retrovelo Mehlert ~ Patitz GbR Executive: Matthias Mehlert, Frank Patitz LĂźtzner Str. 75 04177 Leipzig Tel.: +49 (0)34 147 929 06 Fax: +49 (0)34 158 979 063 e-mail: info@retrovelo.de web: www.retrovelo.de Ust-IdNr.: DE813901979
07. LEIPZIG
12. MOUNTAIN OR CITY?
15. RETRO STYLE
19. FRANK PATITZ
22. CLUNKER ADDICTION
29. RETROVELO
L E I P Z I G RETROVELO
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Retrovelo is a small bicycle company in Leipzig, Germany, who in 2003 introduced a new style of bike: the Balloon Racer. Leipzig has around 540,000 inhabitants and is the heart of the Central German Metropolitan Region. Leipzig is located about 150 kilometres south of Berlin at the confluence of the White Elster, Pleisse, and Parthe rivers at the southerly end of the North German Plain. Leipzig has been a trade city, since, at least the time of the Holy Roman Empire, sitting at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important Medieval trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centers of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing. After World War II, Leipzig became a major urban center within the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), but its cultural and economic importance declined, despite East Germany being the richest economy in the Soviet Bloc. Leipzig later played a
significant role in instigating the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, through events which took place in and around St. Nicholas Church. Since the reunification of Germany, Leipzig has undergone significant change with the restoration of some historical buildings, the demolition of others, and the development of a modern transport infrastructure. Leipzig today is an economic center in Germany and has a prominent opera house and one of the most modern zoos in Europe. In December 2013, according to a study by Marktforschungsinstituts GfK, Leipzig was ranked as the most livable city in Germany and is one of the three European cities with the highest quality of living. In 2010, Leipzig was included in the top 10 cities to visit by the New York Times, and ranked 39th globally out of 289 cities for innovation in the 4th Innovation Cities Index published by Australian agency 2thinknow. Leipzig is currently listed as Gamma World City.
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Leipzig University, located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. Famous alumni include Leibniz, Goethe, Nietzsche, Wagner, Angela Merkel, Raila Odinga, Tycho Braheand nine Nobel laureates are associated with this university. The university was founded on December 2, 1409 by Frederick I, Elector of Saxony and his brother William II, Margrave of Meissen, and originally comprised four faculties. Since its inception the university has engaged in teaching and research
for over 600 years without interruption. The university was modelled on the University of Prague, from which the Germanspeaking faculty members withdrew to Leipzig after the Jan Hus crisis and the Decree of KutnĂĄ Hora. The Alma mater Lipsiensis opened in 1409, after it had been officially endorsed by Pope Alexander V in his Bull of Acknowledgment on (September 9 of that year). Its first rector was Johann von MĂźnsterberg. From its foundation, the Paulinerkirche served as the university church. After the Reformation the church and the monastery buildings were donated to the university in 1544.
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The city’s contemporary arts highlight was the Neo Rauch retrospective opening in April 2010 at the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts. This is a show devoted to the father of the New Leipzig Schoolof artists. According to The New York Times, this scene “has been the toast of the contemporary art world” in the past decade. Furthermore, there are eleven galleries in the so-called Spinnerei. The building complex of the Grassi Museum contains three more of Leipzig’s major collections: the Ethnography Museum, Applied Arts Museum, and Musical Instrument Museum (the last of which is run by the University of Leipzig). The university also runs the Museum of Antiquities. Street art is visual art created in public locations, usually unsanctioned artwork executed outside of the context of traditional art venues. The term gained popularity during the graffiti art boom of the early 1980s and continues to be applied to subsequent incarnations.
