The Corsos also had a pretty substantial wholesale side under the name Corso Distributors. They imported SOMEC and Bottechia as well as Atala. They had Campy too and a bunch of other stuff... After Sal retired his son Louis took over the business. I think that he had been working in some other field before that; maybe banking.
I think that Corso brought in a fair number of frame sets. I know that they had a bunch of the Marchetti & Lang frame prep machines in house... In the early 80's a guy named John Issendorf started an elite junior squad as part of the Kissena club, The team was built around John's son Charlie and the Hincappie brothers. John knew Louis Corso and he got Corso to sponsor the team. The original kits had blue and white horizontal stripes with Atala across the chest. I think that was a take-off of some pro team kit... The Corso sponsorship faded away concurrent to Corso Distributors fading away, but the team picked up Fred Mengoni as their sponsor... And the Mengoni / Issendorf partnership lives on even today.
I was friends with John Issendorf and I helped the team along with mechanical work and wheel building. There are a couple of pictures on my web site from those days. If you scroll to the bottom of this page you'll see a picture of me and (a 15 year old) George in a break away at Kissena. George is in the aforementioned Atala kit, and I'm in the German Bicycle Sports Club colors... And then there are some (much later) photos from a Mengoni team photo shoot under the Brooklyn Bridge.
http://jamieswan.net/
Jamie Swan Northport, NY, USA http://www.jamieswan.net http://www.limws.org http://www.liatca.org
On Aug 19, 2009, at 12:00 AM, Matthew 'Devotion' Bowne wrote:
>
> I am a little foggy on details, but will fill in what I can.
> Sal ultimately moved the shop to a second location on 14th Street,
> near 8th Avenue. Sometime in the mid 90's, I believe, the shop was
> sold to a cousin or other family member. I wanna say his name is
> Don or Dom or something of the sort. I recall hearing that he was
> interested in business much more than he was interested in
> bicycles, but who knows. The shop's name was changed to "'A'
> Bicycle Shop". Until about 5 years ago, there was a great old-
> school wrench there named Giovanni. I met him when every other
> shop I went to told me that I'd have to replace the fork on my
> Somec track bike (originally purchased at Stuyvesant in '85) after
> it was bent in a crash. He simply pulled it straight and sent me
> on my way.
> Rumor had it, Vanni had quite a line on old Campy bits and would
> sell some customers vintage stuff kinda "under the table".
> Don and company moved the shop to Chelsea about two years ago,
> where it still operates.
>
> Matthew Bowne
> Brooklyn, New York
>
>> Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:39:26 -0700
>> From: andy@strawberrybicycle.com
>> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
>> Subject: [CR] Left Coast Inquiry
>>
>> Howdy CR List,
>> So, on the same family holiday trip to the Big Apple in 1965, I
>> visited
>> Thomas Avenia's store and also Mr. Sal Corso's Stuyvesant shop
>> where I
>> purchased a pair of sew-up wheels with Nisi rims and Campag high
>> flange
>> hubs (just had to have the high flange to make me go that little bit
>> faster so I could beat Nick Zeller in the sprint for the Oregon State
>> Road Race - all twelve of us! Unfortunately, to no avail.). My
>> question, after perusing Google, is what happened to Sal and his
>> Stuyvesant Cycle Shop?
>> Andy Newlands
>> Terra Nova Cycles, LLC (Strawberry Cycles Engineering & Fabrication)
>> 1535 S.W. 17th. Ave.
>> Portland, OR 97201
>> tel/fax 503-224-1215
>> http://www.strawberrybicycle.com
>> http://www.oregonframebuilders.org
>> http://www.marchettispa.it
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Windows Live: Make it easier for your friends to see what you\u2019re up
> to on Facebook.
> http://windowslive.com/
> ocid=PID23285::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:SI_SB_facebook:082009