My name is Michael Gordon, and I am the creator of Shop Dog Cycles.
First and foremost, a big thank you to Richard and Josh for my spot here in Smoked Out, and the community they've created with Velocipede Salon.
I’m a steel guy. My love of steel developed as a kid, fascinated by my best friend’s father’s Ron Cooper and Colnago, both of which lovingly hung on a rack in their family room, inside their house…The proper place for any family member. They were not just bicycles. With their lug work and craftsmanship, they were works of art.
As fate would have it, my first real road bike would also be a Ron Cooper, one which came into the shop I was working at to be sold on consignment. As quickly as the manager hung it on the wall, I pulled it down. I’ve ridden carbon, aluminum, and titanium too, but steel offers a ride quality all its own.
Frame building has been a passion now for about 10 years, longer if you add up the years I spent just studying the process prior to even striking up a torch. Much of my early bicycle obsession was spent focused on fit, frame design and the fundamentals of steel frame fabrication (i.e. practice). It was slow going at first, but really took off after reading Richard’s “Downsize the Fantasy.” My lag in “just doing it” was overcome as I gave up on the idea of fancy jigs and fixtures. Creativity took over, and I developed my process for building lugged frames, free from expensive jigs. This taught me patience and process, and better prepared me for use of the tooling I now use. As the saying goes, learn to walk before you run.
My formal education in fabrication comes from a degree in Manufacturing Engineering Technology with focused lab work in CAD, Machining, Welding and Material Sciences. I took on this degree for fun, with my main focus a degree in marketing. It wasn’t until years later that I understood my priorities were flipped. After school I did a short stint in Southern California working for Bill McCready of Santana Cycles. It was an interesting summer, but California was just not the right fit for me and back to Chicago I moved.
Today in cycling I continue to ride and race; mountain, mountain tandem, fat bike, triathlon and cyclo-cross. Track starts up next season. With a velodrome just a few miles from my house, it would be wrong for me not to partake. I’m not the fastest guy out there, but I have the passion to pin on a number and line up at the start gate. I did get to taste the podium once so far, as my son and I took a 3rd place in the Men’s Tandem category at the Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival (yes, there were more than 3 men’s tandems in that race).
Shop Dog cycles is the name on my frames. As I continue my frame building journey, my mission is to help increase the awareness, interest and appreciation in hand-built bicycles in Chicago, once the bicycle building capital of the United States.
