Boomers Bicycles: The 1970’s California Beach Cruisers Created Today’s Fat-Tired Vacation Rides

From a CityLab.com online article:

McNeely trademarked the term “California Beach Cruiser” in 1976, when he was 21 years old. He started selling the bikes at his store, with the tagline “comfort, durability, and nostalgia.” They caught on. After the Los Angeles Times wrote a syndicated story about McNeely’s new entrepreneurial niche in biking, McNeely started getting bags of mail from potential buyers. “We couldn’t build enough of them each night to supply the next day’s demand. There’s no way I was going to be able to sell the bikes across the country.”

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.