About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

15 Replies to “San Marco”

  1. I noticed with some annoyance after Saturday’s ride that my Selle Italia SLR saddle is falling part. Jeez, it only has 10,000 miles on it.

  2. I was fixin bikes with Taylor “Tot” one day when he asked me, “Do you know what a Snarf is?” I figured it was the down syndrome cat from Thundercats, but it turns out to be a guy or gal who sniffs bike seats. It usually happens when a bike is put into a repair stand and the saddle grazes the olfactory system on its way to the clamp. Its like a sucker punch from the Kool Aid guy. OH YEAH…

  3. I love the regal. I rock on on my Peg. It’s so damn comfy. By the way who made those frames back in the day?

  4. Nevermind probably Colnagos, Merckx, or Raleigh. Can’t tell what year those are.

  5. From Sheldon…
    Panasonic

    Panasonic, the bicycle brand of the mighty Matsushita conglomerate, made very nice bicycles, beautifully built, but never very successful in the U.S. market.

    In the late ’80s, Panasonic had a plan to supply semi-custom bikes, using “just-in-time” production methods. The program was called “P.I.C.S.” (Panasonic Individualized Custom System). The frames were stock, but were painted to order (with the customer’s name optionally painted on the top tube) and with a custom-length handlebar stem.

    Panasonic also made bicycles under other names under contract, most notably, for Schwinn…the Schwinn Le Tour was the first non-Chicago Schwinn.

    From a posting by Yellow Jersey’s Andrew Muzi:

    Japanese-built Panasonic/National/Matsushita frames are of excellent quality at each price range. You can distinguish them from outsourced bikes by the serial number location. Osaka-built frames are serial numbered on the lower headlug. The second digit is the year, e.g., T5M78563 would be a 1985 frame

  6. The japanese had it wired in the 80’s. The Miyata tripple splined frame was the nicest i have ever riden to this day. So smooth and great craftsmanship.

  7. My last year racing (1993), I rode a Schwinn Paramount (with a San Marco Rolls saddle) that I’m pretty sure was made by Panasonic. It was a great bike. When I quit racing, I was pretty burnt out and gave away or sold most of my stuff, including that bike. I wish I still had it.

  8. Err, I believe I see a Concor in the mix, third from the top.

    zMud, rocking Regals for decades.

  9. Good to know. I had it backwards. I always thought that other companies made bikes for Panasonic not they made them for other companies. I like em.

  10. zMud, old buddy, I do believe you are correct about the Concor. Leave it to one guy to mess up the whole thing.

    I should have wrote, “Mostly Rolls or Regal…”