The Radavist

This year’s Chris King Open House chose 18 builders from all over the world to display their new colors for 2020: Bourbon and Violet. Thanks to ENVE, Santa Cruz Reserve, SRAM, Brooks, and Spurcycle. these bikes were built out appropriately for such a showcase. Below is a gallery of half the bunch, in alphabetical order for your enjoyment, with each builder’s description of the bikes. Make sure you comment on your favorite because there is some gold in these galleries!

For the past few years, Chris King has opened their doors to the public as part of an entire weekend of events dubbed the Chris King Open House. This event’s intent is to be coordinated with a product launch of their new colors for the year, as well as to showcase what makes their operations tick, and to display a selection of custom bikes, built by some of their best builder customers.

the two new colors for this year: matte turqoise and matte mango.

This year, they sent out an open invite to 30 of their best builder accounts, offering up discounted pricing to them to build a bike for the show, passing on the discount to their customers. Out of those 30 builders, 17 showed up, and they were displayed alongside a Pegoretti bike, which we looked at on Friday. These bikes lined the halls of the Chris King factory, where visitors could look at their features in great detail, chat with the builders about their process, and if they were so inclined, purchase their dream bike.

I was invited up to the Open House to document these bikes for the builders and for Chris King, as well as offering up an ultimate dream bike gallery for you, the readers of this website. Please enjoy! Which bike do you like the best and why? Oh and if you’re interested in one of the bikes showcased here, be sure to reach out to the builders, who are linked in the bike descriptions below.

Man! What a year for the Town Hall bikes at Grinduro. There were nine bikes from builders on display, all the result of their ideal Grinduro rigs, and many of the brands took it as an opportunity to release some balleur builds. Take for instance this Breadwinner Cycles B Road, blinged out with custom Andrew the Maker bags made from Burberry fabric.

The result is one of my favorite Breadwinners to date, especially when you look at the complete build from a distance. It has panache!

E D D Y M E R K I N!

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Follow Breadwinner Cycles on Instagram and Grinduro on Instagram.

When you’ve got a good thing going, why change it? For Saja, he loved his Breadwinner Holeshot singlespeed ‘cross bike so much that when it came to buying a hardtail mountain bike, he looked to the Portland-based framebuilders yet again. Breadwinner has two mountain models, the Goodwater and the Bad Otis, with the latter being a more trail-ready and rowdy big brother to the slimmer, while still shreddy, cross country-oriented Goodwater. The difference between the two mountain models come down to head angles and fork travel. The Goodwater touts a 140mm fork and a 67.5º head angle, which delivers a more than capable bike, suitable for our mountains here in Los Angeles.

Inspired by the BMW M Sport livery, this Breadwinner Lolo disc road bike has speed in its bloodline. As part of Breadwinner‘s limited edition runs, this bike will be offered with varying build kits and will go live next month. With these bikes, Breadwinner offers a limited edition paint job, with plenty of class and flash, all ready to roll for a quick turnaround.

White bikes really pop when shot like this and I gotta say, this one was my favorite of the day…

The Breadwinner Goodwater in Big Country
Photos and words by Gabe Tiller

Some friends and I had been scheming and dreaming up our Oregon Big Country route for an entire year, and this spring right as we were finalizing details Breadwinner Cycles launched their new Goodwater 27.5+ trail bike. I’ve known Tony since he moved to Portland from Salt Lake and watch him build bike after bike, each more lustworthy than the last. And they’ve pulled home award after award from NAHBS and the Oregon Manifest too. His meticulous craft building bicycles has become impeccably tuned, and the few times I’ve had the opportunity to ride bikes with him he’s whooped me soundly on the trail as well.

A few years ago when Surly launched their plus platform I took my first ride on the Krampus and instantly knew mountain bikes would be forever changed. Wider rims, more volume, and less pressure allowed me to clean technical lines I’d never come close to before. Rim, tire, and tubeless technology had brought high volume and large contact patches to the table without the weighing anywhere near as much as the motocross wheels they looked like. I was sold and thrashed my Krampus for a year before upgrading to a Ti Gnarvester. And now I really wanted to steal away on Tony’s fat-tired trail bike for our eight-day overland adventure through Oregon’s Big Country. Surprisingly when I asked, he agreed: “Sure, and ride it like I would—hard.”

He and Ira are often heard saying “We build the bikes we ride” and it shows in the Goodwater. Tony spends a fair amount of our rainy winter sessioning The Lumberyard and while the Goodwater is designed for an entirely different riding environment, he has maintained that nimble playfulness that make park bikes so fun. Giddily riding it home I could feel it begging to be flicked up curb banks and manualed through puddles. It’s got the shortest rear end (440mm) of any plus bikes I’ve ridden, and paired with the Fox Float 34 it cruises over rough terrain and still easily wheelies through desert stream crossings. At least the ones not filled with axle deep mud.

With internal routing, Shimano’s XTR Di2 1×11 drivetrain, Enve HV hoops, and a Thompson dropper it’s an incredibly clean build. It loaded up super well with my Porcelain Rocket Mr Fusion dropper hack, a Revelate framebag, and Limberlost’s DIY Handlebar Roll. It tackled the steep climbs and rocky descents over the Steens with ease, and the 2.8″ Schwalbe Nobby Nics held up well being pushed hard in loose corners or slogging through the Big Sand Gap on our way to Willow Hot Springs.

My only regret is that I didn’t get the chance to drop all the bags and really let this shreddy trail bike shine on some local singletrack before wearily giving Tony back his baby. I’m excited to see so many mountain bike builders embracing fatter tires, and Breadwinner is pushing the momentum of this movement with their Goodwater.

Follow along with the rest of our adventures at Limberlost.co.

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Follow Gabe and the Limberlost crew on Instagram and check out Breadwinner’s Instagram!

Breadwinner’s presence in Japan is huge. At the Gourmet Century Asuke, I saw so many Breadwinners, from the Lolo to the Holeshot, just about every group of riders sported at least one of these made in Portland frames, all built to the same general spec: Chris King everything. This one just looked so good after a morning rain that I had to shoot photos of it.

For those of you who read the CommUTAH story late last summer here on the Radavist, this is the bike that photographer James Adamson was riding, with a little bit of an update. James’ bike utilized a chainstay yoke to ensure the big, fat 27.5+ tires would fit without rub. After a bit of PR&D at the Breadwinner Cycles shop, they determined they could keep the cost down by using stock stays and still get ample clearances. After a few other geometry tweaks, and the Goodwater was ready for release at the 2016 NAHBS…