You already know what this is about. You saw the title and something moved in your chest. Because you had one.

Or you wanted one so badly it kept you up at night. Chrome fenders that caught the sun. A banana seat you shared with your best friend. Handlebars so high your arms were above your shoulders. That was not a toy. That was the first real freedom you ever had.

Schwinn was founded in 1895 by Ignaz Schwinn, a German immigrant who lost his father at eleven and crossed an ocean with nothing but a belief that he could build the best bicycle in the world. He chose Chicago. He found an investor from the meatpacking business. Together they built a company that by 1914 was the largest bicycle manufacturer in America. Four generations of Schwinns ran that factory.

They gave us the Black Phantom. The Paramount. And in 1963, the Sting-Ray — the banana seat, the high handlebars, the bike that by 1968 accounted for seventy percent of every bicycle sold in the country.

You bought your Schwinn at a shop where the man behind the counter knew your name, assembled your bike by hand, and fixed it when something broke. That was not a store. That was a relationship. Families rode Schwinns for three generations. Then the grandson refused to make mountain bikes. The great-grandson lost the factory. Chicago closed in 1983. Eighteen hundred workers walked out with their tools in boxes. Bankruptcy in 1992. Sold for forty-three million to people who had never built a bicycle.

Today Schwinn is owned by a Dutch conglomerate and sold at Walmart. Made in China. The original factory still stands in Chicago. Vacant.

If you had a Schwinn, tell me which one. If you got it for Christmas, tell me what color it was. If you can still feel those handlebars and that wind in your face, tell me about it.

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