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Sting Ray bikes a Euro conspiracy?

Old 05-26-21, 11:25 AM
  #26  
Reflector Guy
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Originally Posted by curbtender
Stripped down Stingrays were are BMX bikes.
Yep, pretty much. DIY style.
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Old 05-26-21, 11:35 AM
  #27  
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My first bike was a single speed Schwinn Sting Ray Deluxe. We rode our bikes on the roads, we rode our bikes on the trails. We rode our bikes everywhere. We made ramps and jumped our bikes.

I BMX'd the hell out of it. I just didn't know at the time it was BMX. I then moved on to a Kent 3 speed and then to a Sekine 10 speed. Never raced though.
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Old 05-26-21, 11:37 AM
  #28  
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Originally Posted by indyfabz
At least it’s not another disc brake or steering thread.
However ... I believe the op's premise is inherently flawed. The Stingrays were 'heavy' bikes, were they not? If so, then a whole generation of American kids were should have been getting workouts superior to those of their Euro counterparts. Therefore, the Stingrays cannot be blamed. If there was a conspiracy, the Euros would have had American kids on the lightest possible 'racing bikes' during their formative years, in order to sabotage their ability to be competitive in European pro cycling.
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Old 05-26-21, 11:42 AM
  #29  
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Originally Posted by badger1
However ... I believe the op's premise is inherently flawed. The Stingrays were 'heavy' bikes, were they not? If so, then a whole generation of American kids were should have been getting workouts superior to those of their Euro counterparts. Therefore, the Stingrays cannot be blamed. If there was a conspiracy, the Euros would have had American kids on the lightest possible 'racing bikes' during their formative years, in order to sabotage their ability to be competitive in European pro cycling.
Excellent point! Yes, American kids got "the Ashtabula workout!"
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Old 05-27-21, 06:45 AM
  #30  
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Wow, this is a Boomer thread if ever there was one.
Generation X (me) who’s rapidly approaching 50, came up in the 1980’s. Our first ‘real’ bike was a BMX; in our teens and 20’s ( in the 1990’s) we rode MTBs.
Boom-era ‘ten-speeds’ were what our parents rode. The Stingray? Wasn’t even on the radar.

Road racing in the US was always sort of an enclaved, cliquish thing; and with the traditional rules, structure and ‘putting your time in’ didn’t really appeal to Gen-Xers individualism or the general 80’s vibe.

Road Racing was something you had to seek out. I grew up in Fallbrook, CA in the early 80's. I don't recall ever seeing a road bike race, let alone a Juniors, but BMX was something that some kids did as their 'sport' like some of us played soccer or were on swim teams.
BMX was also something that a bunch of 8-12 year olds could go off and do on their own, on homemade 'tracks' in 'the boonies' without getting in much trouble. Same with MTB's when I moved East in the 90's. All you need is a couple buddies, and your bikes; just point them into the woods and go.
Some of us had the skill, money and parental support to do it competitively, the rest of us just rode for fun.

Last edited by Ironfish653; 05-31-21 at 12:14 PM. Reason: Edited for generational and regional context
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Old 05-27-21, 07:06 AM
  #31  
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Originally Posted by Ironfish653
Wow, this is a Boomer thread if ever there was one.
Generation X (me) who’s rapidly approaching 50, came up in the 1980’s. Our first ‘real’ bike was a BMX; in our teens and 20’s ( in the 1990’s) we rode MTBs.
Boom-era ‘ten-speeds’ were what our parents rode. The Stingray? Wasn’t even on the radar.

Road racing in the US was always sort of an enclaved, cliquish thing; and with the traditional rules, structure and ‘putting your time in’ didn’t really appeal to Gen-Xers individualism or the general 80’s vibe.
A lot of broad generalizations here. I'm also a Gen-Xer (although I hate the label, thanks Douglas Copeland!), and didn't own a Stingray. My first 'real' bike was a 'ten-speed.' I did go and watch BMX races in Tucson in the 70s, but didn't ride them myself. I road raced in the mid-late 80s. Didn't ride MTBs until 2000s.
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Old 05-27-21, 08:03 AM
  #32  
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You're going to have to fill some of us in on the European Stingray conspiracy theory.
If the Stingray derailed a generation of American racers, why didn't the Raleigh Chopper derail European racers?

