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Re: Spooky Bikes
I grew up in a really, really cool time in the bike world and was super lucky for it.Originally Posted by doubled
The people around me all knew what they were doing and knew other people who knew what they were doing.
Everything was happening so quickly too. Our DH bikes started the season with 4" of travel and ended them with 7" at the end of the year and I literally watched the progression in bmx frame design happen as noticed the downtubes I was cutting getting bigger.
When I volunteered for Shimano at races I got to bed in hub-roller brakes and play with air shifters and dual rotor disc brakes with under-seat mounted radiators.
I raced 220 people for the Jr. X national XC championships at Mt. Snow. 220fuckingjuniors. XC mtb racing... After the 90's it died. XC mtb racing used to be a profession. Now it's a sad little money pit with a bunch of geeks from shit like XC skiing(I looking at you New England) instead of skateboarding and motocross. No more derelicts. Bummer.
I got to meet all sorts of cool people as a young teenager that had no qualms about telling me I was wrong too.
The contacts I made as a kid and the contacts I've inherited from OG people like FTW and Chris Herting and Steve Boehmke and Zap and Captain Dondo and people who got downsized out of the industry when Taiwan took over and most importantly, the people from the NORBA circuit have been the welfare system that's kept me from being homeless(much) ever since I re-started the company.
I have so many friends who've called in so many favors to keep me from getting punched in the neck or aplogizing for my mistakes that I can't say it enough times;
Thanks adults!
The image below has kept me alive too;
When I first restarted the company I was pretty uncomfortable parlaying on our '90's cache to do lots of promotion and stuff since, except for the bikes that 3D built for me, all of my stuff was being made by Sapa and the whole narrative was a little too shallow.
There were the full page pictures and stories I got in Bike and Dirt and Decline when I first restarted the company and a few more pictures in Decline since then but now that Spooky is me and FTW working full-time under the same roof I feel like I can just relax, be myself and let Spooky ooze back into where I've always wanted it to be, MTB racing.
Over the last 2 weeks we've signed 2 pretty darn good female pro XC racers(a former Olympian!) and a female BMX/gravity pro(Collegiate champion in DS and BMX and #6 nationally in girls pro). One of the XC ladies is a good CX racer, I'd love to add one more mtb/cx double dipper to round it out. Even though we're way too late for decent sponsorship for CX season(and half a year late for XC) I'm holding out hope that I can get them as much support as I can for CX season. We'll never be able to pay their expenses but a title sponsor on the other hand...
Frank is putting in dozens of hours to build these ladies race bikes. We've already built a sizing proto for one of the ladies and fedex'd it to CO so I can get feedback before we go ahead with her steel and aluminum frames. 2 frames, identical geometry. I'm going to find out what feels the best for someone who weighs 100 pounds and I'm going to keep it in mind until the next bike we build for someone who is 5'2". 100 pounds.
I'm working to have custom tubes made for the one that weighs 90 pounds and have worked the previously mentioned connections to put together a full build for her bike. She's my mom's favorite female pro racer ever and FTW used to build her team bikes in her heyday. The entire network has been activated. Gravy is building her wheels and doing the final assembly of her race bike, just like the last bikes she had before she retired. It's a good story and i'm really hoping we can leverage it into a bit more media coverage this year.
It took 5 days from the time I signed the bmx girl until she recieved a new custom 20" race bike. Compared to this time last year when I didn't have anything in stock to sell and hard LOTS of trouble getting custom frames out quickly this spring has been a breath of fresh air. It's still really, really hard though.
BIKE RACING, woohoo!
At the same time I'm working with one of the UK MTB video makers on web edits of people in the UK and US getting sideways on 650b hardtails.
The UK media WILL give us coverage, because the videos are going to be AWESOME.
That's the sort of stuff that I should be doing full-time. The pain in my ass that's been the last 3 years has kept me from doing anything fun on the racing front or meaningful on the marketing and promotions front. I'm glad that I've suffered so much over the years and am riding out the storm because all I really want to do is win races and get loose and gnarly on hardtails. I always wonder what would happen if I aplied for a job doing what I'm doing somewhere that has money
I'm clearly pretty good at what I can do given the budget I have to work with, but I also wonder how well falling on my face time again and reflects the abilities I may or may not have when I'm not under the volcano, overworked and out of my mind.
You can have a pretty long lifespan in the bike industry though...
The dude who sold me my first bike shorts is the brand director for Rapha USA now ferchrissakes! He started at a bike shop, then repped for Raleigh, then repped for Shimano, then moved inside at Shimano, then moved to biggest desk at Shimano, then moved to the IMBA board and then moved to the (uneeded) marketing position at Chris King.
Those long arcs are so common in the industry, they are the bike industry.
Specialized just hired one of the guys who ran GT's Project'96 Superbike program to build aluminum frames in Morgan Hill for more money than he's seen in a real long time. They offered the job to other aluminum frame builders who ran factories from the '90s too. From talking to those guys they were suprised as hell to hear from Specialized, surprised that anyone remembered them, surprised that their knowledge would become valuable again, and likely suprised as hell to get job offers from the company that's always been the enemy
Paul Turner, the founder of Rockshox is now a full-time employee at X-Fusion too.
Pretty neat. The mtb industry people from the '90s will never die. They will just rack up frequent flier miles and passport stamps.
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