable just thawed, releasing the brake. It’ll freeze again a few moments after going outside. If you can wait 15 minutes I’ll fix it.

While working on this bike another snowy bike came in with the same problem, and so it went the whole day. Alexis and I pulled and flushed at least 15 cables yesterday. The problem is that Amsterdam bikes live outdoors, rain or shine. Tiny amounts of water drip and condense into the cable housings. On good quality bikes the cables are stainless steel and the housings are lined with polyethelene or another low friction plastic so the water doesn’t make much difference… until the thermometer goes below the freezing point. Then the cable freezes inside the housing. Usually it creates enough friction that pulling hard on the brake lever will overcome the friction, actuating the brake but the brake’s return spring cannot pull it back… thus locked brakes.

So here’s what you do to fix (or prevent) a frozen cable:

1. Let it thaw.

2. Remove the crimped end cap and make sure the end of the cable isn’t unwound or damaged. If it is either rewind, shorten or replace the cable as necessary.

3. Remove any kinks in the cable so that it can easily be pulled and reinserted through the housing.

4. Pull the cable out.

5. Seal the nozzle of a compressed air pistol against the upper end of the housing and blow everything possible out of the housing.

6. Seal the dispenser straw of a suitable light oil against the brake lever end of the housing. It might be necessary to pull the housing cap to do this. We use a generic multipurpose oil with teflon but just about any light oil should work fine. Don’t use “dry” type lubricant because it won’t displace the water for long.

7. Spray the oil into the housing until it begins coming out the other end.

5.5 Oops. Put a rag at the brake end of the housing to catch the oil coming out at great velocity.

8-9-10. Thread the cable back into the housing, readjust the brake and crimp a new end on.

This fix is valid for any brake (or gear) cable but I’m basically assuming the bike has roller brakes here. Drum brakes can pull their own freezing tricks and rim brakes simply aren’t suitable for storing outdoors and riding in snow country. Now the techies can ask me why I didn’t write anything about disk brakes.

This experience also demonstrates something about Amsterdam cyclists: Not only do they store their bikes on the street, they also ride in ALL conditions including snow. Of course they do; How else would they get to work, take the kids to school, do the groceries and visit their friends?

Speaking of snow, here’s a sneak peek at our surprising new development: The WorkCycles Child Transport Sled. We’re strong proponents of the K.I.S.S. philosophy (Keep It Simple Stupid) and our Sled meets the KISS criteria beautifully: It needs no wheels, tires, bearings, towing linkage or even harnesses. Just shove the kid in and go! It’s versatile too: You can pull it while walking, tie the patented “S.T.R.A.P.” (Singular Tied/Releasable Attaching Pieceofplasticwebbing) to your bike or even have your dog(s) or oxen pull it from a yoke. When there’s no snow it can be attached to the front carrier of your bike as a convenient transport bin.

In testing the WorkCycles sled we also learned that Amsterdammers not only ride their bikes all year round in all conditions, they can also make really big snowballs.

Several years ago while I was doing a project with design students at Technical University Eindhoven I met Jelle Zijlstra of Zijlstra Industrial Design. He’d designed the “Fietshangar“, a protective bicycle parking unit that replaces half a car parking spot. The concept is brilliant and philosophically I just love the idea that a single car parking space will be replaced by ten bike parking places. There are already a few hundred Fietshangars in use in various Dutch and Belgian cities and several hundred more are scheduled to be installed.

It is estimated that some 900,000 bikes are stolen each year in the Netherlands, about half of which were parked outside at home (statistics from CBS). Our experience selling city bikes at WorkCycles suggests that the perceived risk that a bike will be stolen (or vandalized or damaged) has a considerable influence on both cycling behavior and the sales of bicycles; There are a few people who’ve given up cycling after having their umpteenth bike stolen but more often people simply choose to ride crappy bikes to avoid theft and minimize the loss if their bike gets stolen anyway. The theft problem does vary widely by location; As expected it’s not a big problem in more upscale urban neighborhoods and certainly not in the villages and smaller cities. In the urban neighborhoods with mostly social housing and sketchier areas of the city center bike theft and destruction is really a plague. Just to note: The question of why fewer immigrants ride bikes comes up frequently but I’ve never seen anybody take into consideration that the areas with the highest concentrations of immigrant populations are lousy places to leave a bike outdoors. Few people have an indoor place to store a bike thus that tram gets more attractive each time you walk outside and find either your bike with a wheel flattened to the ground, your bike with the saddle slashed open, or no bike at all.

Thus the Fietshangar offers a solution for those (potential) cyclists who live where their bike otherwise wouldn’t be safe. There are two versions: A standard model that offers a basic level of protection, and the heavier duty, more secure Fietshangar+. The latter version is normally installed by a city.

I’m not sure whether Fietshangars have been installed outside the Benelux but if you’re interested you can contact the manufacturer: Heimerink Wagemakers. Their site’s in Dutch but the contact info is at the bottom of each page.

Rob Bushill of Really Useful Bikes in Bristol, England was clearly a little jealous of all the attention pulled in by the tech-weenie discussion about crates on bikes inspired by Swiss colleagues DoubleDutch. Exactly why my readers get more excited by a five minute post about a wooden crate than several hours of observations and philosophy about Japan with dozens of photos is something that escapes me but hey, I’ll just go with the flow.

Rob sent the following note with these great pictures:

Roy Belchamber took these of his Fr8, he says his daughter loves to travel on the back and he enjoys the way he can now ride to the shops instead of driving…

I think it great how a Dutch/American product with Dutch accessories can look so quintesentially English….

hope you enjoy..

Rob

I certainly DO enjoy Rob – Thanks very much for passing them along. That’s a really interesting observation that a Dutch/American product with Dutch accessories can look so quintessentially English, even if the word “quintessentially” has far too many letters and syllables for most Americans to wrap their heads around. I think our previous President “W” was even pushing a bill to ban words like “quintessentially” from Amurrican dikshunerees and buks… or maybe they were just trying to ban/burn books. I can’t quite remember what was going on in those darkest of days.

In any case I think there’s a fairly simple explanation; The qualities that people associate with “quintessentially English” are basically elements of timeless style such as natural materials, conservative colors, and pure form high on function and low on flourish. They result in objects or products that (if manufactured well) stand the test of time, achieving a certain patina. These are certainly qualities that WorkCycles strives for.

This is, incidentally, in stark contrast with what we would call “typically English” such as drunken and stoned weekend tourists browsing the windows of Amsterdam’s red light district in a rowdy group.

Wow, I sure wish we’d known about this stuff earlier! It’s been cold and raining for almost a month straight here in Holland and I’m really itching to get out for a nice, long bike ride in the countryside. Well this new “Anti-Rain Spray” from Dutch distributor Agu just showed up and I can’t wait to try it.

I know that the Dutch continue cycling for transportation regardless of weather... but riding recreationally is another story. I’d much rather cycle under a sunny sky, or at least when it’s not pouring and slightly above freezing temperature. I stopped racing years ago so I just don’t NEED to do that anymore.

If it works well WorkCycles will add it to our wonder spray range, right next to our famous High-Tech Antitheft Bicycle Spray.

Reading the instructions I’m already a little disappointed though; It says to apply the Anti-Rain Spray to jackets, bags and shoes. Problem is that I don’t always wear the same clothes and shoes to ride. So it already looks like more work than I expected but if it brings the sun out, or at least keeps it from raining for a couple hours I’ll be more than satisfied!