Mike Wolfe on his Obsession with Bikes

The American Picker Dream, Part I: Mike Wolfe On His Love Affair With Vintage Bikes

By Ben Marks

As co-host of History Channel’s “American Pickers” and the operator of Antique Archaeology, Mike Wolfe is known to millions of TV viewers as the guy who digs crazy treasures out of barns, sheds, and basements. But he’s always been a vintage bicycle guy at heart—that’s what got him started ‘picking’ at age six. In this first of several interviews, we spoke with Mike about his bike racing days, his current collection of bicycles, and that fateful day in the ’70s when he got hooked by a bunch of banana-seats.

I was walking to school one day and saw all these bikes in the garbage. I was just amazed because I didn’t have one and I found it incredible that anyone was throwing them out. So I gathered up as many as I could and put them all in our garage. They were mostly banana-seat bikes from the ’60s, maybe one was a Schwinn. There was a girl’s balloon-tire bike, too. That was the first bike I learned to ride because there was no bar in the middle—I was little, so I would ride it almost right above the cranks.


http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-american-picker-dream-part-i-mike-wolfe-on-his-love-affair-with-vintage-bikes/