Someone Else's Musings On My Trade atmo -

[JChasse]

I could be completely wrong, but I was commenting to my riding buddies on the way home from NAHBS that awards notwithstanding, I thought this year's show was more about functional (looking) bikes vs. bikes for art's sake than in the past. Anyone else get that vibe?

[sk_tle]

I don't see anything wrong with "over the top" or "show" bikes being displayed in ...well... a show. I was far far away from the NAHBS showrooms (5166miles according to a gmaps distance calculator) but from what I can see in the flickr galleries there was a nice diversity of bikes displayed at the show, from city bikes to full blown TT bikes with all sort of tourers, fat bikes, BMX, 29ers, adventure bikes, cargo bikes, race bikes, ballers bikes with all sort of materials involved

The problem may not lie in the show, but in the medias and in the visitors/readers awarness. It's up to the journalists / bloggers to pay attention to the diversity of NAHBS and it's up to the attenders and readers to be smart enough to not fall in such a simple trap.

Besides, I like a bit of decadence and I would definitely buy at least one of these over the top bikes. Hey, if I wasn't using my full blown pursuit track bike (now with a disc wheel, sorry no pic) for commuting, going to grocery store or to tow a trailer with my 2y old daugter, it wouldn't get a lot of miles from it. I don't race with it that much now that masters aren't allowed to race on the track. I wouldn't mind doing that with that english TT bike. Just because I can.

[CWinters]

JP is one of the great ones- other than a bad book on bmx racing that he did to make schekels he is legit and decent. And he tells a pretty bitchin' story.

He is legendary around the NYC circles.

I would be happy to pass along his email address so you can email him directly.

Thanks, I would appreciate that!

[edoz]

Oh, and can someone point me to a picture of anything Edoz displayed? Haven't seen anything, which is sad

Thanks zetroc, and I also made Bike Radar:) (although they got about half of the new builders' names wrong)
NAHBS 2013: Mahogany, copper, film-dipped & more | BikeRadar

Bike Rumor, Mountain Flyer, and Mountain Bike Action also talked to me and took pics, but that stuff hasn't hit yet.

While I agree with a lot of the article, the 'sunset of the handbuilt industry' tone put me off. Since that came at the beginning of the article, it was hard to read the rest of it with without "meh, whatever" sounding in the back of my head.

[joosttx]

It’s striking to me that as carbon fiber and electronic shifting are sending bike prices skyrocketing, custom builders aren’t using this as a moment to show their relevance. Surely a great bike from a custom builder and outfitted with top-shelf parts can deliver a great ride at a competitive weight and a price that can beat out lots of mold-made carbon bikes these days. It would be great to see these bikes treated as such.


I have found this a paradox as well. When you look at the models (custom builder models) that work, as far as I can tell, produce a great riding (note not fitting) bike with a great paint job at a high end price with a great brand identity (via osmosis or strategy). Of course the personalize service is a benefit. One thing I left out, other than back office stuff, is a consistent vision.

If I were a builder, I would go after that high end market. Not by building bikes which I can put a chainsaw on, but by specializing and competing for madone and s-works buyers as the author puts it. The problem, and I think this IS the problem, is the job would become so repetitive. If you build a 1000 similar frames how freeing is that? And I think Freedom is a reason why some people get into this career, as I observed. I mean you are going to have to get on a different wavelength to find uniqueness to do so, which takes a special person. Shit, even Warhol hired people to make his art.

[blasdelf]

Yes and no. Most people buy $3k cargo have tried the cheapies and found them wanting.

Builders such as Mike Flannigan (AntBike) and Ahearne (who were not at the show in Denver but has been at previous shows) believe that it is possible for many to actually replace cars in their lives with thoughtfully designed bicycles. If it takes pizzazz to get that concept across, so be it.

The problem with is that plenty of the Cargo / Porteur / Randoneé bikes shown at NAHBS are very poorly designed given what they're kitted out for. Really it's usually *most* of them, with only a handful of baller ones actually having any R&D behind them.


This is set up perfectly, both of those dudes have built enough of them to know exactly what works:

final__copy_1024x1024.jpg


And this is a cargo-cult imitation (no particular insult to them, there's at least one every year):

Geekhouse-Brentwood.jpg


It's like builders just assume that riding with a front load has to result in a bike that handles like dick and responds poorly to pedaling. So they just take their standard cyclocross or sweet fixie geometry and accessorize it to look like what they see — if you're gonna make a turd why not just hang the same parts on a Surly?

