Scott Mackey’s bicycles

Bicycles call out to dreamers who can see beyond the silver geometry of gears, past the welded angles of metal tubes, to untraveled roads seen at a height just above that of human shoulders, at a pace that’s somewhere between a jog and the speed of a car.

Scott Mackey is one of those dreamers.

At his Pedal Play Bicycles on Perkins Road, Mackey deals in racing machines and kids’ first rides. Yet he also exhibits one of the area’s finest collections of vintage bikes.

Mackey runs the tips of his fingers along the drivetrain of a 1982 Schwinn Paramount.

“Like a fine watch,” he says with a wistful turn of the wheel.

1800s-era children’s tricycle

1950 JC Higgins beach cruiser

1966 Bottecchia road bike

1978 Colnago road bike

1979 Austro Daimler road bike

1981 Cinelli road bike

A generation ago, bike builders took pride in their craft. Bikes today are tightly made, but stamped out by machines that can never know the joy of going so fast your eyes tear up and your mouth emits peals of laughter.

Bicycle builders of old hand-etched their logos and calibrated their wheel hubs with such perfection they’d be able to roll without a waver or a hitch half a century later, or more.

These treasures often end up lying around people’s garages, turning to rust.

Each day, Mackey celebrates the old while tuning up the new. And he’s always on the lookout for new, dusty finds.