30 Jul 2011

I just noticed that my new Thylacine Tephra XK was actually finished in Feburary, before it got a grand tour of the US including going to Strong frames where it was deemed “unmediablastable” (I have it on good authority that’s a real word), then to NAHBS where it was deemed “unshowable”, before going back to Idaho, then on to Spectrum Powder Works in Colorado where it sat in the queue for almost 3 months, then Arizona for freight consolidation, before finally making it to sunny Melbourne Australia and Thylacine HQ. It was one of five frames I had to prep and ship this week, so it’s been a bit full-on.

Take a second now to catch your breath.

Half of that is highly unusual, but the Spectrum part isn’t, so it’s pretty safe to say that if you want your frame Powdercoated, your 2 month leadtime is now 5. Or thereabouts. Which sucks quite a bit, but hey, a custom frame is for life, not just for Christmas, so suck it up. I had to.

As per usual, I was incredibly slack with ordering the parts for this frame, so I’ve been caught with my pants down a bit. It’s going to be a bit of a ‘Ghetto’ build because I don’t use new glamour stuff for bikes that are going to be my Daily Rider. Initially the only new parts are going to be ones that are specific to ‘Cross frames that I don’t currently have - namely, forks, tyres and brakes.

For forks, I’m still up poo creek. Enve have still got their fingers up their bums and can’t ship to us plebs down here in the Antipodes, so I have a Wound-Up on order, but of course they don’t have any in stock. I could go with a steel fork but that would take even longer to get made, to the ceramic coaters, and then to me here. Still don’t know what the heck to do with that one.

Tyres are a bit of a struggle, too. I really want to get some new wheels with wider rims so I can fully take advantage of 35c tyres, but that’s going to have to wait. This bike spends almost all of it’s time on-road, so nothing too ‘Cyclocross-y’ is the order of the day, but I don’t want them to be too wussy, either. Currently on the list are Maxxis Overdrives, Schwalbe XR / Dureme, Conti Cyclocross Speed, or the WTB Pathway.

For brakes, I got some TRP’s for a really good price, but something tells me I’ll end up with Pauls.

The wheels I’ll probably end up getting are a set of Hope Pro 3’s or White Industries laced to these new rims I stumbled upon by a company called H Plus Son. Styled after the ubiquitous Ambrosio Nemesis, but 24mm wide and clinchers with a machined sidewall. Classico!

Also temped by the C-4 hubs but they’re a little bit of an unknown quantity, but I should give them a shake because I already know the Hope and WI hubs are good, so why play it safe, eh? Afterall, I expect my customers to pick me.

So, enough already, show us some pictures of this new frame. Why, I’m glad you asked…..

So what do you think? Is the new Tephra XK ‘unmediablastable’ and not worthy of a NAHBS unveiling? I’ll let you be the judge.

Thanks to KVA Stainless Steel for their support.

Posted by warwick @ 9:26 am

15 Jun 2011

Been a bit quiet in Tigerland recently. Just trying to tie up a few loose ends before my brain goes on bike-cation in which it won’t have to think about bikes for a while. We’ve had a rather large selection of customers’ frames stuck at Spectrum for the best part of 2 months now, and we got word finally that they’re all ready for shipping. Frankly, a relief. If you’re patiently waiting on a frame and haven’t heard from me, it will be in that shipment, which is somewhere around 14 days away at a guess.

After this, Thylacine is going to do it’s best Han Solo and go into hibernation, only to be awoken when rescued by a design proposition that can press all the right buttons to free it.

The next personal design project will be the Tephra XS, which I’m planning to do by the end of the year - or maybe start after the Winter thaw - but there are some debts to clear caused by recalcitrant contractors that I have to deal with before I can indulge my own personal whims. I planned to do this sooner, but…..shit happens.

So, things are going to be a bit quiet around here, but if you’re after a frame I can generally still accommodate. Please keep in mind though that leadtimes are currently at 12-16 weeks and that isn’t going to change for the next 12 months.

Posted by warwick @ 9:42 am

13 Apr 2011

It goes without saying that pro road cycling is the bastion of the bike companies that have more in common with Kmart than they do those of us peddling handmade custom bikes, and Paris - Roubaix is no different. However, one thing that the PR is, is a great litmus test for products and ideas - a place where you’ll see Cyclocross bikes, Aluminium parts chosen instead of Carbon, and magazine editors uttering the words “Massive” and “27mm” in the same sentence. Also the place of course where you’ll see a certain brand of headset saw a certain riders’ fork steerer in two before they prudently finally sign a licensing agreement for the proper design. Nervous days for designers.