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Retrovelo is a small bicycle company in Leipzig, Germany, who in 2003 introduced a new style of bike: the Balloon Racer. These bikes are part city bike, part zero-generation mountain bike, and part, well, a whole lot of other elements borrowed from bikes over the last century. While “retro” in aesthetic, these bikes are not warmed-over anything, but new designs executed with exacting vision and technical innovations never before seen in production bikes. Clever Cycles is the first North American dealer. They are stunning, easily among the most beautiful bikes I’ve ever seen. The step-through models could be pieces in a gauzy photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe. Confectionary or cupcakes with buttercream frosting come to mind, but those are sticky, weak and ephemeral, while these are timeless lugged cro-mo steel, tough and purposeful. The guys’ ones evoke lumberjacks and German shepherds and underwear. There’s almost a danger in this prettiness: you might think looks are their strongest point. In fact they ride marvelously. Weighing about 10 pounds less than similarly outfitted Dutch utility bikes, and supporting a sportier posture, these bikes scream fun, with
wheelies and jumps feeling as natural as just gliding along. More than any other single thing, it’s the tires. Many people with a little knowledge of tires take one look at these fatties and assume that they must be slow. You know what they say about a little knowledge? You can run pressures as low as 25psi, and just float over crummy pavement, rails, even the odd curb or flight of stairs. They are fast. Really. Take a test ride!
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Retro style is style that is consciously derivative or imitative of trends, modes, fashions, or attitudes of the recent past. It generally implies a vintage of at least fifteen or twenty years. For example, clothing from the 1980s or 1990s could be retro. The word “retro” derives from the Latin prefix retro, meaning “backwards, or in past times” – particularly as seen in the words retrograde, implying a movement toward the past instead of a progress toward the future, and retrospective, referring to a nostalgic (or critical) eye toward the past. In the postwar period, it increased in usage with the appearance of the word retrorocket (short for “retrograde rocket”, a rocket generating thrust in a direction opposite to that of a spacecraft’s orbital motion) used by the American space program in the
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1960s. In France, the word rétro, an abbreviation for rétrospectif gained cultural currency with reevaluations of Charles de Gaulle and France’s role in World War II. The French mode rétro of the 1970s reappraised in film and novels the conduct of French civilians during the Nazi occupation. The term rétro was soon applied to nostalgic French fashions that recalled the same period. Shortly thereafter it was introduced into English by the fashion and culture press, where it suggests a rather cynical revival of older but relatively recent fashions. In Simulacra and Simulation, French theorist Jean Baudrillard describes “retro” as a demythologization of the past, distancing the present from the big ideas that drove the “modern” age.
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Retro Is most often used as adjective, and often simply means “old fashioned” or old (functioning very much like the terms “timeless” or “classic”). It has also been associated with modernism in the immediate post war years, encompassing an aesthetic that ranges from tail fins on Cadillacs to ranch houses. Sometimes, it can also suggest an entire outlook on life (describing especially forms of social conservatism like home schooling or the embrace of traditional gender roles). Retro fashion dates from c. 1940-1990. Retro fashion is a clothing style which consists in wearing clothes commonly used in the past. This way of clothing often includes garments and accessories that are characteristic of such times, and many people use them in an exaggerated way and in combination with current clothing. Examples are leather handbags from the 1950s, “bell-bottom jeans”, Poodle skirts, big sunglasses, fedoras, funky jackets (commonly Adidas Classics) and shoes, small neckties, chiffon scarves, sport equipment, skinny jeans[citation needed] etc. Makeup may also play a part in feminine retro fashions, with focal points being heavily-lined eyes and bright red lipstick; hairstyles such as pompadours, ponytails, and ducktails may be adopted, as well as styles that model film stars of the 1940s.
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Retrovelo designer Frank Patitz, for whom Schwalbe named the signature “Fat Frank” tires now appearing on a number of Retrovelo-inspired bikes, loves mid-20th-century American industrial design with a zeal found more often outside America than in. On his visit with us in Portland recently he’d stop at every old Nash Rambler, Ford Falcon and the like on the street to photograph them. ( We were riding, of course; my eventual eye-rolling produced assurances that he doesn’t actually own a car, but just that he admires them as design objects.) The bikey parallels of these old cars are the balloon-tired “clunkers” that, after 30-40 years of service (or sitting in people’s garages) got reborn as the first mountain bikes in Northern California, in the late 1970s. Retrovelos are partly an homage to these bikes. Hub gears, drum brakes, Brooks saddles and those distinctive swept handlebars are back! I confess to a certain curmudgeonliness about mountain bikes, or at least about the gap between how they are designed and marketed and how they are most often used. Mountain bikes are presented as toys you load up on cars to drive someplace free of cars, to escape. In reality, mountain bikes are the dominant utility bikes of America.
