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.
It won't win any races, but fat-tired cruisers bring car-free mobility to beach towns nationwide.Shutterstock

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.