So what’s the message for the custom bike industry? What can we learn from the Dark Side?

Well, the big thing I think is the effectiveness of the non-traditional road bike. While it’s true that the average customer of ours isn’t riding cobbles all day, it just takes one patch of crap road to know that things could be shall we say a tad more comfy. 23mm tyres, thin handlebars, and 400mm chainstays when you be perfectly honest with yourself, don’t really scream ‘enjoyment’ - especially if you’re not smashing out 500km+ weeks. I honestly think the average road cyclist - and by that I mean 85% of ours and everyone elses customers - could do with a serious rethink when it comes to the approach to design, but also the ignoring of a paradigm that really has very little basis to it except that of the inertia of history (well, not exactly) and manufacturing efficiency.

We’re still inextricably caught up in the “Shorter is better, ‘Compact’ is better than, um, ‘Not Compact” Kool-Aid (as the Yanks like to say, and I like to say because it’s more G rated than our version) that was thrust upon the unsuspecting bike rider and sold as “Faster! Shorter! Stiffer! Better!” firstly by the Italian builders and then by the likes of Giant in the early 90’s with their “Three sizes fits nobody” marketing brilliance. We need to further break that meaningless paradigm I think, and embrace things like the Cyclocross bike for more than just ‘Cross, espouse the joy that is 25 and 28mm tyres, and make bikes that are more cruisey and less ‘racy’. Heck, we even need to be making bikes that actually ARE more racy and not just appear racy when viewed through the current backward looking kaleidoscope. That would probably start with not being emotive when referring to geometry with meaningless terms such as ’slack’ or ‘laid-back’, which are ridiculous. Maybe a 72 degree head angle is just, “right” or “appropriate”? With a 50mm raked fork, it’s certainly no less ‘racy’ than 73/43. Maybe if you need 90mm of saddle setback, you need longer chainstays than someone with 75? Is that less racy, or able to be raced? Not even slightly. How about the ability to take your road bike on a weekend or rail-trail riding with freinds, just by switching over to 32mm tyres? Certainly worth the trade off if the only racing you’re doing is a run down Beach Rd once a week with a pack of idiots enthusiasts.

Posted by warwick @ 4:10 am

06 Apr 2011

I’m not really sure what exactly the product managers at the major Steel tubing companies do every day, but for about a decade now there have been some glaring holes in the steel tubing catalogs of all the major manufacturers. Combined with the fact that recent trends are largely being ignored, it makes you wonder whether most of them just want to clear existing inventory and go do something more profitable, or with something like the re-release of Columbus Max and Mini-Max, keep us all ‘retro’.

If I had the resources, I’d jump on the opportunity to just get tubes made to exactly the specifications I’d want, but as I don’t, I thought I’d write a list for the product managers out there so they’d have something to do. Here we go….

1. Tapered headtubes.

I’m not talking about the machined type like PMW are making, I’m talking about simple, taper-swaged designs.  As 1.5″ lower fork assemblies take root in pretty much all arenas of frame design, we need headtubes to cater for this or we’ll miss the boat. Machined headtubes are too expensive and too heavy for road frames, so what we need is a really simple headtube, with 1-1/8th at the top, 1-1/2 at the bottom, and a short taper of about 50-75mm inbetween. I.0mm wall should do just fine. Even 44mm at the bottom would probably be a better option because you could either run a 44mm ‘Inset’ style headset, or a 44XX 1.5 external at the bottom, keeping options open.

2. Tapered tubes.

If you have a 29.4 bulge butted seat tube, and a 36mm head tube, it makes no sense joining the two with a 31.8 top tube. What would be super nice is a 34.9>28.6 top tube so nothing has to be squished.  You could compliment this with a lighter 31.8>28.6 design.

3. Ovalised tubes.

Designers in other materials have realised that ovalised tubes in the right areas can add some vertical compliance, so another nice design would be a top tube that’s ø31.8 round taper to a 31.8 (horiz) x 25.4 (vert) oval.