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Older, unsuspended ones especially, retrofit with lower-profile tires to bring down the bottom bracket, a rack, fenders, maybe some more comfortable bars please, clamp-on lights: these are the tough, lovable mutts of the American street. The proudest few ascend the karmic spiral of Craigslist and methamphetamine reincarnations to become Xtracycles. You have to love the punkrock frankenstein aesthetic, or you don’t. What if bikes like this could be designed?
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I see Retrovelos as a brighter, less ironic ending to the mountain bike story, or another fork of the story picking up from that same start, thirty years later. They take the essential fun, toughness, and comfort of archetypical mountain bikes, but instead of leaving all the useful, transport-oriented stuff to be bolted on haphazardly by the second or third owner, it’s designed in, gorgeously. A specific and clear example of this trend is the way in which the sport garments from the 1970s and 1980s are used nowadays.
Soccer jackets, jerseys and t-shirts with former logos of the soccer associations are very popular; their designs commonly remember the old days by using lines in the sides and combinations of colors characteristic of those times. A specific case is the 1970 FIFA World Cup held in Mexico. Its logo and font type is used in a variety of retro sport garments. Brands such as Adidas, Puma and Nike have their own divisions specialized in retro products. Some soccer, baseball and basketball clubs also have re-edited their former garments to raise their sales.
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The Nash Rambler is a North American automobile that was produced by the Nash Motors division of Nash-Kelvinator Corporation from 1950 to 1954. On May 1, 1954, Nash-Kelvinator merged with the Hudson Motor Car Company to form American Motors Corporation (AMC). The Nash Rambler was then built by AMC in Kenosha, Wisconsin through 1955. The Nash Rambler established a new segment in the automobile market and is widely acknowledged to be the first successful modern American compact car. The 1950-1955 Nash Rambler was the first model run for this automobile platform. Using the same tooling, AMC reintroduced an almost identical “new” 1958 Rambler American for a second model run. This was a rare feat of having two distinct and
successful model runs, an almost unheard of phenomenon in automobile history. Nash-Kelvinator’s President George W. Mason saw that the company needed to compete more effectively and insisted a new car had to be different from the existing models in the market offered by the “Big Three” U.S. automakers. The Rambler was designed to be smaller than contemporary cars, yet still accommodate five passengers comfortably. Nash engineers had originally penned the styling during World War II. The new model was the company’s entry in the lower-price segment dominated by models from Chevrolet, Ford, and Plymouth (automobile). The Rambler was designed to be lighter and have smaller dimensions than the other popular cars.
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The Ford Falcon was an automobile produced by Ford Motor Company from 1960 to 1970. It was a huge sales success for Ford initially, handily outselling rival compacts from Chrysler and General Motors introduced at the same time. During its lifespan, the Falcon was offered in a wide range of body styles: two-door and four-door sedans, two-door and four-door station wagons, two-door hardtops, convertibles, a sedan delivery and the Ranchero pickup. For several years, the Falcon name was also used on passenger versions of the Ford Econoline van. Variations of the Ford Falcon were manufactured in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile and Mexico. Edsel Ford first used the term “Falcon” for a more luxurious Ford he designed in 1935. He decided the new car did not fit with Ford’s other offerings, so this design eventually became the Mercury. Historically, the “Big Three” auto manufacturers (GM, Ford and Chrysler), focused purely on the larger and more profitable vehicles in the US and Canadian markets. Towards the end of the 1950s, all three manufacturers realized that this strategy would no longer work.
