Full cycle: Bike museum ready to roll on Saturday
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Craig Morrow at work at Bicycle Heaven, where he says he has 90,000 bikes and accessories. -
On the wall at Craig Morrow's Bicycle Heaven is an all-wood bike made in 1862.
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Look up when you enter Bicycle Heaven. Even the sky is filled with bicycles.
The new North Side museum and bike shop, set to open Saturday, is dedicated to all things two-wheeled, from 1860s "boneshakers" -- handcrafted wooden bikes -- to rare fiberglass Bowden Spacelanders and the ultimate 1960s pedal-driven dream: the Schwinn Sting-Ray Krate.
You know the one: glittery banana seat. Ape-hanger handlebars with streamers flying from the ends. Sissy bar in back for wheelies and slick tires for skidding, complete with raised white letters. Some even sport a five-speed shifter between the rider's legs and mag sprockets between the pedals -- the bicycle equivalent of fancy rims.
What: A museum of rare, vintage and antique bikes, as well as sales, repairs and rentals.
Where: R.J. Casey Industrial Park, 1800 Preble Ave., North Side.
When: Grand opening, Saturday; 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week.
Info: Free admission; rentals, $25 a day. 412-716-4956.
"That's when they were trying to make bikes look a lot like motorcycles and race cars," says Craig Morrow, whose collection of Krates hangs upside down in neat rows along the museum's ceiling and nearly crowds him out of his office.
Mr. Morrow, 57, of Ben Avon, a former auto body painter, claims thousands of bicycles ready for display -- in fact, he said his place boasts 90,000 bikes and accessories. He's been collecting and repairing bicycles for decades -- he even became celebrated locally for a shop that was, essentially, in the alley outside his former home. But this is the first time his acquisitions will all be in one place.
Bicycle Heaven, in the R.J. Casey Industrial Park (near the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild on Metropolitan Street), hardly resembles a traditional museum, apart from the glass cases ready for smaller items, such as vintage head badges (the curved metal nameplates on the front of many bikes) and 150 years of design evolution in lights, tools, pedals, seats and mirrors.
First Published June 29, 2011 12:00 am
