The Radavist

Today was the Cub House’s third annual bike show and swap. While we’ll look at the show itself tomorrow, I couldn’t wait to share the winning bike from the show, this Medici-built Carnevale Road bike. Now, with all bikes like this, there is a backstory. Ralph Carnevale was a major dealer of Medici Bicycles in Southern California in the 70’s and 80’s. His shop sold so many Medici bikes that the Masi-spinoff builder made a whole line of Carnevale Bicycles for Ralph.

While Black Friday follows a holiday meant to celebrate the togetherness of friends and family, we oftentimes get swept up in consumerism. Hey, it happens. Deals here, deals there. Lines, lines, lines! The whole ordeal can really taint an otherwise pleasant weekend. Don’t even get me started on Thanksgiving in itself. (You should read the history behind what this holiday was founded on, written by the Manataka American Indian Council.) Now, I’m not writing this piece to get into the complicated history of Indigenous Lands and religious zealots’ squandering of natural resources. I actually like what this time of year embodies but I approach the subject with great care. No matter how you look at it, we are all on Native Lands.

Over the past few months, the Cub House has been host to a number of pop-up shops inside its San Marino space. There’s a 10’x10′ room which happens to make for a perfect space for brands to display their product. This round, Sean, Danny, and Carla reached out to Japan’s Sim Works to open a “Konbini ” – Japanese slang, shortened from convenience store – filled with Sim Works, their outdoor brand, RAL, as well as Japanese snacks and trinkets. In the Cub House fashion, the team decided to make a big deal about it, throwing a group ride, and pinging Mick from 100 Tacos to cater the event.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area, be sure to swing through the Cub House to see the Sim Works Konbini  Store!

The Cub House
2510 Mission St
San Marino, CA 91108

“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.” – Jack Kerouac, On the Road

We all have our favorite authors, our favorite books, and our favorite quotes. Many of these anecdotes for travel or life’s great lessons can be applied to cycling. For Mason, he was drawn to the writing of Jack Kerouac. Particularly, On the Road. This quote became his mantra for his new Stinner Gibraltar road bike. Mason selected one of Stinner’s “Vault” paint options, Paradise, and requested the Team Dream Team Chubby Bobcat to be added to the wild paint scheme. This little detail, along with his Kerouac quote really brought the whole build together. Not to mention the SRAM Red eTap, Boyd Wheels and Quarq power meter cranks. The whole package was assembled by Simon at the Cub House.

Straight up road bikes still do it for me, especially when they’re this clean, this light and this local. I love seeing all the Stinners on the roads of Los Angeles, both paved and unpaved.

Enjoy this bike, Mason!

After a successful soft opening, the team at the Cub House felt it was time to officially open their new San Marino location with a party. A party along with a swap meet and crowd-judged bicycle show. With their new location comes, even more, space and on a beautiful fall day, this event brought crowds of people from collectors to sellers, to buyers and riders, with their family and friends, drawing a large crowd to this sleepy little town outside of South Pasadena. It was the perfect way to waste away a Saturday! Enjoy this rather hefty gallery on your Monday morning.

The Cub House
2510 Mission St
San Marino, CA 91108

I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with these photos after processing them last night, post-party. Then I realized something: this was such an undertaking for Sean and the whole team at the Cub House. When they first opened their small shop in South Pasadena, they had no idea how long it’d be up. The landlords told Sean they wanted to demolish the building, giving him 6 months in a tentative rental lease. It felt like they had only been open for a few months when they received their 30-day notice to vacate the premises, sending Sean on the look-out for a new space.

That’s when the old nursery in San Marino popped onto Sean’s radar. It was a huge space, but needed lots of work. I can’t emphasize that enough. It smelled of fertilizer and mildew, with all kinds of issues to fix, yet in a few months time, everyone at the Cub House turned it into a massive, open-air retail space, with lots of character and even more product lining the walls.

Last night was the soft opening, filled with food, drinks, and two DJs welcoming cyclists from all over LA county to visit their new space. This is meant to be a short introduction to the new Cub House. There will be much more to come, once the space’s buildout is finalized.

Til then, go by and see for yourself.

The Cub House
2510 Mission St
San Marino, CA 91108

A few months back, the guys at Team Dream Team came up with the idea of doing a bicycle show during their next swap meet. The call went out to all of Los Angeles for cyclists to bring in their best bicycle for display. Coinciding with a swap meet, people would be able to haggle for new parts, BBQ, and ogle the many noble steeds that would parade their way to South Pasadena for the show.

On Saturday, the event went down, bringing in some serious beauts. Including, but not limited to Tinker Juarez’s old Klein, a resurrected De Rosa Joe Bell restoration, a 1993 Chris Carmichael Motorola Merckx TT bike from the Tour, road bikes, all-road bikes, vintage road and kooky, one-of-a-kind show stoppers.

Many thanks to the folks at the Cub House for throwing this shindig and to everyone who made it happen!