4. Triple butted tubes.

One of my major irks is the lack these days of triple butted tubes. The classic location for where this design would work a treat is the downtube, where all the major forces are at the head tube end, not the BB end.  Having an MTB 0.9/0.6/0.9 walled downtube is a waste of time - a 0.9/0.6/0.7 design would be lighter, probably stronger, and just plain betterer. Put material where the loads are.

5. Oversize seat tubes.

There is only one readily available external bulge-butted ø31.8 dedicated seat tube (from Reynolds) but it’s a bit of a pig. I’ve had some samples from ECO in Taiwan which are pretty much exactly what is needed, but they’re impossible to get without MOQ’s beyond my measely output.  Someone needs to make these readily available because they really are what’s needed for MTB’s that have a ton of seatpost hanging out.

Plus the 29.4 Thomson seatpost is 44g lighter than the 27.2 one anyway, so why bother with it?

6. ø22.2 chainstays.

I’m a fan of Pegoretti-esque chainstays, but there are very few nice ø22.2 tubes available.

Posted by warwick @ 1:49 am

03 Apr 2011

I kinda want to set the record straight about my views on the custom bike industry. There’s a big group of people who understand where I’m coming from and what my views actually are, but there’s also apparently a group that doesn’t.

At the risk of sounding however I sound when typing on the Intarweb, I want to dismiss without reservation that I’m here to ‘dis’ the industry or think it’s crap. The glaring disparity with that view is, well, that’s where I get my frames made. Despite what my wife may think sometimes, I’m a pretty smart guy, so it wouldn’t really make much sense to wholesale slag off an entire industry whilst being dependent on said industry. I mean, the idea of setting fire to bridges is a good one, but shall we say, fundamentally flawed.

Speaking of flaws, one of my own favourite personality ones is that I’m not the most positive, saccharine and upbeat fellow, so I tend to be unnaturally attracted to negatives. I just love a good stouch and I just can’t help myself, so whenever I come across things I thing are wrong or stupid or are broken, I tend to be a little bit like a dog with a bone.

So, because of that, I tend to be outspoken about industry issues - as you can probably tell from my last few blog posts. It’s not because I ‘hate’ the industry, it’s because I actually want it to be better. When I have a shit time within it, or get burned, or see some glaring issue, I want to talk about it so it can be fixed, or others can avoid the same problems. So much for my negativity, ay?

I also fully understand that I’m not in the best position to exactly being a whistleblower. I’m a bit player who sells 30 frames a year. I’m in Australia, everyone else is in the US. I don’t make Thylacines, but the majority of custom framebuilders do make their own brand exclusively. It’s one thing when Mike Zanconato says “I’m not so sure about NAHBS I think it needs some changes” and another thing when I do. However, there’s also an upside to my position that is largely ignored - I’m an outsider looking in.

To be completely frank, almost everyone I know who has a job as a paid professional wonder why I bother with the custom bike industry. Not a single colleague of mine isn’t shocked when I tell them that the only trade show that promotes the industry globally is run by an autocrat and that the show has no mission statement nor selection criteria. Not a single colleague of mine isn’t shocked when I tell them a big label New England framebuilder builds three frames for us that break in exactly the same place despite the frames being different designs and calls it a non-warranty issue because it’s a ‘design flaw’. I’ve had more problems than probably anybody and cleaned up more of other people’s mess than I ever wish I’d ever have to, yet 10 years later here I still am, a passionate believer in custom bikes and the custom bike industry. If that’s not a passionate belief, go talk to my accountant.

As a ‘non-framebuilder’ coming from the Industrial Design arena, that fact alone throws things into stark contrast. For example, I see blown out leadtimes as a simple management and resources issue, whereas the framebuilding industry continues to see it as a tool to falsely promote an air of success as well as ensure a perceived extended revenue stream. I make comments based on the comments of others about the lack of branding and effective brand communication, and I get lambasted for making the comments despite the fact that because of my background I know 100 times as much as the average framebuilder who only spends a fleeting moment considering how what he does is perceived by the buying public? If you were a framebuilder, wouldn’t you think this was supremely important and something you should learn about?

