The Radavist

At the Chris King Swarm event in Bend, the brand compiled a short list of builders who would display various kinds of bikes, built up with components fabricated in their Portland facilities. We’ll start off the showcase with this beautiful Doppo All Road.

Nagoya, Japan’s Sim Works has been making moves to open a base in the USA. Located in Portland – actually in the Chris King factory – Rie Sawada has been working on increasing the stock and inventory for this brand that sells products exclusively made in Japan by Nitto, Panaracer, and Honjo, the powerhouses of Japanese component manufacturing. When it came to bikes, however, Sim Works has been sampling builders to make their Doppo model. Initially, we saw a Made in Japan Doppo touring bike a few years back, so I was surprised to see a Doppo at the event this weekend. Especially one made from aluminum and in the USA!

Oscar from Simple Bicycle Co has been building frames for over a decade and in that time, he’s moonlighted as a behind the scenes fabricator for many brands featured on this site. His talents lie in anything metallic, ranging from titanium to aluminum, and dirt jumpers to all-roads. When Cielo closed their doors last year – where he built full-time for the brand – Oscar pursued more of his own projects, including two bikes we’ll be looking at in detail here at the site.

The resulting bike features clearance for a massive tire, while maintaining a road q-factor and chain line, allowing for the rider to choose a 700c or 650b wheel. For the Swarm, Sim Works built this bike to spec with many of their own parts, resulting in a largely made in Japan kit, on a MUSA frame.

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The 2017 NAHBS coincided with the 25th anniversary of Sycip Designs. Jeremy knew he had to do something special for the showcase, so in the spirit of Sycip number one, which we saw in detail yesterday, he pinged his brother Jay Sycip, who works at Chris King, to come down to Santa Rosa and do something special…

The 70’s were the automotive paint design heyday, ATMO anyway. Earth tones and bright hues intersected along cars, vans and trucks via a network of chevrons and stripes. While many manufacturers embraced these trends, it was the niche hobby market who took it to the next level. A whole culture emerged with vans donning intricate designs, long before #VanLife, yet it was the off-road culture that has always piqued my interest, most notably the baja bugs and trucks. Jeremy from Stinner Frameworks has always had an affinity for the early 70’s Baja Bug paint designs, ultimately these became the inspiration for this two-wheeled off-road machine.

It has been scientifically proven that if you add a Death Spray Custom fork to any bike, it’s destined to get even more attention, even when it comes to a slick bike like this. Morgan’s Stinner Frameworks is brushed stainless, kitted with Jones wheels, PAUL Skewers, Chris King, Dura Ace and ENVE. A completely tricked out road bike by all accounts, yet he wanted to do something to spice up a completely mono-tone build so he contacted David at Death Spray Custom to do something special.

Visibility doesn’t have to end with your apparel, as evident by this 80’s geometric-inspired fluorescent disruptive pattern coated fork.

Suddenly this bike went from being a 10 to an 11! Nicely done fellas and great meeting you, Morgan!

“Il Faut Toujours Souffrir.”

That’s what’s painted on the top tube of Barry’s Stinner disc all-road frame. Roughly translating to “we must always suffer,” this saying acts as not only a motivation for Barry on rides, but as a reminder as to what cycling means to him in relation to life. Nothing good comes easy.

Barry‘s an illustrator, a typographer, a graphic designer and in Los Angeles, that means freelance. It takes a certain soul to be a freelancer in LA. You’ve got to hustle, be on your game at all times and yes, sometimes suffer the ups and downs of the creative economy. That means some weeks, months, years, you’re on your game and others you’re not. It all takes sacrifice.

The allure of the eBay score is strong, especially after so many Landsharks have been recently featured here on the site. Such temptation was too great for Andre. After looking on eBay for a few months, he finally scored this Road Shark with Shimano 600 for $400. It came as shown, minus some dry-rotted tires and no saddle, which were easily replaced. It’s in ok overall condition, just don’t look too closely at the bar tape!

The future of this bike is uncertain. There’s been talk of long-reach calipers, 650b conversion with porteur bars, or a modern 10-speed group, and my vote goes to keeping it as-is, just overhaul the damn thing a bit. For now, Slawta’s crazy personal touches shine regardless as to how much patina is present. My favorite detail is the chomping shark mouth on the internal cable routing exit…

One part inspired by the band Electric Wizard and six parts inspired by Erik’s Di2 Alfine 11 Peacock-Nuke AWOL.

While this customer may not be heading off to Europe to participate in The Transcontinental anytime soon, he is riding this thing through the urban jungle we call Los Angeles and participating in daily jaunts through the Santa Monica Mountains.

The new Soma Wolverine was our canvas and the picture which we would paint took longer than some of the most famous oil paintings. Most of the components were no-brainers. While questions like whether to use a belt or chain took a bit longer.