I was a Stingray kid in 1969 but my next door neighbor Danny was a Chopper kid. These bikes were the BMX and Mountain bikes of their day. I know I road mine not only to school every day (yes we did that back then), but I spent many days blasting through the woods and making jumps with plywood with Danny in our neighborhood. When I built my first go kart, my Stingray got parked for most of that summer. 1972 maybe?

So, why didn't we figure out mountain bikes back in the early 1970's? Blokes in Marin County figured that out a few years later....

Road racing in America as a whole (excluding some pockets like Colorado and California) was not popular back then. It wasn't until years later that Greg LeMond increased awareness and the popularity.



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Old 05-27-21, 08:34 AM
  #33  
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OP... come out, come out, where ever you are!
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Old 05-27-21, 10:33 AM
  #34  
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Originally Posted by SkinGriz
The British don’t consider themselves European? I had no idea. The Romans crossed that canal easily enough.
I did have a friend from Rhodesia who said he thought the British were the most evil people on earth. Slight tangent, but the thread started off with a conspiracy.
If your friend still says he's from Rhodesia, I know some Zimbabweans who would consider him among the most evil people on earth...


The Raleigh Chopper was the most popular kids' bike in Ireland in the generation that produced Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche. And I bet at least one or two of Lemond, Grewal, Davis Phinney, Hampsten etc etc had a Stingray/Chopper/equivalent at the same age.
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Old 05-27-21, 12:24 PM
  #35  
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Damn! I was diverted from my racing career by the stingray. I got a fastback for my 9th birthday. Gold one.

I could be retired from my pro career by now.

