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One for Oddjob

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AshimotoK0:
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Johnny4428:
C90 outside the shop?

Oddjob:
Or a 50 or 70.

That part they are parked outside became just a salesroom for bikes, the one next door became an insurance office, the next 3 and around the corner were also salesrooms, every morning me and the rest of the lads would walk from the back of the building to remove all the bikes sold the day before so we could PDI them etc, due to the amount of bikes in the rooms that could involve moving 6 others to get to the one we wanted. We'd then freewheel them round the corner to the workshop, not a great start to the day in bad weather.

The door in the middle was the entrance to Suzuki/Yamaha parts. Honda parts entrance was inside the 3 showrooms part. That's a VERY early picture, it had changed a lot since that pic and when I started.

Johnny4428:
Interesting old pic Ken! No 5ft darts flying about in this pic! 🤣🤣

Oddjob:
There is Johnny but it's at the back of the building, out of picture  :) :) :)

I was talking about Queenies and the building in particular last night in the pub and I'd forgotten what a rabbit warren of passage etc were in that building, all those towers for instance, I'd forgotten about those, upstairs on the 1st floor was the remains of a night club called the Waterfall, the stage was still there and all the tinsel and glitter decorations were still hanging up, the 750K0 was parked almost on that stage.

There was also a CB350K4 still in it's crate, stored on it's end so the forks were pointing towards the floor, we cut a small flap in the cardboard outer so we could see what colour it was etc, it was a metallic olive green IIRC. It was still there when the place shut so someone must have bought it and put it back on the road.

In the basement, lower than the road, is where the workshops were, there was also a cellar (under the 3 showrooms) where all the write offs were just thrown into, hundreds and hundreds of all sorts of bikes, just in a huge jumble, the smell of that room I can still recall, stale petrol, old oil and rust and corrosion, a very distinctive smell. Oddly, I had to go to a place near Lancaster last year to pick up a job lot of CB550 parts I'd bought, they were stored in a huge old hanger type building, near the back, as we walked further in, the smell got stronger and stronger, until I said that it reminded me of being in the cellar at Queenies, at which point the owner said, well it should, as all these came out of the cellar there, he'd been PAID to empty that cellar, he didn't pay for anything, it was all free so long as he took it away, the stuff down there would be worth a fortune today, old Bridgestone motorcycles, some Vespas and Lambrettas for some reason, quite a few old British bikes including some Velos IIRC, shed loads of CB160 type bikes, hundreds of C50/70/90s. Some people just have all the luck.

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