When I was a kid there was a boneshaker hill at the end of my street dubbed Suicide Hill and if you could ride your Stingray down there without it doing the Shimmy Shimmy Shake with subsequent crash and skinned up knees you acheived ledgendary status...
I crashed a couple of times, my older stepbrother told me to lose the ape hangers and I might have a chance. We moved overseas before that challenge presented itself, I outgrew the stingray too.
I visited that street in Mountlake Terrace Washington many years later and I drove down to the beginnings of Suicide Hill.... pfffft things always look bigger when you’re 10.
Lol. Ape hangers. I wonder who invented those stupid things. They are real popular with the local Harley crowd now. Seems like most non-tourers have them. I tried them back in 1972 when I had a chopper. I rode around with them for an hour and took them off. Not just stupid but dangerous. Now I look at ape hangars like I do Biden stickers. They indicate that the user is stupid and needs to be avoided. They were just as bad on bicycles.
ICBW, but I think every neighborhood had a Suicide Hill no matter when or where you were growing up.