Still have the bike, though. It lives in the basement with other retired bikes.
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Old 05-29-21, 01:56 AM
  #36  
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The American public did not really care for 10 Speed Racing Style bicycles UNTIL Schwinn released the SAFETY LEVERS ( "Turkey Levers") in 1969!!!
EVERY MAJOR BICYCLE MANUFACTURER QUICKLY FOLLOWED SUIT ON EVERYTHING......EVEN ON HIGHER END MODELS.
Yes, that is how it was once upon a time when things were far out.
THE REASON THAT THE 10 speed Racer Style Craze THAT FUELED THE Bike Boom of the '70's HAPPENED IS THAT ORDINARY FOLKS COULD NOW RIDE THE "TOPS". You have to realize that young people didn't want to be identified as "Straight" ( the word had a different meaning then....) They wanted to be seen as Cool and Hip, and straight was as far from that as possible... Well, for whatever reason, at that time, a 10 speed with North Roads Tourist handlebars was as popular as long pleated skirts, saddle oxfords, and bee-hive, or boufant hairdoos for women and any whitewalled, flattop, crewcut, buzzcut, short or wet-head hairstyle for men was in 1969. You just didn't dress or look like the tv characters BUD ANDERSON (father knows best..'50's) and WALLY & The BEAVER(leave it to beaver '57-'63).
Never before had so much change in style of dress and what was deemed hip and cool changed so much......ever.
The USA was slower to adopt to this but between 1968 and 1970 the USA had reached where England and other countries already had been for years. England was the hip style leader for all the world beginning in early 1964 and remained so for at least the remainder of the Sixties....
The Beatles.................
Even the most ordinary square television programs like the first season of Brady Bunch that aired in 1969 has the mom dressed in boufant hairdoo and clothing-dresses that could equally be out of 1962, and the dad has short over the ear haircut and wears suits and ties and shoes that look like the attire that Sgt Joe Friday would wear daily. Well, as yall know Carol & Mike Brady did metamorphosize into sporting styles and hip clothing that was farther out than some young folks who would have been labelled hippies in about ten Southern States in 1970-1972.
The Sting Ray craze largely was the phenomenon of the younger Boomers that were born in the years between 1956 and 1964. So if you were about eight years old between about 1964 and 1972, you likely recall that Sting Rays and similar carbon copies by other makers were the dominant bicycles that were in the bike racks at your elementary school......... IF YOU WERE BORN BEFORE 1956, YOUR CHILDHOOD RIDE TO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL WAS THE TYPICAL JC Higgins/Schwinn/Columbia/Murray/Huffy/Ross/Western Flyer/Hiawatha/Firestone/Coast to coast/AMF Roadmaster/Rollfast/.....etc 'BEACH CRUISER STYLE BICYCLE WITH COASTER BRAKES AND FULL FENDERS AND NORTH ROADS-CRUISER HANDLEBARS & 1-Piece ASHTABULA CRANK.
The kids born in 1956 graduated from high school in 1974, so by the time that they had reached age 13, the Sting Ray was too much of a child's bike for them, and they had already moved on to something more suitable in an adult size bicycle for the last few years before getting the drivers license at age 16 or 15 as was the case in some states like South Carolina. So the 1964 birth kids, the last of the Sting Ray adoptees, largely were probably done with Sting Rays by age 11 or certainly 12, as you'd guess that 10 speeds were the rage and the Sting Ray craze was dead by 1975-1976 as eight to 10 year old kids wanted Evil Knievel like Motocross looking bicycles.
There were so many bad accidents with the crazy high rise bars that were seen on the 1964-1971 bars (or '63 onward thru '71 if the StingRays commenced in '63...)
A friend of my sister, named Catherine had to have emergency surgery to remove her spleen after crashing in the Summer of 1967 on her banana seat, high rise handlebar SCHWINN girls bike version of the StingRay. The handlebars impaled her side. Catherine was ten at the time (born in '57 and class of '75 and college class of '79).
The newly established Consumer Product Safety Commission campaigned strongly against both Lawn Darts(remember those...) and the crazy high rise handlebars so much in about 1970 that they got legislation prohibiting such bars with the width and height as seen during the 1964-1971 era.........whether the manufacturers agreed to dial it back or whether it was specific legislation that forced this, I do not recall but there was a significant change in the size and width of those crazy ape hanger high rise handlebars that all the banana seat craze bikes had until 1971. A heck of a lot of people got hurt just in normal ordinary accidents like Catherine's in 1967, but the accidents became exponentially worse for boys especially after the 1968 Caesars Fountain Jump put Evil Knievel on the radar screen. ABC Sports' Wide World of Sports featured Evil doing jumps (and near death crashes) between 1968 and 1973 that were massive television ratings winners. You've got to remember that most larger cities only had three television stations......ABC, NBC, and CBS were the broadcast networks....... Nobody had cable television other than some mountain areas and that just largely got you the three broadcast networks. Nobody cared about public television that was low power, UHF and barely viewable without a large rooftop antenna. Many cities only had TWO Broadcast TV Stations before 1973, where one tv station would be for example a CBS affiliate and the other maybe began as NBC affiliate and still was but largely picked the best of ABC shows & NBC shows to air, as by the end of the sixties, some ABC shows were as popular or more popular than most NBC shows and some CBS staples. The FCC allowed this until the early seventies because many folks still only had televisions that could only pick-up VHF stations (channels 2 thru 13)........... Televisions equipped with both VHF (2 thru 13) and UHF (14 thru 86) did not begin to be sold in stores in the USA until about 1964, so many folks still had sets without UHF tuners. Televisions were relatively expensive then and believe it or not, many households in the USA still did not own Color Televisions even in 1973, even though everything was broadcast in color here in the USA by 1966.

