Dwight – Dwight Perkins – 90s Landshark Roadshark road bike – personal bike

Road Shark Landshark, Reynolds 731 OS Race w/ Reynolds 531 Fork

Dwight is named for Dwight Perkins, my favorite architect and a founding architect in the Prairie School style who held posts as the Chief Architect of Illinois, Chicago, the Chicago Board of Education and Cook County as well as being principal of several architectural firms in private practice.  His masterwork is considered to be Carl Schurz High School in Chicago’s Irving Park neighborhood on the city’s northwest side.  As with many Prairie School architects, most of Perkins’ work emphasized a low-slung horizontal style like the land that inspired the architecture. He is buried in Graceland Cemetery, known as the cemetery of architects for the vast number of influential Chicago architects interred on its grounds.

Landshark Bicycles are the bicycle company of master builder John Slawta. Slawta was the builder behind the Huffy and Murray branded pro and Olympic bikes of the 1980s, including the bike Andy Hampsten rode to victory in the 1986 Giro D’Italia. He continues to be a builder of trust, still making custom steel and carbon bicycles to discerning riders the world over.

Well, what can I say, this happens to be my size.  I am keeping it. I bought the Reynolds 731 OS Race w/ Reynolds 531 Fork from a pro-racer whose team had just switched to Blue bicycles and was getting rid of some old frames and parts. The bike’s finish was a typically loud Slawta paint job, but also badly rusted, lots of knicks, scratches, etc. There was basically no way to save the paint job, which many would say was no loss, but for Landshark fans, the outlandish paint schemes is part of the appeal. Dwight was treated to a black rainbow sparkle powder coat, a full Campagnola Chorus 11 speed group and White Industries hubs laced to Pacenti Forza rims for wheels, it is a sweet ride. I should ultimately get a slightly shorter stem for my ideal fit.