I’ve made this joke in the past – “at some point, I want to turn the Michelin around my tummy into a Schwinn.” It’s an off-handed comment, a reference to controlling my weight and working my abdomen down to a more manageable girth. And people would laugh and get the joke instantly.
I made the joke a week or so ago – I was at Appletini’s on Central Avenue, just hanging out and having a good time. A friend of mine went outside for fresh air, and I accompanied. There were a few people out there, and somehow the topic of conversation turned to weight. I tapped my stomach and said, “Yeah, at some point I want to turn this Michelin into a Schwinn.”
“What’s a Schwinn?” one of the girls asked, in front of all of us.
I thought about this for a second – this girl was probably in her early 20’s, and had absolutely no idea what a Schwinn bicycle was.
Of course, all of US knew what a Schwinn was. Because we all WANTED a Schwinn, and we envied those who had one. This was the bicycle for the cool kids. Okay, some people wanted a Huffy, those elitist snobs that they were – and others went for that AMF Evel Knievel bicycle, so they could jump the driveway and hopefully not crash-land and skin their knees – but, honestly, how could you go through your childhood without owning a cool Schwinn Stingray bicycle?
Even today, although Schwinn has modified its brand to appeal more toward motocross and BMX and extreme sport cycling, there’s still a facet of their market that appeals to the classic ten-speed with the banana seat and the bell. As you can see from this clip.
I did have a Schwinn back in the day. I don’t remember if it was a Stingray or not, but I do recall that it had a couple of cool aftermarket features, like a speedometer / odometer combo attached right to the ape hanger handlebars and the banana seat – and it did have the crossbar, which designated it as a boy’s bicycle. I rode that thing everywhere, and most likely I rode it until the wheels bent or the tires went flat or something happened to it, because it – like so many parts of my childhood – went away.
Of course, I’m sure that as we grew up, we all had bicycles. Bicycles that were just as precious to us as kids as our cars and motorcycles are today.
I remember my Schwinn. Tell me about your bicycle.
Even if it wasn’t a Schwinn.
Chuck The Writer 
I had an blue Schwinn Stingray. The bannana seat, high-rise handle bars and all. We would modify our Schwinns by taking the front forks of an old bike, put them on our own bike to extend the front and give the bike a “Chopper” look.
My friends and I would gather together and in addition to sticking cards in the wheel spokes we would take the plastic holders that held six-pack soda or beer cans together light them on fire and peddle really fast. The plastic would burn faster the faster we peddled. So there we were, riding down the street heralding our approach to everyone with the clickitly-clack of the cards and leaving them in a cloud of smoke and burning plastic.
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Banana seats!
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What? No, no one wanted a Huffy. That was the embarrassing bike your parents bought you because they understood nothing about bikes.
I wrote about my childhood bikes here:
http://www.mynonurbanlife.com/2011/11/rosebud-the-bicycle.html
I’m not quite sure what it means for your tummy to be a bicycle instead of a tire, though.
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The use of out-dated references is one sign of
extreme “Aging”. Swift Mental Editing (S.M.E.)
must be exercised, so as not to be classified,
and subsequently discounted, as Stupid Old Coot
(S.O.C.).
Insert present-day material to avoid this un-
fortunate appellation, such as: “It is my own
fervent hope to trans-mutate this, now, most
unsightly and offensive midriff bulge into the
latest version of Apple’s ‘iPhone’ device. Is
this not both praise-worthy, and amusing?”
Or, you could simply laugh in the face of the
ignorant young slut. I know what ‘Ragtime’ is,
not because I was THERE, then, but because I
CAN READ. Suggest that to the uninformed and
illiterate amongst us, of ANY age.
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My first two-wheeled bike was pink and had a banana seat and apehanger handlebars, but my mom called them varoom handlebars (because you were supposed to say, “Varoom, varoom” when you twisted the handgrip, pretending to rev the engine). For my 10th birthday, I got a “big girl” bike, a three-speed Schwinn in dark green. Still have it, 40 years later, in my garage, with two flat tires since you can’t find that size anymore.
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