The dichotomy that Craig sees between bikes as "sporting good" and "transportation" doesn't have to exist, especially not in the world of handbuilt bikes.

[Jonathan]

Gosh, since everyone has an opinion here is mine. I've been close several times to displaying bikes. Several times in the newbie tables and now that I no longer qualify, in the main section. I just can't justify it though and i keep looking for the incentive over walking through the front door. Maybe next year. So far the few ive been to to spectate have been loads of fun. I get to see the folks I buy tubing from, tool and fixture makers and everyone else who is in the industry. I try not to bug framebuilders trying to sell stuff. I like these folks too. I'm also a bike geek. It's not a waste of time for me to look at the bikes others laugh off. Sure I dismiss much of it, but I get ideas too. So, it holds zero interest to me the linked article. I'm more interested in a discussion among other framebuilders if there is a way to move the niche forward with or without NAHBS and without the politics and control issues that normally occur. This stuff is just like picking lint from the belly button.

[e-RICHIE]

I'm more interested in a discussion among other framebuilders if there is a way to move the niche forward with or without NAHBS and without the politics and control issues that normally occur.

I don't think the niche moves forward, show or no show. It's just the niche. The individuals move forward (or don't...).

[Chauncey Matthews]

I could be completely wrong, but I was commenting to my riding buddies on the way home from NAHBS that awards notwithstanding, I thought this year's show was more about functional (looking) bikes vs. bikes for art's sake than in the past. Anyone else get that vibe?

I did. I'd say the VAST majority of bikes there were made to be ridden, all of my bikes were daily drivers I temporarily repo'd and shined up for the show.
It's just the majority of practical bikes got the minority of the coverage...just like always, but I knew that going in. I still think it was a great show, I finally got to meet some of my heroes, and I'm seriously considering NC for next year.

Ps- Peacock Groove Forever!

[nahtnoj]

Geekhouse-Brentwood.jpg

The guy in the striped sweater in the background - witness protection program?

[solfege]

i'd give my eye teeth, the extra $500 i had to spend on bullshit shipping and set up fees, and a copy of a book by friedrich engels for the show to be in a new england union town...

Exactly. Y'all wanna get paid for what you do. So, too, do riggers and convention center workers. Some of 'em might even buy your bikes.

[solfege]

Yeah, that clicked for me 11 minutes after posting.

Still, its a cool show and I would encourage continually scorned residents of the Northeast to attend.

I love it. Missed it this year b/c of a combination of shitty circumstances, which bummed me the hell out. But have been religiously other years.

[thollandpe]

The guy in the striped sweater in the background - witness protection program?

I'm pretty sure he has a $500 deposit of mine from 1995. He told me the bike's in paint.

[timdude]

Exactly. Y'all wanna get paid for what you do. So, too, do riggers and convention center workers. Some of 'em might even buy your bikes.

Until now I never made the Union town connection with the show. No worries were down to less than 10% of the workforce, just a little more time and show will be able to go anywhere. I was wondering why folks were not sending in their union dues;)

[SamIAm]

Wow the unions you guys long for must be very different than the ones I have dealt with over the years. As a veteran of 50+ trade shows at McCormick Place in Chicago, I have been witness and victim to some outrageous behavior, extortion, waste and laziness. Maybe Northeast based unions are different.

[davids]

Wow the unions you guys long for must be very different than the ones I have dealt with over the years. As a veteran of 50+ trade shows at McCormick Place in Chicago, I have been witness and victim to some outrageous behavior, extortion, waste and laziness. Maybe Northeast based unions are different.

Outrageous behavior, extortion, waste and laziness should be the exclusive domain of the small business owners who built this country, huh? That hardly seems fair.

[e-RICHIE]

Wow the unions you guys long for must be very different than the ones I have dealt with over the years. As a veteran of 50+ trade shows at McCormick Place in Chicago, I have been witness and victim to some outrageous behavior, extortion, waste and laziness. Maybe Northeast based unions are different.

I come from a trade unionist family and none of my relatives are from Chicago. I bleed union. Unlike others here, I have a huge stake in this game. I'd rather have a union man or woman get my money especially if it meant i wouldn't have to sign my life away to shipping and courier companies as well as the airlines as I have EVERY YEAR since Houston atmo.