The learning stream works both ways. I recently had a frame checked out by Ewen Gellie and in an afternoon learned a lot about alignment, fixturing and the penchant we both seem to have about making weird things work. Every time I get a frame done buy one of our new guys, Erik Rolf, I learn something new about how professional and engaging the designer/builder relationship can be. It could however be argued that the learning from me stops when it actually comes to me making frames myself, and I’d have a tough time arguing against that. I think I can safely say though that after having done almost every step in the process of building a bike frame, just never one after the other, that I’ve never had the desire to make a frame from start to finish. I got my first custom frame built in 1989 by Glenn Roache and nothing has really changed since then. I’m still unsure as to whether that’s a good or bad thing, but the fact remains that it’s not a detriment to everything else that I do, whereas conversely if you’re a framebuilder and you ignore the basic tenets of brand building and visual communication, you’re stuffed. Build it, and they won’t come. Darren Baum once said to me without a hint of irony “In a perfect world, it wouldn’t matter how things looked” with a larger dose of irony considering I’m the guy who came up with his initial branding, designed his headbadge, and now his bikes carry a very strong evolved branding. Despite the fact that he is one of the best framebuilders in the world, without learning what he needed to do in terms of branding, he’d still be the guy with one lonely yellow frame hanging from John Kennedy’s racks. I think he would agree with me.

One of the natural defensive reactions to any ‘whistleblower’ is “Well, you’re not so great yourself” or “If you don’t like it , you do it”, (or my favourite - “If you don’t like it, leave”) but these are just that - defensive reactions. There’s no real point to being self righteous and defensive, you have to move beyond that and investigate for yourself. Like many framebuilders, I myself as a non-framebuilder have a tendency to exist in a vacuum, further isolated by circumstance, geography, and the way I’ve chosen to do things, but I think I can honestly say that I’m not so insular and self-absorbed that I don’t take people’s advise. I certainly don’t jump down people’s throats if they have an alternative view to myself - I do this thing called research and then evaluate. Passionate debate soon thereafter.

A good example of this is a good friend of mine is in marketing and much more well versed in ways to promote things than I am, once said to me I should drop the stripes that adorn the top tubes of my frames because they’re too polarising. Of course he’s completely right, and further exacerbating the problem is I change the design every other year just simply because I get bored. I’m completely aware of this, but I was also completely aware he wasn’t having a dig for the sake of it. I took his advise and now allow frames to be shipped out without the stripes - and in fact the two latest models, the Tephra XS and XK - don’t even have the stripes as part of their design. Deliberately. Of course, as soon as you do that people like the stripes, so you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t - ‘Such is Life’.

And speaking of damned, I’m probably less comfortable now with my self imposed and enforced marginalism than I was 3 years ago. Thylacine Cycles has always been a completely selfish endevour. I’ve never compromised on anything because it was really a single minded tool for me to do whatever the hell I liked. There’s no ‘Plan’ of any description - I literally just follow ideas I think are cool, and do things within my capacity that I think are better. It’s a complete, self-indulgence that is admittedly a reaction to my career as a Product Designer where literally for 15 years, I felt that good ideas were being put on countless backburners largely because people were afraid of risks and afraid to make decisions. ‘Publish or Perish’ is the mantra in Publishing, but in the Design field when you come up with a concept you think is 100 degrees of awesome, you want to see it out there - not bought and just put on the shelf.

Over the years there’s been dozen such ideas which you get paid well for, but go nowhere. A 600g XC disc front wheel, (Prototyped, tested) XC stem with ‘gasp’ four M5 bolts holding the thing together (Nitto said it was ‘unsafe’), one-bolt seatposts designs, large carcass / small knob tyres, a brilliant Manga-style advertising campaign for a certain brand of tyres that went to print only once. In Japan. A litany of IP thrown into the ‘too hard’ basket, and as a Designer that can only happen so many times before you throw up your hands. Thylacine Cycles is my therapy.

However, therein lies the rub. Everyone want’s to be successful, but sometimes that success is reliant on you compromising, and Thylacine was never set up for that. I’m utterly reliant on quality contract framebuilders, yet here I am defending ‘what my opinion is’ on the framebuilding industry when I thought it should be patently obvious. In many ways, my fun little toy is getting a lot more complicated than it ever has been.

Anyway, this is starting to sound like a novella so I might just wind it up here for now. Dear reader if you get nothing out of this except “Custom frames and framebuilders are cool, but like everything there is room for improvement and we should talk about it like grown-ups” then I think I can chalk this up as a ‘win’.