Well if you aren't at least a BOOMER or a pre WWII fossil and WWII era baby, then you likely have no idea how things changed so swiftly and so fast, and some might say radically.... THOSE TURKEY-LEVERS WERE LOVED BY NEARLY EVERYONE ON THE PLANET DURING THAT 1969 - 1975 ERA.
FOLKS BEGAN RIDING "RACING LOOK BICYCLES WITH THE DROP BARS....RACING BARS IS WHAT PEOPLE CALLED THEM THEN, BECAUSE THOSE "Turkey" Safety Levers ALLOWED FOLKS TO RIDE THE TOPS...... YEAH, NOBODY GAVE A DAMN ABOUT THE EFFECTIVENESS OF HARD BRAKING WHILE USING THE TURKEYS BECAUSE FOLKS WERE NOT RIDING THEIR BICYCLES LIKE EDDY MERCX or HOW THE Dope-Boy LANCE A. would later ride.
So yes, the Turkeys brought huge numbers to the racing style bikes and largely contributed to the BIKE-BOOM.
It was an impossibility that RACING STYLE BIKES could have caught on with such massive popularity Without the Introduction of the Turkeys.....-safety levers- that were the rage beginning in 1969. No way in hell that, the racing style bikes would have caught on with the masses here in the USA before that 1969 introduction. Yes, it is possible that maybe in the 1970's the 10 speed would have still gained somewhat in popularity even if the Safety Levers-'turkeys" had never been introduced...............Shimano and SUNTOUR had improved rear derailleur quality by the start of the seventies to a level of reliability and quality that the Europeans never even imagined. I do believe that yes the safety levers were 100% the biggest catalyst that got ordinary folks to initially jump aboard ten speed bicycles. These millions of ordinary folks also realized within one to two years in the early seventies that the Japanese rear derailleurs were durable and trouble free and most anything Campagnolo and Simplex was not and Huret was the least bad of the Europeans but still light years behind Shimano & Maeda SUNTOUR in quality.
..............What can I say but : "...we were all there ,,,,,,,,...a generation lost in space..........but thats how it used to be "
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Old 05-29-21, 04:16 AM
  #37  
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You almost have paragraphs figured out.
It's a start, Keep trying.
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Old 05-29-21, 07:50 AM
  #38  
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Bruce Brown and Steve McQueen (On Any Sunday (1971) has young boys racing and jumping their Stingrays, Motocross (Motorcycles) being the next logical step. It also covers ( at the time) two famous, European Motocross Champions.
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Old 05-29-21, 08:55 AM
  #39  
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Originally Posted by dedhed
You almost have paragraphs figured out.
It's a start, Keep trying.
Totally unnecessary and needlessly mean.

Now you can criticize me and I could care less.

In ‘69 I had a metallic green Schwinn Continental. It was my pride and joy with quick release levers and turkey levers which I always found wanting. Outfitted that 35 lb wonder with a frame pump and water bottle cage and felt so cool. My best friend had a Bob Jackson racing bike and a leather strapped ‘skid lid’ which he would make fun of since he knew it was next to useless. Even though I had my “Hefty hunk of steaming junk” I didn’t get into racing and neither did my friend. Guess the conspiracy worked after all
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Old 05-30-21, 01:55 PM
  #40  
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Some interesting theories put out there but the turkey levers sparking the bike boom? No, I dont think so. More to do with baby boom and demographics I would think. And really the early 70's euro boom bikes didnt have turkey levers anyway.

And as far as euro components compared to Japanese? I'm still using Simplex, Campy, Huret components, all from that time period, and find them wonderful operating parts...50 years and still performing well!
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Old 05-30-21, 03:54 PM
  #41  
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My first bike was a banana seat bike.

But, when my brother aged out of the Midgets, I inherited the 24" green 5 speed "road bike". Probably a Gitane. I put quite a few miles on that bike, but was never a super fast racer (#2 in the state Midgets, I think).

Then after the Midgets, I never raced as an Intermediate.

I don't think I'd blame the stingray bikes for kids not racing, but rather BMX and MTBs.
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Old 05-31-21, 01:58 PM
  #42  
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My thoughts are coaster brakes on kids bikes are worse than “muscle bikes”.

