In the next installment of a four-part series, our European correspondent Petor Georgallou joins Significant Other Bikes of Denver, Colorado. Petor recently took a gonzo-style roadtrip through North America to visit four framebuilders who have been awarded SRAM’s Inclusivity Scholarship to attend Bespoked in Dresden, Germany, on October 18–20. Take a peek behind the bikes made by Ashley King at Significant Other…

“It might be more convenient to park in the back. You can pull up next to the suspicious-looking Honda Fit; it’s mine.”

All American cars are suspicious. Why are they so big? The context of a Dodge Charger is very different in the UK. While most cars in the UK are like a 1.9 turbo diesel and get 65mpg, the Dodge Charger is a ridiculous 4-door muscle car with a 392 Hemi V8, which weighs a lot and makes a lot of noise relative to the car’s actual performance. It’s absurd and flamboyant by British standards. We hadn’t realized its context in the US was as a police car, and the one we’d rented was white like a police car, which in hindsight may have influenced other road users driving around us.

The all-plastic interior is spacious and the seats are comfortable and supportive, but most of all, when in Rome… rent a Charger, chow down on jerky, and drink a liter can of iced tea with 120% of an adult’s RDA of sugar in the form of high fructose corn syrup. There are few things less suspicious than a tall, lean, tattooed German, high on sugar and novelty, grinning ear to ear, accelerating and braking without modulation, blasting Shoki as loud as the stereo goes, with a weirdo in a fishing hat hanging out of the window, precariously wielding a Super-8 camera. We parked next to the sensible Honda Fit and went in through the back door.

Ashley King’s shop is relatively compact (even by British standards) and lives in the back room of paint shop Flux Customs. It’s fitted out in the shape of a U that wraps around a tiny enclosed welding room, with one prong full of media blasters and paint stuff. The other prong is home to a pristine Bridgeport mill with a flag that reads No Step on Snek on the wall above it. Through the double doors hangs a mixed rack of bikes, some of which are customers’ bikes built under the name Significant Other, and beyond that, two paint booths and an office.

Significant Other, as a brand, has only been around for a little over a year, so I’d come with the expectation of seeing a new builder’s work, but on the rack staring back at me was a Pinion/Gates-equipped double top tube titanium gravel bike, welded to a standard that the majority of builders will never reach.

The more I looked at it, the more details I noticed: the super-discreet routing, how the top tubes had multiple compound bends and ran continuously from the headtube to the rear dropouts, and a little cat stretching to bridge the twin top tubes, brushed to a satin finish to contrast the neat media-blasted panel beneath. I was sure, based on the skill on display, that this was a second career for owner, operator, fabricator, and mechanic Ashley King. The build turned me basic, and all I could do was ask all the basic questions journalists ask, because I couldn’t believe this bike had been made by someone who’d only been building for a year or two.

Petor: I literally can’t believe you’ve only been building for a year. Do you have a background as a welding engineer or something? Look at the state of this thing! How did you start doing this?

Ashley: My background is in making things. For most of my twenties, I was designing and making hydroponic systems for public schools in New York. I was working in the nonprofit world, which ultimately wasn’t for me. It took me, like, 10 years to figure that one out. Essentially, I was just burnt out on the whole thing, and I took some time – I started racing track and messengering and trying to figure out what to do next, and that brought me to Colorado right before the pandemic. I was staying with my uncle, and he sat me down one day to ask me what my plan was. I didn’t have one, so he was brainstorming with me, and he’s the one who said, well, you have this background in making things, and you clearly love bikes – can you make bikes?

It was this huge eureka moment. I signed up for a course at UBI and flew out and took their steel TIG course, just to kinda get a taste, and see if I did actually enjoy it. And spoiler alert: I did. I loved it. I came back and landed an internship with a bike manufacturer right before the pandemic hit. And then bikes went crazy – everyone wanted a bike. You couldn’t get bikes from the larger companies. There was this huge custom boom. I got a lot of experience very quickly, which showed me pretty full-on what it was all about. I loved it. I loved every second of it, and here I am, almost five years later, still working at it!

Okay! It would be really scary if you’d just started out and you were making that level of work right out of the gate. How long have you been here building as Significant Other?