Hopefully even if the message does come from a loud-mouthed, marginalised, smarmy-pants designer type guy on a quest of fully aware self indulgence. And shit-stirring.

Posted by warwick @ 8:34 am

23 Mar 2011

In case you were wondering as a designer, how you could nab yourself a trophy and a cool €12,500 (that’s AUD17,585 folks) for that cutting edge design you’ve been slaving away at for years that’s a real game changer, well don’t go to Taipei because you’ll be usurped by this -

Posted by warwick @ 8:35 am

Pardon my crank Fetish.

For some unknown reason, I have a thing for cranks. You wouldn’t know it if you could see the current cranks on my bikes (nothing gets the heart racing like Shimano Deore XT eh? Ooh Lah lah!) but I do.

It all started many years ago when I actually made money and I lashed out and bought a set of Syncros Revolution cranks.  They were the best part of……..sit down…….900 bucks. They were ridiculous cranks, and as I learned a few years later when I went to Interbike for the first time and spoke to one of the Syncros founders, a complete money pit because of the time and resources it took to make the things. I forgot to mention I paid 900 bucks for mine, so clearly someone was making some money from them.

They were also a money pit because a year later I put them on a Spot singlespeed and doing about 30RPM up a big hill I snapped the non-drive side arm clean off.

Of course, before the ‘actual’ crank fetishism took off, it was underwritten by the chimps at MBA magazine, and Zap Espinoza and his damn Yetis. I don’t know anyone here who didn’t think those ‘fresh outta the shed’ FRO’s with their white Bullseye cranks weren’t exactly what American ingenuity and mountain biking were all about. Of all the bikes, Yeti’s with their Bullseye hubs and cranks still resonate, 20 years later. Heck, even my current 29er is ‘Desert Turquoise’.

But anyway, I digress slightly.

As you may or may-not know, Bullseye hubs have been leaking into the market via Ebay for quite a few years now, but everytime I’ve enquired about the cranks, I’d been given the old ‘yeah, soon’ line. Some have managed to make it online but it’s been ages if not years since they’ve been sighted. I guess you know where I’m going with this….

I have nearly 40 blogs and Flickrs I take a look at once a week to see what people are up to, and lo-and-behold our ubiquitous FTW has a folder called ‘Bullseye’ and a few teaser photos.

That’s all the info I have at the moment, but I’ll drop Frank an email and see what the deal is.

Never know, I may be able to finally re-indulge my latent crank fetishism!

*EDIT*

Okay, an update. Apparently Frank has been making some BMX-specific Gen 1 cranks currently and they’re all presold. The next batch is apparently some Gen 2’s and they will be more readily available.

Hey Warwick!

Yeah he is finish welding our OLD STOCK crank components for us.

Those are all pre-sold sets.

Let me know what size your after and I will see what I can do for you.

You do know these are all 1st Generation BMX style?
We will make 2nd Gen. TA style MTB/Road/Fixed sets as soon as these are completed.

Thanks and nice to hear from you.

Posted by warwick @ 2:22 am

21 Mar 2011

Because I walk in the shadowy Limboworld as a designer in a world full of as Richo likes to say, “effbuilders”, I’ve pretty much been lambased by the framebuilding industry mostly because ‘I’m not a framebuilder’. Of course the great irony of this is as I’ve said repeatedly here and elsewhere, you’re not really buying a frame when you go to a custom framebuilder. What gets the vast majority of customers over the line is emotive - they just take for granted that the thing is going to be well made.

This is a nice article from Red Kite Prayer by Padraig, titled ‘Builder Brand’. He made some very good points about his trip to NAHBS :

“Brand. For all the passion, technical wizardry and expert work I saw at NAHBS, the detail that united most of the builders there was a lack of branding.”

“Further, my sense of what [his] brand stands for is just that: my sense. Because it’s my emotional connection to what [he] does, it doesn’t even matter if my perception is different from yours if both are favorable.”

He’s referring mostly of course to Vanilla bicycles, although I would argue that White’s ’secondary’ brand Speedwagen has probably overshadowed ‘Vanilla’ at this stage, precisely because it is fresh and modern whereas Vanilla has it’s emotive and aesthetic roots in the past.

“There’s no way to deconstruct how a pink grenade conveys speed, style and lust, but it does all of those things, and more.”

