Day 2 at NAHBS was a blast, there were 5 times as many people at the show and the streets around the convention center were littered with as many awesome bikes as were held inside the showroom. Early in the day it was so crowded it was hard to even walk around let alone grab pictures so I waited till the end of the day to grab some shots of some of the real stand out bikes I missed yesterday.
This Peacock Groove 29er was catching everyone’s attention with it’s 24K Gold plating. Not only that but it also has a carved out seat tube to really jam the rear tire in to keep this 29ers wheelbase less than than a 26″ mountain bike.
And obviously it is all in the details.
Moots had this killer Snow Bike that I can’t even imagine how fun it would be to ride around an arctic tundra, or maybe Boston right after a blizzard.
Villin had me coming back to their booth over and over because their bikes were really that nice. This one in particular was made using hand made steel pieces. Just beautiful.
Detail of the hand crafted steel, looks kind of like a topographical map.
Of course I spent some time hanging out with my good friend Jeremy Dunn, former Cambridge Bicycle Employee, now of Embrocation Cycling Journal and Rapha Fame. Both booths looked fantastic!
And here he is pointing out one of his favorite embrocations.
Independent Fabrications, had an amazing booth set up and their bikes were so nice that I saw another bike builder who copied their lug design, I am not about to name names, but you know who you are. Imitation is the highest form of flattery and if you are going to imitate someone , IF is a good choice.
Here is Marty hammin it up in the Geekhouse Booth wearing his super geeky Spock outfit.
Well that is it from me for now, I have a lot of driving ahead of me, but will hopefully have more for you when I make it back to Boston! If you ever have the chance to make it to NAHBS I highly recommend it, it is a fun and inexpensive way to learn a ton about the bike industry from the people who are actually getting their hands dirty.
As I have been talking about, almost non stop recently, Geekhouse built me a custom frame. Marty and I have been working on this for over 3 months now and I am just counting the days until I can actually ride it. It all started when I stopped over to Geekhouse to order up a frame for the shop and I ran my idea for a frame past Marty. Surprisingly Marty said, yeah we can do that. So the concept for my personal Geekhouse was born, and sadly the Geekhouse for the shop was placed on the backburner. It was only a week or so later when Marty asked me how I would feel about my bike being placed in the NAHBS, to which I replied, that is a capital idea. One of the best things about having your bike in the Handmade bicycle show is that people take amazing photos of it, and the great people at Urban Velo took a lot of nice photos of mine, so here they are. Look forward to a more detailed write up when we get back to Boston as well as an interview with Marty himself. I also want to send out a big thanks to Tom Estrada, our mechanic at Superb, for hand building the American Classic wheelset at the 11th hour!
I finally made it down south for the second half of day 1 of the North American Handmade Bicycle Show. We hit some pretty crazy snow/rain/wind on the way down, but apparently made it through before it got really bad. We lost about a half hour due to the weather but the Geekhouse bus mobile lost over 2 hours. That aside it was a pretty easy trip. My road trip tip number one: download a mp3 book for the journey. On this trip we are listening to Jules Verne’s “The Mysterious Island” and other than the fact that we are on chapter 20 and this Island is yet to be very mysterious, it is quite an interesting read (or listen), especially if you like entire chapters dedicated to how to make nitroglycerin. But I digress, I was talking about NAHBS right? The show is amazing, the amount of talent jammed into one room is almost too much to take in. It is very easy to be overwhelmed with all the amazing bikes on display and all the best builders just hanging out ready to chat it up. Well lets get to the photos, that is what you wanted to see anyway right?
First up from Boston, one of Mike Flanigan’s Bikes from ANT. His stuff was looking really good, I am gonna try to get more shots tomorrow, his booth was busy, but I did notice he had custom Pedal’s with “ANT” cut out of them
Chris Igleheart also of Boston, had a nice selection including this very nice, stainless 29er MTB frame. If you look closely you can see the stainless caps on the top of the fork legs. We have some Igleheart track/singlespeed frames in the shop, priced significantly under the price of a full custom, stop by and check them out!
Ian of Icarus was around, mainly at the geekhouse booth, but making trips back to the bike check room to show off his new bike. This seattubeless pursuit bike was downright amazing and I could easily say it was way nicer than a lot of the bikes actually in the show room.
Speaking of the geekhouse booth, here it is. My new bike is sitting pretty in the middle (more on that later) with Matt’s Cross bike to the right and Bianca’s Touring bike to the left. The bikes were getting a lot of attention, I hope you are ready for the increase in sales Marty!
Better shot of Bianca Touring Bike. This bike will be touring the US in a matter of months, follow Bianca and Greg’s Journey HERE
A collection of Lugs from the Richard Sachs booth, his bikes look the same as they always do (that’s a good thing).
I was really into all of the Villin Bikes. The lug work and paint job on every single one was amazing.
This Yipsan was nice, I am a sucker for internal cable routing.
Vanilla’s Bikes were nice as usual, and their booth was at least 4 times bigger than the others. They really took the presentation to the next level.
This Cherubim was insane, all the way to the saddle custom made from two steel rails. I’m not sure how comfortable that would be though.
I spotted these 1 finger leather gloves at the CCP booth, they were quite interesting, would anybody wear these?
Well I am heading back to the show for day 2, hopefully grabbing more photos and meeting more people.
I am currently on my way south for this years NAHBS in Richmond Virginia. If you would like to follow along with the Superb exploits, make sure you are following the Superb Twitter. I will be updating the twitter feed with tons of great stuff from the show as well as whatever other awesome stuff is going on. I will try to keep the blog up to date as well, but it will obviously be lagging behind the twitter.
We just got in some long awaited goodness. The IRD Cranks are absolutely beautiful and won’t set you back too much ($160).
The 26″ front Mag wheels aren’t light but they more than make up for it in the strength department so if you are looking for a beefy front wheel for tricks or whatever, this is the ticket. It has sealed cartridge bearings and track nuts and is only 120 bones.
