“I don’t have a normal job,” says Jim Hurd, gleefully. He gestures at a cavernous loft filled with rows and rows of bicycles. “Everyone else here has to think of next year’s model. I’m the only one that gets to think about last year or 100 years ago. And they actually pay me to do this. That’s the most amazing thing.”
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“This is the King Tut’s tomb of the bicycling industry,” he says. Schwinn has always been a family-run business, and Hurd says that the company had enough foresight to save all sorts of bicycles and memorabilia. After three years on the job, he estimates it will take another two before he even gets to see every item in the inventory. Among the things he’s found so far are bicycle-safety films from the 1930s, medals awarded in the 1890s to cyclists who completed 100-mile bike rides (“along cow paths,” Hurd explains), a flag given by the military to the company for its war-production efforts during World War II, and of course bicycles. Hurd has seen everything, from the Ordinaries of the late 1800s (the kind with the huge front wheel) and the tandems on which a courting couple could ride side by side to Sting-Rays from the 1960s.
Talking about the fat-tired models of the 1950s, Hurd says, “These bikes are childhood memories for baby boomers that remember cherry Cokes from before they came out of a can.” He adds that collecting Pee-wee Herman-style bikes is an affordable hobby rapidly growing in popularity. A good deal of his time is spent fielding questions from callers who want to know, for example, whether the Schwinn Black Phantom they just picked up at a garage sale for 15 bucks is really worth anything.
Also in the 1890s, the Magnificent Mile on weekends was chock-full of socialites riding for pleasure.
For more information about the Schwinn History Center, call 454-7471.