I hope you guys enjoy looking at this bike as much as we liked building it!

p.s. The Soma Wolverine was also reviewed in the latest issue of Bicycle Quarterly. So if you’d like to know more about the performance of this bike, I’d suggest heading to your local bike shop and picking up issue No. 51 of BQ.

For Alchemy Bicycles developing a new frame takes time. With a busy production schedule, an in-house paint department and juggling the day to day operations, there isn’t much time for R&D. So you can imagine how long this bike has been in the works. As their first carbon MTB frame, the Oros translates to mountain in Greek. Naming it was easy, developing it was not. The Denver based brand had to completely rethink construction.

Because Alchemy is using a unique tube-to-tube technique, they’re able to visualize the frame as a whole, while engineering and developing each section of the frame individually. The stays are shaped and continue to flow with the top tube, ending in a beefy head tube. While I can’t go into to much detail about their technology, I am eager to take it for a spin. Moves like this aren’t easy for small frame builders, but it’s evident this bike has a promising future ahead of it.

Fit with Shimano’s Di2 XTR, Fox suspension, ENVE carbon and Maxxis tires, this bike is a trail ready machine. While I don’t have a scale, the Oros feels well balanced and yeah, pretty damn light. The geometry is still in the prototyping phase, so we’ll omit those details. Once the Oros is ready for production, I’ll post updates. For now, see it in person at NAHBS, booth 501.

Golden Saddle Rides: Sam Potts Modern Classic Road
Photos and words by Kyle Kelley

There seems to be small resurgence in frame building here in Los Angeles. GSC has been working with a few builders first hand and I’d guess there are even more working with other shops around the city. It’d be interesting to see how many people are actually building bikes in and around Los Angeles at the moment.

Golden Saddle Rides: Haunted Hollows Stinner Off-Roadie
Photos and words by Kyle Kelley

I guess this bike would be a little more Halloweeny if it was black and orange, but what the HELL, it’s not!

Stinner Frameworks provided the skeleton, and we installed the costume.

Matt, the owner of this bike knew exactly what he wanted. A no nonsense road bike that could take large enough tires to really get dirty. The Velo Orange Grand Cru brakes are what made his decision to go standard caliber, over a cantilever or Mini-Moto style brake. Besides the Chris King bits, the bike is outfitted with a full Ultegra kit. The ENVE bar and seatpost are keeping Matt comfy on long dirty rides. Be it road or dirt the bike is always outfitted with some skin walls, duh.

It’s been a while since I’ve shot a bike from Mark Majaco‘s shop here in Austin. Four years if I count correctly. In that time, we’ve both finely tuned our art. Well, I can speak for Mark anyway. This True Temper road bike is heading to the Philly Bike Expo and is a prime example of what Mark describes as a straight-forward, fillet brazed road frameset.

Built, painted and assembled in Austin, TX, these frames run under $2,000. Paired with Ultegra and you’ve got one solid machine…

Last year was a bad year for Jon from Skratch Labs. Not related to the company, which grew exponentially since the last year’s Tour of California. No, 2013 was a bad year for Jon personally.

First, he and his wife were in the Boston Marathon bombing, then he got hit by a car in July coming down Boulder canyon, leaving his MCL torn and surgeries followed, unable to ride for a while. Two life-threatening events that gave him some perspective.

As a “life reward”, post-accident, Jon contacted Kevin at Mosaic to build a custom titanium RT-1 road with ENVE and Ultegra Di2. The inverted 2013 serves as a reminder and motivator to Jon as he pedals his way into recovery.

Right now, this bike is setup to accomodate his injuries. The saddle is slightly tilted back and the steerer remains uncut, to make the riding position a little more upright. Jon’s intentions are to slowly progress back to his normal riding position, but with all things, it will take time.

Time that Jon’s more than happy to spend riding this machine, like to the top of Rock Store during the final stage of the Amgen Tour of California, where I had, literally 5 minutes to shoot this bike!

I wish the best to Jon, his family and Skratch in 2014. Thanks to Mosaic for being so kind to him as well. See you guys in Boulder!

The late 80’s and early 90’s saw a lot of serious shred sleds, many of which have become icons in the vintage MTB world. This is one of those icons, the early 90’s Colnago Master. These bikes were the epitome of Italian design and fabrication, notoriously behind the times when it came to tech – hence the chainstay mounted rear u-brake, but made with the same precision as their road-equivalence.

Using Columbus Gilco tubing and an arabesque seat tube cluster, the Masters are still some of the most iconic MTBs, over 20 years later.

The owner, Ray bought it off eBay, as is – sans the Campy QR, grips, pedals and computer. It’s immaculate and the details are just so wild, right down to the Shimano XT drivetrain, which is arguably better than the Italian counterpart… When I saw it atop of his caravan at the ATOC, I politely asked if I could photograph it.