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We manufacture favorite bicycles. A RETROVELO is a one-of-akind bicycle, assembled to fit your personal specifications. We have always believed in bicycles that give you as much fun in everyday use as in leisure. That’s why each RETROVELO unites functionality, city-chic and the individualism of its rider. Its unique appearance shows a fine sense of form and function. One can only enjoy the ride; impeccable function is fully integrated in the design process.
SWEPT HANDLEBARS BROOKS SANDDLES
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HUB GEARS
SCHWALBE WHEELS
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28”-ALFONS
PAUL
The 26” fat tyre Retrovelo formula has been implemented to 28” sport bikes with slim tyres. Such recombination means the development of the 26” series into an elegant and sporty everyday bike. In other words, we transferred our experiences of patents or crossrides to 28” sport bikes with slim tyres. The style variation of the 28” slim tyre line is the same as for the 26” fat tyre series: through its variety a full-fledged base capable of matching the individual preferences of every demanding daily rider.
PAUL is not a bike for eating up miles, but for relaxed and enjoyable cultured excursions. His extravagant fork crown looks like the grille of an Art Deco legend one would approach respectfully. Wide handlebars offer a relaxed position and give the sovereign sense of stability on every surface. The upright, active posture ensures good vision of the passing scenery. Handlebars, arm and shoulder form a circle that subtly highlights the rider’s position. We also test PAUL behind the scenes with the most current technology as the 7 or 8-speed internal gear hubs.
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PAULA
26”-MIXTE - ANNA
From kindergarten to the office, shopping at the market, from the hairdresser to a café, getting the kids to their grandparents right after a glass of champagne with the girlfriend, rushing to the theater with her loved one – 24 hours is far too short a day for the modern woman. But without PAULA it would be much shorter. With her 7 or 8-speed internal gear hubs PAULA overcomes each distance in no time. Along the way she provides a relaxed and upright position and thus a very comfortable ride in every situation. No distance too far, no burden too heavy – whether the kindergarten, before or after shopping.
The pleasure of looking good even on a bicycle – this is everyday life with our bikes. You are the stylish main attraction, not only at home in front of your mirror but also outside in the traffic with a bicycle matching your clothes. Seeing and being seen: spontaneous smiles and encounters in the street for a small talk. MIXTE CrMo frame, size 52 cm , Disc brakes AVID BB7. eccentric bottom bracket available as SingleSpeed or with 3, 8, or 11 gears SHIMANO internal hub. light optional B&M LUMOTECH IQ Cyo plus, LUXOS or LED SECULITE plus BROOKS leather saddle B17s.
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CHOOSE YOUR OWN COLOR Your Retrovelo can shine in one of twelve brillant colours – and even more than that if you ask kindly. Other RAL-colours are also available in a matte finish on extra charge.
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FRAME BAG – SINGLE OR DOUBLE? Who says that bicycle bags always have to look like ‌ bicycle bags? Even 100 years ago the rock-solid frame bags for Swiss military bikes proved its worth. We picked up this idea, modified its format and usability for everyday use and designed it with RETROVELO style. Compatible with many classic bike frames with horizontal top tubes, the ORIGINAL RETROVELO frame
bag is the first that provides two compartments for either A4 notebooks or laptops. It is thrown quickly over the top tube and fastened with two belt hooks and a TENAX button on the seat tube. Our small frame bag with a single compartment. It adequately fits all A4-size objects. Apart from this, both bags are available, or can be subsequently be equipped with an optional shoulder strap. 41
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THE ORIGINAL RETROVELO HANDLEBAR LEATHER BASKET. Rattling noises of metal baskets and extra bags for the bike basket are bygones! Comparable to our reliable frame bag, our handlebar leather basket combines for the first time the advantages of a front rack leather basket and those of a shopping bag in a unique piece of luggage made of long lasting material.
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Your luggage is therefore comfortable and chic in front of you and the foldable lock is within easy reach all the time. A double string can close the decoratively patterned inner bag supplied with six small safe compartments for keys, a wallet or a mobile phone.
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