This is exactly the tractor I’ve been driving for ages now - “it’s not about the bike” (Thanks Lance). All those little details which say just as much about the guy tending the helm are far more important than their ability to stick 8 tubes together. There’s only so far you can go with technical ability mostly because 99% of people wouldn’t know if something actually was well made, or whether it just looks neat enough to convey the idea of it being well made and the emotions that provokes.

Vanilla have been poo-poo’d somewhat over a velocipede for making it be more about the display and less about the bike, but the image is even more potent when you can back up the quality of the display with the quality of the merch. Why just sell the ’sizzle’ when you can sell both the sizzle and the steak? Does the only thing that matter is how something is made? Did you pick your last girlfriend using a spreadsheet and non-destructive testing?

Honestly, when I looked at the hundreds and hundreds of photos from NAHBS this year, I was left a little cold. There really wasn’t that much interesting stuff there and all it really did for me was cement in the mind of potential buyers probably only 20 builders offering anything with any real coherency - and even half of them are conservative established builders like Sachs and Della Santa. Many more offer a nice bike, but leaves it impossible for me at least to attach an emotive quotient to what they’re doing. If I removed myself from the ring, I honestly don’t know what I’d buy. You’d have to macerate 10 builders together to get the same amount of je ne sais quoi the now defunct Fat City Cycles had almost 20 years ago. Even Erik Noren of Peacock Groove was a little subdued this year.

So, perhaps it’s becoming clearer that custom framebuilders need to take maybe just one page out of the Sacha White Handbook of Awesome, and realise that once you get to a certain proficiency, it’s perhaps time to devote more than a passing few moments to how your personality, beliefs, and style and the way that’s conveyed to Joe Customer.

I should perhaps look up the chapter entitled “How being an acerbic, over-opinionated outsider will not work”?

Posted by warwick @ 9:17 am

06 Mar 2011

So years later it seems like there is finally some constructive dialogue about what NAHBS actually is, and it’s happening over at velocipede salon (16 pages to wade through), go means go, and bicycle design. I’m sure there’s others but I’ve wasted more of my life on this than is generally regarded as healthy.

It’s great that the ‘establishment’ has finally decided it’s okay to talk about this, because I do sometimes feel a bit weird as one of the strange guys stuck in limbo between Artisanland and Designland - and someone whose never been to NAHBS and is unlikely to ever exhibit - being the guy pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes. I’m not sure half the time why I even bother, except for my annoying personality trait of being a dog with a bone.

Despite my colourful negativity, I am a huge fan of NAHBS and it has done a whole heap to promote Custom, Handbuilt bikes. I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with each year and I spend hours scouring the Net for every single photo I can find.  It’s a heck of a lot of fun.

However, it’s clear that people are finally over the “okay, it’s good for us so we’ll just shut up and go along with it” phase and are into the critical appraisal stage. The larger players have got a fair whack invested in the show now and are now starting to have a little spray in the corner to mark their territory - or they’re just a bit tired of the Don Walker Invitational where the rules are flaunted if it suits the desire for the organisers’ egos and status. Whatever the motivation, it’s good. Dialogue is good. It’s very grown-up - at least until the self-righteous indignation dollar kicks in.

So - because I can - what is it in my highly esteemed opinion that NAHBS should be?  We should firstly, look at the environment -

A Counterpoint to Interbike.

If you can’t exhibit at Interbike, or it’s not your demographic, then NAHBS should provide a trade show that acts as a counterpoint to that. It should be an ‘Alternative’ trade show for design, innovation, and artisanship. Not a show for the North American Mill and Lathe owners Assoc.

Promote Small Business.

Please, companies like Zipp and Shimano don’t need to be at NAHBS. The MOQ of OEM is way above what most small businesses can handle, and they get enough mainstream exposure. NAHBS should be a showcase of innovative small business - regardless of who or where ‘handmakes’ their goods.

Affordable

I’m completely against using the price of entry as a ‘deterrent’ to get ’serious buyers’ into the show, that some people have suggested. The show should be as affordable as possible so as many people can visit as possible. There should also be multiple levels of sizes of stands so even someone whose made a few courier bags in their shed can attend if they so desire.