I started Sig O almost 2 years ago, but I was still working full-time for another frame manufacturer up until the end of this past May. So what is that – five months ago now?

So you must have welded a lot of frames. What stopped you from doing this until now?

It was just me wanting to take the time to learn and understand what I was doing before I felt comfortable showing it as something someone else could buy. I wanted to feel confident in being able to stand behind my work and the things I was creating, and that just took time. I wanted to learn the mechanics, and I also just needed to find my confidence in what I was doing.

We hung around the shop for a day, poking around, filming, and chatting about bikes and the state of the world. We met Chris from Flux Customs briefly as he sauntered past in a fabulous dancing/painting outfit, and then as he was leaving did the thing where you talk for a long time at the threshold, in neither in nor out limbo. It would be rude, foolish, and basically depraved to visit Golden, Colorado, a mile above sea level, in the foothills of the Rockies, and basically in the shadow of the famous WRX Rally hill climb, Pikes Peak, without going mountain biking at least a little bit.

Neither Ashley nor Chris needed much convincing, so we had chaperones, and Ashley’s partner Miles had access to some test ride bikes for us. I’d been specifically not cycling for a while since injuring my back a few weeks before, but I figured some fast, flowy trails without any drop-offs or features would be fine. I’d swallow my pride and ride an e-bike. If nothing else, it would be beneficial to our health and morale after the relentless and dehumanizing airports and flights to get out in the mountains and see why so many incredible builders live in Colorado.

The next day we arrived, characteristically late, in our kind of dorky rental police car. Ashley and Chris were waiting, loaner bikes unloaded. Bennet jumped on his and wheelied off down the road, grinning. He’d asked me a kind of ambiguous series of questions the night before that in my jet-lagged haze, I’d not tallied with having anything to do with the loaner bike.

He asked me things like my height and weight, but not what size frame I ride. With the data I’d volunteered, Miles, Ashley’s partner, had set up the suspension for me with care, knowing that I had a bad back, Unfortunately, Bennet had asked for a medium frame for me, which fitted kind of like clown bike, which distracted me from the fact that the rear suspension was locked out for like half the ride, which made the little bike feel even twitchier.

I’d half expected, despite that to maybe be enlightened and change my mind on electric mountain bikes, but even with my injury I longed for a normal (better fitting) bike without the ultra-stiff frame concealing a heavy battery, and the somewhat unpredictable torque of the motor kicking in. In spite of the pain and the twitchy little motorbike it was among the nicest trails I’ve ever ridden until just over halfway, I bent over to pick up a tiny filter for the camera and suddenly re-injured my back. Something about being in a lot of pain, and perhaps the altitude, made the rest of the day feel like a dream.

 

I caught up with Ashley a few weeks later on the phone to fill in the blanks…

I was super bummed out to have not enjoyed the ride properly. I may never be in Colorado again. I guess that riding is the reason to be there.

When I moved out to Colorado, I had gone mountain biking a handful of times. Then someone took me out to Buff Creek, and I was just like, oh, this is mountain biking. Like, wow – this is so amazing. Honestly, 75% of the reason why I moved out to Denver was because it was equidistant to these two velodromes, the one up in Erie and then the one down in Colorado Springs.

Then Erie announced that they were shutting down because of funding and financial issues, and then a few months later, the pandemic shut everything down anyway. So I was kind of, I don’t wanna say forced to like a new style of riding, but it was kinda like my main impetus to coming out here disappeared. I love bikes, so I was riding what I had: city streets, climbing meandering gravel roads, and then mountain bikes. Mountain bikes are a lot of fun. They were and they are a new challenge, and I love feeling challenged and learning and experiencing new things. I’m learning things all the time whenever I take my bike out.

Living in Colorado and being a builder, how do you ever work with riding like that on your doorstep?

I really like welding. Like, honestly, welding is probably one of my favorite activities. Welding is 100% my favorite part of making bikes. It’s just me, my pulser, and the frame. It’s very meditative and centering and calming. It’s just an extension of myself and I’m just kinda vibing and hanging with myself and feeling good and creating something hopefully cool that someone will like, that I will like. It’s a kind of flow state I never had experienced off of the bike. Like, I never found that in my profession before. You don’t find your flow state in putting together Bespoked?

