25 Jan 2011

http://bicycling.com/blogs/mbword/2011/01/19/handmade-mountain-bikes-gaining-popularity/

This is awesome news! Seriously though, every time I hear mention of the phrase ‘custom bicycle’, people seem to continually attempt to justify it’s existence in terms of quantifiable things, such as ‘fit’ or ‘choice’. Whatever happened to the good old fashioned reason of “Because I can”?

Rody Walter said :

“Riders who are more experienced are looking for a better ride or maybe a competitive edge, so hand-built bikes offer them the ability to select a certain tubing, a geometry to compliment style and the components they want.”

That’s all true of course, but for me the biggest driver for people wanting custom bikes is “I’m an individual, and bikes are this important to my life”.

Being that everything that I do seemingly is a reaction against what Industrial Design has become, and what mass production has become, custom bikes for me represent the ability to be yourself. In a world of homogeneity, custom bikes - at the core of it all - allow you to take your physiology, take your tastes, take your imprint on the everything you do with your bike, and make you own it. For a lot of people that’s scary, and I think that’s a reason why the reasons to buy a custom anything are sold in terms of the quantifiable, like the Western consumerist idea of ‘choice’ and ‘fit’. Oh, and ‘pretty colours’ (or in the current environment, ‘white’.)

From a Sociological POV, there’s also the idea of ‘belonging’. Although it’s a bit alien to me, If you surf the web you can see brand worship on sometimes the smallest and most ridiculous levels. From what I can see, this is most effective with large scale consumerism, but it’s also trickling down to custom bikes. Obviously there has to be a reason to buy a custom bike that isn’t based on the quantifiable, because we’re not robots. So, if we can engage with the ‘cult of personality’ or ‘image’ of Custom Bike Company A, why are we so afraid of that other reason to by a custom bike - ‘I’m an individual’?

I think that a large portion of the reason is because of this pack mentality, the desire to belong, but also the desire to not be seen as excessive or snobby. Spending as much on a bike as a car can seem a high price to pay for individuality. However, in the grand scheme of things, it’s certainly a more sustainable option than paying 10 grand for the same type of bike Cadel Evans used to ride in last years TdF just before he changed teams and you now look out-of-date and all your Banker mates are now laughing behind your back down at that cafe on Beach Road. Especially if you crash said bike in the first week of having it and it’s now 900g of carbon fiber landfill.

The bottom line of course, is that we could all do with less stuff, and the stuff we have should have all the good attributes of something meaningful and personal. Custom bicycles do all that, and transcend the infantile waste of consumerism with exactly that - something more meaningful and personal.

It’s great to have a bike that fits you well, it’s great to have ‘choice’, but at-the-end-of-the-day, it’s much better to have something that says ‘I’m an individual and I have something to say’. It’s time us proponents of custom bikes stopped shying away from that fact.

Posted by warwick @ 6:00 am

12 Jan 2011

I’m sick of the Boy Racer look 99% of all bike companies perpetuate. Time for some fun?

Posted by warwick @ 1:34 am