Transportation
The California Beach Cruiser Built a Bike Movement
In the 1970s, the signature fat-tired mobility mode of beach towns managed to turn vacationers into bicycle riders.
If you hit the beach this summer, you’ll see them. Fat tires. Wide handlebars. Candy-colored retro-looking frames.
That particular kind of bicycle is known as a “beach cruiser.” While it looks like a nostalgic holdover from the Eisenhower era, the bikes that ramble along boardwalks of America’s beach towns were born in mid-1970s. And, as Marketplace chronicled a few years back, they found their way to the beach thanks to the efforts of one man.