I’m super dyslexic, so ending emails and organizing things is like the opposite of my skillset. Making Bespoked happen is rewarding because it’s super valuable for so many people, but the day-to-day is definitely not flow state. How did you become Significant Other?

Starting out in the industry, I didn’t feel like I belonged. I didn’t feel like anyone wanted me doing what I was doing, which fed into the whole confidence thing and not knowing if I was doing a good job or whatever. I felt very other. Then one day I woke up and I was like, there are a lot of different people in the world and that’s kind of awesome. Like, it’s kinda cool we’re not all the same. There is value and significance in the fact that I am different from most of the people that I work with or meet in the industry. So I wanted my brand to reflect that, and that’s where the name came from. Significant Other. Of course, it has other meanings that pertain to me and my experience – my bike has been with me through everything, all the moves, the job changes, all that stuff, and I think will be with me ‘til the end of it all. Bikes are my significant other. I’m not the only one in that. Other people feel the same way too. So just showing that and sharing that with others who might feel the same way.

Looking at what you make, which is insane, it’s really hard to believe you’d have a hard time as a welder in the cycling industry. Like, if what you’re making isn’t successful, I’m almost scared to ask what success would look like. What did you struggle with in the beginning?

I thought no one would hire me because I was so terrible, but then I went on a few interviews and kinda talked with some people and learned quite quickly that I had a lot of experience, which was kinda weird to hear. I guess a lot of the cycling industry is pretty transient, and the production side is no different.

Do you think exhibiting at shows helped?

I hate that I needed that validation from outside myself, but I really did! It made a huge difference. I was like, I guess maybe I have something to say that people are interested in. That’s super cool. I think there’s no worse feeling than having something to share and having no one be receptive, and having no one care, because life is all about connecting with people. Once I felt that, I was like, I want to do more of this. I just had no confidence… and then I did.

I love your head tube badge and the downtube logo. The head tube badge is like an agave with an eye?

There are just so many phallic references in the cycling industry, or dude-bro things. My partner Miles is from El Paso, and I love the desert. I love desert riding, and I love riding down there with him. He’s also a graphic designer, and I wanted to involve him in this whole creation. So I asked him to work on my logo, and it went through many iterations. Finally, we came up with this and I thought it was perfect.

Cool. What are you bringing to Bespoked?

Oh, it’s an all-road bike with a little bit of an apocalyptic flair. I’m calling it the Furiosa Road, or something like that. Maybe not. But that was the inspiration. I needed inspiration, and that’s what I came up with.

Like Dangerholm!

Yeah. Miles actually sent that to me, like, a week ago. First of all, it’s cool we’re on the same wavelength. Second of all, that sucks, because everyone’s gonna think that I copied him.

How far from the actual apocalypse do you think we are? I’m planning Bespoked, but at the same time it doesn’t feel real, like it’s a contingency plan in case the apocalypse doesn’t happen before then. Do you think we’ll make it to Halloween?

I’m surprised every day that society has made it one more day. So, no, I don’t think we’ll make it to Halloween. And if we do, I’ll be very surprised. I learned a few months ago how many satellites Elon Musk owns in space, and how easily he could just, like, take over communications if he wanted to. That’s scary. War is scary. Nuclear capabilities, climate change, just like it’s a whole brewing mess of disaster.

Half the time I feel like I should become a prepper and dig a bunker or something, but then being logical, it seems like a lot of effort and stress to die in a cave of exposure to nuclear fallout after 6 months of toil and cancer. It’s probably better just to accept it when it comes and know it was all pointless but I could have done it worse.

We might as well spend our time doing things we wanna be doing and being nice to people. That’s how I deal with it. I’ve got what I’ve got, and I’m just gonna make a happy little life if I can. I’m gonna try not to make other people’s lives any more difficult than they already are, and I’ll try not to make too much garbage. You gotta get out into the mountains more. Go on more cycling tours.

Words to live by. Stay tuned to The Radavist for our Bespoked coverage, where you’ll see new work from Significant Other and other skilled framebuilders, including fellow recipients of the SRAM Inclusivity Scholarship.