[doomridesout]

If there's anything I think a custom builder with years of experience dating from previous 'eras' of framebuilding should take away from NAHBS (and the age of the internet photo gallery in general, which NAHBS is a symptom of), it is that the primary challenge for them going forward is going to be communicating what that experience entails. In other words, why is a veteran framebuilder a commodity compared to a recent UBI grad? The importance of geometry, having the wheels in the right spot, and specifically sorting through the 'noise' in customer input- this is the kind of thing that makes an established builder a cut above the glut of younger peers. Example-- leaving out the name, I can think of a pic I've seen of a bike by a younger builder which is obviously super-stiff- 44mm head tube, ginormous stays, massively shaped and oversized tubing, with a slammed-forward saddle, bizarrely rotated bar/hood position, and short stem. In other words, the builder took fit numbers at face value from a customer who didn't know their fit, and built the bike as if Andre Greipel was going to be contesting sprints on it, because it was a 'race bike'. It looked uncomfortable and unnecessarily stiff. If I were an established builder who knew better, in terms of fit/filtering customer input, etc., my question would be how to communicate that experience in ways that don't shit on younger builders or say 'no' overtly to be customer (including insulting the wattage in the cottage). I've been interested in custom bikes for a few years, entirely in the age of the internet photo gallery, and if it's taken me that long to figure out these differences between the lifers and the recent entries into the scene, the established builders need to work on finding a new way to communicate what they do to the public. Maybe this is a problem I'm making up, but it should be obvious what Don Walker, J.P. Weigle, et al have to offer that a newer builder doesn't, and not just some sentimental tripe about tradition, either. Its not just the end user of the bike who needs to know, either, it's anybody who would pick up a torch in 2013.

[e-RICHIE]

If there's anything I think a custom builder with years of experience dating from previous 'eras' of framebuilding should take away from NAHBS (and the age of the internet photo gallery in general, which NAHBS is a symptom of), it is that the primary challenge for them going forward is going to be communicating what that experience entails. In other words, why is a veteran framebuilder a commodity compared to a recent UBI grad? The importance of geometry, having the wheels in the right spot, and specifically sorting through the 'noise' in customer input- this is the kind of thing that makes an established builder a cut above the glut of younger peers. Example-- leaving out the name, I can think of a pic I've seen of a bike by a younger builder which is obviously super-stiff- 44mm head tube, ginormous stays, massively shaped and oversized tubing, with a slammed-forward saddle, bizarrely rotated bar/hood position, and short stem. In other words, the builder took fit numbers at face value from a customer who didn't know their fit, and built the bike as if Andre Greipel was going to be contesting sprints on it, because it was a 'race bike'. It looked uncomfortable and unnecessarily stiff. If I were an established builder who knew better, in terms of fit/filtering customer input, etc., my question would be how to communicate that experience in ways that don't shit on younger builders or say 'no' overtly to be customer (including insulting the wattage in the cottage). I've been interested in custom bikes for a few years, entirely in the age of the internet photo gallery, and if it's taken me that long to figure out these differences between the lifers and the recent entries into the scene, the established builders need to work on finding a new way to communicate what they do to the public. Maybe this is a problem I'm making up, but it should be obvious what Don Walker, J.P. Weigle, et al have to offer that a newer builder doesn't, and not just some sentimental tripe about tradition, either. Its not just the end user of the bike who needs to know, either, it's anybody who would pick up a torch in 2013.

I don't know where you have been, but nearly all of us from the pre-Y2K era have been "...communicating what that experience entails" since we got online atmo. The newer builders may have no experience and no numbers in their fingertips to speak of, but they do have one thing that's invaluable. And it's all cached online going back to the first listserves and every message board in between. We can't do the work for them but we've certainly articulated every step along the way, shot pictures of it, created how-to pages, mentored all and every business issue that you can imagine, and more. But until a cat has made hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds...) of units, he'll still be approaching the bench from the left hand side of the developmental time line.

[doomridesout]

Well, I guess the rush of an E-Richie kudos went to my head. It's not as though new builders lack archival knowledge- I guess I'm saying that it still took me, as a custom bike consumer and relative industry neophyte, several years to come around to why the old timers reserve the right to say no to any number of stupid customer inputs, and why a Gaulzetti looks like a De Rosa on paper. I guess the tradition needs innovative ways to justify itself, rhetorically speaking.