Our Town: Free Wheeler

The gleaming chrome, shiny fenders, and fat, white-walled tires catch your eye, sure, but it’s the small details of pharmacist Mark Gordon’s vintage bicycle collection that are most interesting—especially to the collector himself. The curved, swept-back frames adorned with hand-painted pinstripes, futuristic-looking headlamps, and Art Deco ornaments of bikes from the 1930s are clearly his darlings. His biggest score so far is an Elgin “Bluebird” bike from 1937 that he picked up for $12,000. Nearby you’ll find an original (not restored) Schwinn from the 1950s, a Huffy with a built-in (still-working) radio and speakers, and more than a couple classic oldies, like the Hop-A-Long Cassidy and Donald Duck bikes—complete with a big duck head on the handlebars. He’s even got one that is a replica of Pee Wee Herman’s beloved red bike from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.

Gordon, 55, has about sixty bicycles which he began amassing in 1991. He keeps his prized wheels in the basement of his home in Greer which also houses binders of vintage bicycle ads starring celebs like Joan Crawford and Humphrey Bogart.

That these bikes are rare and look so cool is what appeals to Gordon, but so does the history of the different makes and models—a vast depth of knowledge that would likely put Lance Armstrong to shame.

He’ll go far for the right bike, too, like the time he went to Detroit, Michigan, for one. He got there on four wheels, by the way, not two.