Local bike shop will be featured on NBC Nightly News

SYCAMORE – Rod Griffis, owner of Blue Moon Bikes in Sycamore, started collecting vintage bicycles – particularly Schwinn Stingray Krate bikes – in the 1990s when he was still operating his part-time bike repair shop out of a garage on State Street.

Griffis and his son, who was 12 at the time, shared an interest in the bikes and started looking for them on eBay and at swap meets during classic bike shows.

Griffis said he has more than 200 classic bikes on display in an upstairs museum at his shop, which includes every year, make and model of the Krate bike that was made for children. He said the store and his collection started to get coverage after larger news networks came into town to cover larger court cases – most notably Jack McCullough's exoneration after he was convicted of the 1957 murder of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph.

For the first time, Griffis said, the shop will be featured nationally on “NBC Nightly News” during the 5:30 to 6 p.m. Saturday broadcast for the 27th annual Classic Bike Show at two city parking lots on South Somonauk Road in downtown Sycamore. Kevin Tibbles, the NBC correspondent who covered the story, said the feature is set to be the closing story for the news segment.

Griffis said his shop has been featured in articles, but he was surprised the national network wanted to feature the collection.

“Because that’s just what our love is, the artwork of bikes,” Griffis said.

Tibbles said he enjoys doing stories on Americana, and that he was tipped off to the bike shop and festival after a reporter told him about it.

He said he was told that this year’s bicycle festival in Sycamore is a bigger deal than usual because it’s the 50th anniversary of the Krate bike, which was manufactured from 1968 to 1973.

“I’m always looking for any story that has a little angle that is about who we are, where we come from, and something that is perhaps out of the ordinary that will pique peoples’ interest,” Tibbles said.

Tibbles said he made the pitch to the network about this “slice of Americana” that baby boomers will remember fondly, and that he emphasized Griffis’ collection of more than 200 classic bikes. He said one of the bike shop employees told him that, back in the day, the 1968 Krate bike was the bike that every kid had or wanted.

“We live in a time where there’s all kinds of anxious and animosity and not a lot of good news going on,” Tibbles said. “I’m just trying to focus in on stuff that people would say, ‘Oh yeah, I remember those.’ ”