Promote Design as well as Artisanship

It’s small minded and parochial to exculde design as something that’s not valued on a small scale. In fact, if you look at the multitude of small businesses based within the cycling community, you see many companies that are design based, small, and not overly concerned about doing everything inhouse. Currently companies like this have no trade show voice, so why can’t NAHBS be that voice?

Divide and Conquer

Sure, why not have a show where there is a section for Men who live in sheds, one for Design, and one for P&A? If the Framebuilders are feeling like the show has been invaded by people who own Macs, Pfaffs, and CNC vinyl cutters, why not let them have their own corner? It would help attendees find what they’re interested in, too.

Okay, so that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. I think the main point I want to make, is that NAHBS should primarily be a counterpoint to Interbike, and it should promote small business. That’s the core problem - it’s not really about either.

Anyway, that’s about all the energy I have left for the topic, so I’m probably going to leave it at that.

Right after I have a look at this other lot of 1200 photos I missed………

Posted by warwick @ 2:22 am

28 Feb 2011

I like to think that I’m pretty big on principles. I’ve done my share of CLM’s simply because I wasn’t prepared to ’suck it up’ and be complicit when I knew something was wrong, even though I would get ahead. What can I say, it’s a burden.

One of my top items on my Shit List is Don Walker at NAHBS. It’s pretty public what I think of the way he’s run the show and how it essentially has no principles nor does it care specifically for small business or newcomers - unless it’s a feather in his ego. On the surface everything looks shiny (ha!) but it’s not especially - especially if you’re privy to the undercurrent. It’s funny how ‘the alternative’ can somehow turn out to be like like ‘the non-alternative’ except with beards and Sailor Jerry tattoos. And even more xenophobic and exclusionary.

Another ‘notch in my belt’ as it were in the ‘Wow, just how punk-rock is Thylacine Cycles!?’ crusade, has been the inclusion of Gaulzetti Cicli in NAHBS.

Now, if you don’t know who that is, don’t worry, coz neither did I really until they were Smoked Out on Velocipede Salon. (Still waiting for that phonecall, too) Nothing wrong with that, because nobody knows who I am either. Gaulzetti is run by a colourful character (whose handle is ‘the jerk’ on Velocipede Salon) called Craig Gaulzetti who is clearly an industry stalwart in the US, who just happens to have pretty much the exact same attitude and job description as myself. We both run design focused, custom bike companies, we’ve both chosen to pursue the design and CS side of things and leave the welding up to people better than us. Clearly Craig is also a firm believer in specialisation and is fully aware of that thing that happened a few years ago called ‘The Industrial Revolution’.

There’s a pearler of a quote from Craig via bikerumour.com -

“….the happiest day of Ugo and Ernesto’s lives was probably the day they had enough money to hire some guy to do the actual shit work of building the bikes….so they could focus on the design and the business.”

That’s pretty much my attitude too. It’s only people who have no idea how things are made or have never been terribly exposed to heavy machinery that have a love of it to the point of wide-eyed and dribbling mouthed idolatry. Unless your Italian, then you just love everything. However for me, I’m just not that great with my hands (although I would make a great painter apparently) and I have zero mechanical background so the actual making of bike frames doesn’t really have a gravitas for me. It’s just one piece of a much larger puzzle. Heck, I’ve had some mitred carbon tubes and a squirty pack of adhesive sitting here for 4 months that I don’t even look at.

Turns out that I’m obviously not alone in this weird limbo zone, stuck between the man in a shed, and the man in the cubicle. At least I have a man who’s online persona is named ‘the jerk’ to keep me virtual company.

Of course, the main point of difference here, is that Gaulzetti exhibited at NAHBS, but as far as I know, Thylacine is still banned on the basis of Walker’s email to me - I’ll requote in case your not familiar with his double standards:

“Once you build your frames, in house, with your hands, you’ll be welcome at NAHBS.”

Judging by the fact that Gaulzetti doesn’t make his own frames, and neither does Mickey of Spooky, and that Tom Ritchey exhibited two frames of which the actual production versions will more than likely be made in Japan like the P-Series was, I’m left wondering just how outlaw Jesse James I really am.

Answer? I’m the real deal baby!

Badder than bad, meaner than a Junkyard Dog, and - clearly - bigger than Texas.

(Sailor Jerry tattoos not included.)

(more…)

Posted by warwick @ 10:38 am

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