city beat

By Daisy Fried

Simon Firth works on a Bilenky tandem.

Vera Wang's famous customers are picky. Each expects the wedding dress the bridal designer makes especially for them to be unique, gorgeous, perfect; to express their personality and their dreams; to make them look more like themselves and at the same tim e more gorgeous than they've ever looked. They'll pay more to get that, and they get what they pay for.

Same goes for the clientel e of North Philly's Bilenky Cycle Works. None are famous ("I don't know why, maybe movie stars think tandems are too nerdy?" says Steve Bilenky, bike artisan). But they're rich enough to be able to spend $4,000 or $6,000 on a Bilenky hand-crafted, custom made bicycle-built-for-two.

Bilenky's bikes take three or four months to make. He sells them to dealers and direct to customers. Before he even begins, Bilenky has a long talk with the client and draws up a kind of psychological profile of her bike-riding h abits, past bikes she's owned, and indeed, her hopes and dreams in life in relation to her bicycle. He only makes a few hundred each year, for customers all over the world: Singapore, Brazil, Israel, France, Australia, and in the United States of course.

Tandem magazine—the magazine for enthusiasts — can't seem to mention a Bilenky without using language like "amazing craftsmanship,""dream come true" and "lively and very responsive."

So you might be surprised when you go up the gravel driveway way the hell out in Olney, past the collision service and the tree doctor; past the tough girls at the gate making sure Bambi, Bilenky's attack dog, half pit bull, half rottweiler, is tied up be fore they circle the workshop on their way somewhere else. You'll probably yell 'hello' through the iron gate over the door into the not-particularly-big brick-walled garage where a few grease-and-sweat-stained hairy guys are working with green-burning to rches and pre-World War II government-issue machinery under a bristle of bike skeletons and spoked wheels hanging from the ceiling.

It might be Dave or Andy or John or Simon who lets you in and warns you not to go near Bambi, who's tied, deceptively docile, by the drum set over on the other side of the garage.

Enya or AC/DC might be playing on the workshop stereo. There will be pipes and wires and tools and goggles everywhere, and amongst them astonishingly gorgeous bikes, of a quality even the most ignoran t non-biker can recognize, in various states of finish, sleek, cool and brilliant. There will be recumbent bikes, with chairs set onto low-slung frames instead of saddles, and dashing bicycles built for two, lighter than you'll believe possible (you can p ick one up in one hand without straining), with the smoothest of joints and the most graceful of frames. They might be marbleized or painted with colors fading one into another or just plain white. They might be made to come apart and fit into a suitcase so you can check it on an airplane and jet it to Alaska for a bike tour at no extra charge.

The workers will tell you about "fillet brazing" and "jigs" and "head tubes" till your head spins. Then Steve Bilenky might come in from the recording studio where the company band, also called Bilenky Cycle Works, and fronted by Steve's songwriter-wife, Janet (who also works in the workshop office), is cutting its first CD. And Steve will tell you his business is like a microbrewery, only each person gets his own personalized brew — and it never tastes sour.

Tandem bikers belong to a mini-subculture in the complicated, esoteric, nerdy-cool world of biking. Some of them race, some ride for pleasure. You subscribe to Tandem magazine, you visit tandem Web sites, you take your bike on vacation with you and you go to bike rallies attended by hundreds, even thousands of tandem enthusiasts.

You don't have to pay thousands of bucks for a tandem, but if you want the best, writes one happy Elkins Park-based customer to Tandem, "there is no better built bike than a Bilenky."

For some people, says Bilenky's right-hand man Andy Dyson, a Bilenky is "bike jewelry, or like a custom-made suit."

"They're the Porsche, not the Chevy Nova, of biking," offers Simon Firth, who works part-time at Bilenky in North Philly and also runs Trophy Bikes in South Philadelphia. "But I've got to get away from car metaphors."

"We also sell a lot of bikes to people looking for a particular size or dimension," says Steve Bilenky.

Bilenky's been working with bikes for over 30 years. Rode bikes as a kid, took 'em apart, fixed 'em in his garage. At 13, he got a job at a small Northeast Philly Schwinn shop operating before the big ' 80s bike boom. His first pseudo-tandem was a banana-seated Sting Ray: he and a pal sat on the seat, put their four feet on the pedals and pedaled like hell to the mall.

When he went aw ay to Penn State, he taught a course in bike maintenance and repair. When he came back to Philly, he opened a bike repair shop in a basement. Later he moved it upstairs, went retail, and met his wife. Janet is 5 feet one half inch tall; Steve is 5 feet 3 and a half inches tall; both had trouble finding bikes to fit them. So Steve began building their bikes himself. Thus, more than 14 years ago, his bike building business was born. Eventually, he moved into tandem and his rep grew and grew.

"We fit your bike to your body, not the other way around," says Bilenky's order form. "We make sure that your bike matches your size, your style, and your dream."

Bilenky creates a dossier on each client, listing bikes they've owned in the past, how they use their bikes, their height and weight and all manner of other detail.

A picky guy who wants people to swoon over his bike tells Bilenky that he and his wife do "fast recreational riding... about 20-50 miles at a time, with occasional centuries... spirited recreational riding and touring, with the capability of air travel ... we want the most well-conceived, practical, stunningly beautiful tandem known. A tandem that is reasonably light but tough. A tandem long enough in the rear cockpit to allow the stoker to see something oth er than the captain's back, but able to fit in [a]... case for travel."

He wants his pump and bottle painted to match his bike which will be "maroon to black fade, no chrome, names on top tubes." He doesn't want fenders. He specifies comfort and corrosion res istance, strength, and budget. Please, no funny shaped bends and no flares on the drops of the handlebars.

Over the next months, Bilenky and crew will communicate by e-mail about each phase of the process, from ordering parts from dozens of different companies, to the test ride (down the gravel drive and out into Olney) to the shipping of the bike.

Besides the attention given to each detail, what sets a Bilenky apart are the special fillet-brazed joints. Instead of being welded together in a traditional wa y, Bilenky bike tubes are slid together; Bilenky then takes a brass fillet and brazes it around the joint. It can be done at a lower heat, so that the steel tubing isn't stressed, and Bilenky smoothes the fillet into the joints so that the bike looks as t hough it was formed from one piece of steel.

Recently Bilenky acquired exclusive rights to manufacture the "Bilenky Viewpoint tandem," a two-person bike where the "captain" — usually in front — sits in back on a normal saddle, and the "stoker" — usually the rear person — sits in a low chair on the front of the bike and pedals in a recumbent position.

"It's great if you're a good biker and your boyfriend isn't," says Bilenky. "You can fit it to put two seats, say for two little kids. You could fit it for a cargo basket so that next time there's a UPS strike, bike messengers can fill in. You can use it for people with special needs. We have a client who's using one with his retarded daughter. It's great for rehab — someone with cerebral palsy can sit up front and we can fix it so he has to pedal as the other person propels the bike — great for muscular development. It's a great bike for two people with different abilities to use. We're very excited. Because tandems won't just be exclusively a fun toy for the rich, the hobbyist, the enthusiast, but will have practical uses too. "

On Sept. 28, to celebrate 15 years in the business, Bilenky Cycle Works — the band and the bike makers — will hold a rally in Parvins State Park in New Jersey.

"The users of our bikes want to meet us," says Steve Bilenky. "We'll eat and drink and ride and our band will play. We'd actually like to get a kind of Grateful Dead scene centered around our bikes off the ground."