Getting my kids confidence up was hindered at first by not being able to quick and easy put either pedal forward without moving the bike.
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Old 05-31-21, 03:01 PM
  #43  
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In the early 80's while all the other kids had BMX bikes I was the dorky kid with a Gold Sparkle BSA banana seat bike. I guess with the English motorcycle industry crashing BSA may have turned to bicycle manufacturing? To be honest it was surprisingly comfortable to ride around. I got my first paper route and saved up for my first BMX.

After the bike bust it was BMX sales that kept many bike shops in business through the 80's. So in a way it was the Schwinn Stingray that saved a lot of the bike industry.
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Old 05-31-21, 06:05 PM
  #44  
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Originally Posted by Lakerat
Sting Ray bikes had to have kept a generation of American cyclists from becoming racers.
EXACTLY! I've been preaching that conspiracy theory for years even though people think I'm crazy. Darn those Europeans.

And you knew the Grateful Dead were really British spies, right? That's why they were always touring.

Okay, I'll now remove tongue from cheek.
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Old 05-31-21, 07:30 PM
  #45  
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Originally Posted by TCollen
EXACTLY! I've been preaching that conspiracy theory for years even though people think I'm crazy. Darn those Europeans.

And you knew the Grateful Dead were really British spies, right? That's why they were always touring.

Okay, I'll now remove tongue from cheek.
Did anyone tell Althea? Would she have cared?
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Old 05-31-21, 07:51 PM
  #46  
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Originally Posted by Phil_gretz
I'm sure that the OP was trying to be clever, but …

Start with 60s muscle cars, like the GTO. Add a sprinkling of tricked out American chopper motorcycles. Add a boom of kids who come into bike riding age, while admiring the rides of their older siblings. What you get is an opportunity for genius in marketing/product design, the muscle bike. Make it with chrome fenders, a wide slick rear tire, a cantilevered sprung front suspension and even a beefy stick shift.

Europe had little understanding for what was happening in America other than to be jealous of it.
Jealous of America? You must be kidding! Loud, brash and no style and no taste was the view when I was growing up over there! Ugly cars covered in chrome and ugly HardleyGoanywhere motor cycles, which were a joke when compared with European makes. We didn’t need muscle cars to go fast. European cars had better engine and suspension technology to allow them to go REALLY fast.....and they still do!
As for decent road bikes, were there any?
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Old 05-31-21, 08:45 PM
  #47  
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Originally Posted by Lakerat
Discounting my paranoid tendencies requiring me to have a chin strap on my tin foil hat, Sting Ray bikes had to have kept a generation of American cyclists from becoming racers. Imagine what could have happened had the ten speed craze occurred ten years earlier.
Another conspiracy theory is that the ten speed kept a generation of American cyclists from becoming cyclists.
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Old 05-31-21, 09:30 PM
  #48  
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Um, what in the world is all this? Is there a central point and or summary? Could this not have been condensed into a more readable format? And finally, when you reached the end of authoring this tome did you really truly expect it would be read in its entirety or no?

Originally Posted by Vintage Schwinn
The American public did not really care for 10 Speed Racing Style bicycles UNTIL Schwinn released the SAFETY LEVERS ( "Turkey Levers") in 1969!!!
EVERY MAJOR BICYCLE MANUFACTURER QUICKLY FOLLOWED SUIT ON EVERYTHING......EVEN ON HIGHER END MODELS.
Yes, that is how it was once upon a time when things were far out.
THE REASON THAT THE 10 speed Racer Style Craze THAT FUELED THE Bike Boom of the '70's HAPPENED IS THAT ORDINARY FOLKS COULD NOW RIDE THE "TOPS". You have to realize that young people didn't want to be identified as "Straight" ( the word had a different meaning then....) They wanted to be seen as Cool and Hip, and straight was as far from that as possible... Well, for whatever reason, at that time, a 10 speed with North Roads Tourist handlebars was as popular as long pleated skirts, saddle oxfords, and bee-hive, or boufant hairdoos for women and any whitewalled, flattop, crewcut, buzzcut, short or wet-head hairstyle for men was in 1969. You just didn't dress or look like the tv characters BUD ANDERSON (father knows best..'50's) and WALLY & The BEAVER(leave it to beaver '57-'63).
Never before had so much change in style of dress and what was deemed hip and cool changed so much......ever.
The USA was slower to adopt to this but between 1968 and 1970 the USA had reached where England and other countries already had been for years. England was the hip style leader for all the world beginning in early 1964 and remained so for at least the remainder of the Sixties....
The Beatles.................
Even the most ordinary square television programs like the first season of Brady Bunch that aired in 1969 has the mom dressed in boufant hairdoo and clothing-dresses that could equally be out of 1962, and the dad has short over the ear haircut and wears suits and ties and shoes that look like the attire that Sgt Joe Friday would wear daily. Well, as yall know Carol & Mike Brady did metamorphosize into sporting styles and hip clothing that was farther out than some young folks who would have been labelled hippies in about ten Southern States in 1970-1972.
The Sting Ray craze largely was the phenomenon of the younger Boomers that were born in the years between 1956 and 1964. So if you were about eight years old between about 1964 and 1972, you likely recall that Sting Rays and similar carbon copies by other makers were the dominant bicycles that were in the bike racks at your elementary school......... IF YOU WERE BORN BEFORE 1956, YOUR CHILDHOOD RIDE TO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL WAS THE TYPICAL JC Higgins/Schwinn/Columbia/Murray/Huffy/Ross/Western Flyer/Hiawatha/Firestone/Coast to coast/AMF Roadmaster/Rollfast/.....etc 'BEACH CRUISER STYLE BICYCLE WITH COASTER BRAKES AND FULL FENDERS AND NORTH ROADS-CRUISER HANDLEBARS & 1-Piece ASHTABULA CRANK.
The kids born in 1956 graduated from high school in 1974, so by the time that they had reached age 13, the Sting Ray was too much of a child's bike for them, and they had already moved on to something more suitable in an adult size bicycle for the last few years before getting the drivers license at age 16 or 15 as was the case in some states like South Carolina. So the 1964 birth kids, the last of the Sting Ray adoptees, largely were probably done with Sting Rays by age 11 or certainly 12, as you'd guess that 10 speeds were the rage and the Sting Ray craze was dead by 1975-1976 as eight to 10 year old kids wanted Evil Knievel like Motocross looking bicycles.
There were so many bad accidents with the crazy high rise bars that were seen on the 1964-1971 bars (or '63 onward thru '71 if the StingRays commenced in '63...)
A friend of my sister, named Catherine had to have emergency surgery to remove her spleen after crashing in the Summer of 1967 on her banana seat, high rise handlebar SCHWINN girls bike version of the StingRay. The handlebars impaled her side. Catherine was ten at the time (born in '57 and class of '75 and college class of '79).
The newly established Consumer Product Safety Commission campaigned strongly against both Lawn Darts(remember those...) and the crazy high rise handlebars so much in about 1970 that they got legislation prohibiting such bars with the width and height as seen during the 1964-1971 era.........whether the manufacturers agreed to dial it back or whether it was specific legislation that forced this, I do not recall but there was a significant change in the size and width of those crazy ape hanger high rise handlebars that all the banana seat craze bikes had until 1971. A heck of a lot of people got hurt just in normal ordinary accidents like Catherine's in 1967, but the accidents became exponentially worse for boys especially after the 1968 Caesars Fountain Jump put Evil Knievel on the radar screen. ABC Sports' Wide World of Sports featured Evil doing jumps (and near death crashes) between 1968 and 1973 that were massive television ratings winners. You've got to remember that most larger cities only had three television stations......ABC, NBC, and CBS were the broadcast networks....... Nobody had cable television other than some mountain areas and that just largely got you the three broadcast networks. Nobody cared about public television that was low power, UHF and barely viewable without a large rooftop antenna. Many cities only had TWO Broadcast TV Stations before 1973, where one tv station would be for example a CBS affiliate and the other maybe began as NBC affiliate and still was but largely picked the best of ABC shows & NBC shows to air, as by the end of the sixties, some ABC shows were as popular or more popular than most NBC shows and some CBS staples. The FCC allowed this until the early seventies because many folks still only had televisions that could only pick-up VHF stations (channels 2 thru 13)........... Televisions equipped with both VHF (2 thru 13) and UHF (14 thru 86) did not begin to be sold in stores in the USA until about 1964, so many folks still had sets without UHF tuners. Televisions were relatively expensive then and believe it or not, many households in the USA still did not own Color Televisions even in 1973, even though everything was broadcast in color here in the USA by 1966.

Well if you aren't at least a BOOMER or a pre WWII fossil and WWII era baby, then you likely have no idea how things changed so swiftly and so fast, and some might say radically.... THOSE TURKEY-LEVERS WERE LOVED BY NEARLY EVERYONE ON THE PLANET DURING THAT 1969 - 1975 ERA.
FOLKS BEGAN RIDING "RACING LOOK BICYCLES WITH THE DROP BARS....RACING BARS IS WHAT PEOPLE CALLED THEM THEN, BECAUSE THOSE "Turkey" Safety Levers ALLOWED FOLKS TO RIDE THE TOPS...... YEAH, NOBODY GAVE A DAMN ABOUT THE EFFECTIVENESS OF HARD BRAKING WHILE USING THE TURKEYS BECAUSE FOLKS WERE NOT RIDING THEIR BICYCLES LIKE EDDY MERCX or HOW THE Dope-Boy LANCE A. would later ride.
So yes, the Turkeys brought huge numbers to the racing style bikes and largely contributed to the BIKE-BOOM.
It was an impossibility that RACING STYLE BIKES could have caught on with such massive popularity Without the Introduction of the Turkeys.....-safety levers- that were the rage beginning in 1969. No way in hell that, the racing style bikes would have caught on with the masses here in the USA before that 1969 introduction. Yes, it is possible that maybe in the 1970's the 10 speed would have still gained somewhat in popularity even if the Safety Levers-'turkeys" had never been introduced...............Shimano and SUNTOUR had improved rear derailleur quality by the start of the seventies to a level of reliability and quality that the Europeans never even imagined. I do believe that yes the safety levers were 100% the biggest catalyst that got ordinary folks to initially jump aboard ten speed bicycles. These millions of ordinary folks also realized within one to two years in the early seventies that the Japanese rear derailleurs were durable and trouble free and most anything Campagnolo and Simplex was not and Huret was the least bad of the Europeans but still light years behind Shimano & Maeda SUNTOUR in quality.
..............What can I say but : "...we were all there ,,,,,,,,...a generation lost in space..........but thats how it used to be "
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Old 06-01-21, 09:13 AM
  #49  
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Originally Posted by DocJames
Um, what in the world is all this? Is there a central point and or summary? Could this not have been condensed into a more readable format? And finally, when you reached the end of authoring this tome did you really truly expect it would be read in its entirety or no?
We've seen that before. Maybe he just wants to say a lot of things whether people read all of them or not? There's also a lack of awareness that readers may not be viewing things through an American, baby-boom lens.
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Old 06-01-21, 09:20 AM
  #50  
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Originally Posted by rsbob
Totally unnecessary and needlessly mean.

Now you can criticize me and I could care less.

In ‘69 I had a metallic green Schwinn Continental. It was my pride and joy with quick release levers and turkey levers which I always found wanting. Outfitted that 35 lb wonder with a frame pump and water bottle cage and felt so cool. My best friend had a Bob Jackson racing bike and a leather strapped ‘skid lid’ which he would make fun of since he knew it was next to useless. Even though I had my “Hefty hunk of steaming junk” I didn’t get into racing and neither did my friend. Guess the conspiracy worked after all

Form follows function.

It is not mean to tell someone that has spent a lot of time writing that the form they have delivered is untenable. Tossing out rough drafts that have not been well crafted for the intended audience is oft going to be met with helpful advice.
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