Ryan & Marie’s Folk Engineered got a write-up this week in The Daily Newarker.
Read about it here: http://dailynewarker.com/press/2010/03/11/custom-bicycles-handmade-in-newark/
Newarkers Attend North American Handmade Bicycle Show
March 7, 2010 – 8:06 pm
Last weekend, Ryan and I left Newark in the middle of a snow storm to attend the North American Handmade Bicycle Show in Richmond, VA. Oh my gosh! There was any kind of bike you could imagine there: steel, titanium, carbon fiber, bamboo, wood composite, road, track, mountain, off-road, city, tandem, folding, lawnmower, etc. And best of all, all the bikes were beautiful and made BY HAND! This is the first time the Handmade Bike Show has been on the East Coast. What up East Coast!?!
You can check out the Award Winners and some other News from the event at the NAHBS website. You can check out all of our pictures from the event here.
Without further adieu, pictures:
The big convention hall room filled with beautiful bikes for the Handmade Bike Show.
The cutest commuter bike by Yipsan. Won NAHBS best city bike award.
The second best city bike by Vanilla.
The most beautiful bike there by Cherubim. Stainless steel everything, a seat made of rails, silver handlebar wrap, and look at those brake levers! This bike won President's Choice.
A 24k gold plated bicycle made by Peacock Groove. Notice, the rear dropouts are cut-out like a peacock. Sweet.
Perfect paint by Llewellyn.
Perfect powder and stainless steel lugs by a new builder - Mosaic. After building frames for Dean Cycles for 6 years, the owner/builder started his own framebuilding company in July.
Pegoretti bikes not only have exceptional craftsmanship, but are also hand painted. Although the paint was applied with textures, the 24 layers of clear coat make the tubes smooth.
In my opinion, Banjo bicycles have the best head badge. They play banjos and wear tweed suits. They make kinetic sculptures (like Arthur Ganson) and all have red hair. Strange. Oh yes, and they collectively make touring and city bicycles incorporating as many mediums and techniques as possible, including wood fenders and collapsible racks.
A wonderful titanium bike with interesting aestheics: titanium etched stipes meeting painted stripes that wrap around the cable stop.
Villin Cycles plays with metal. This is an example of their hammered lugs and fluted seatstays. They also etch and bend metal parts for their bikes. It makes you wonder, "What is that?"
Vanilla Cycles shipped in many parts of their workshop and set up demonstrations of work in progress. If you were wondering, this is how you can shape lugs. Interesting...
Look at that craftsmanship! It doesn't get better than that! This is a stainless bike with silver brazed fillets. Amazing!
More amazing craftsmanship by Bilenky. I think the guy in the picture told me that he spent 100 hours on lug shaping for this bike.
This Danish framebuilder brought the bicycle down to simple physics. With this braking system, you actually pull the cable to brake, no brake lever necessary. Also, the wooden handlebar grips can be removed and replaced with various decorations. He also makes hubs with the same function so your bike components can match.
Bring it back with Dromarti leather cycling shoes to match your Brooks saddle and shellacked handlebar tape.
Wood composite bicycles with stainless, internally brazed lugs. Pretty inventive. Each bike is made of a different combination of wood to accommodate for different bodies and riding styles.
A bike from Japan. No, it does not fold. The design is solely for shocks and tiny 20" wheels.
A Brompton folding bike. Really easy to fold and unfold. All 30,000 bikes per year are made by hand by 100 builders in England. For a train commuter, this would be a great purchase for $1400.
Ted Wojciak's lawnmower bike. Newark City Parks & Grounds should upgrade.
Marty’s Rep Night
February 22, 2010 – 7:18 pm
On Tuesday, February 16, Ryan and I apprehensively attended Marty’s Rep Night. Marty’s Reliable Cycle (saving the world with bikes) is a wonderful bike shop at all three of its locations: Morristown, Randolph, and Hackettstown. If you were wondering, yes, Marty looks exactly like the cartoon on the website.
Marty’s Rep Night is a night with the “movers and shakers” of the industry. We enjoyed free Snapple, coffee, chips, and cookies while checking out the latest bicycles, components, clothing, culture, and competition for 2010. In short, it was a great way to keep up the bicycle enthusiasm until the spring.
We really did not know what to expect… we’re not that big into constant upgrades to new technologies. But it ended up being really amazing. About 50 people attended to chat with factory representatives from: Specialized, Trek, Gary Fisher, Bianchi, Bontrager, Thule, Pearl Izumi, Mavic, Park Tool, SRAM, Zipp, Bell, Topeak, Haro, Shimano, CamelBak, Wilderness Trail Bikes, Yakima, Fox Racing Shocks, Fizik, Look, Continental, Action, Profile Design, CycleOps, and Vittoria. And special guest -Keith Bontrager- was there! Surprisingly, we actually learned a lot:
- We inspected a fancy Specialized carbon fiber bike with cutouts to show how it was constructed – lots of fibrous sheets laminated with epoxy. My intuition tells me not to trust something with a 1,000-feather weight to support my 120,000-feather body. The examination proved that what you pay for a bike is inversely proportional to the weight of your bike.
- We perused hundreds of cross sections of tires – Vittoria, WTB, etc. I now know how they get all that Kevlar in there.
- There was a neat touring bike (totally forget the make). Its bolt-on couplings at the seat cluster and on the down tube allow it to split in two, fit in a box, and travel on a plane/train/automobile.
- We got to check out Shimano’s new Dura Ace Di2 electronic (cableless) shifting. Actually, it’s not quite “cableless” because you need a wire going from the battery to the shifter and derailleur. Priced at over $2500, I’m not sure the upgrade is worth it. Of course, we would have all said that regarding wireless networks during WWII.
- And we could not miss the sweet, new, and bright yellow Mavic clip-in shoes… they were really bright.
At the end of the night, we worked up the confidence (and there was no line) to talk to Keith Bontrager. As budding framebuilders, this is where the real bicycle education happened. Keith started as a physics student, then he raced and built motorcycles, then he worked at a machine shop, then he built custom bicycle frames, and now he designs components for Trek, who bought his company. His wheels were ridden by Lance Armstrong. He disclosed some framebuilding industry tricks, like pre-heating brazes and setting up machines to do your work. And, we got his autograph.
To top this fantastic evening, Ryan, who never before won a raffle before, won sunglasses! In fact, his new pair of Tifosis lost their virginity at last Sunday’s ride. In the end, Marty’s Rep Night was great, and I would recommend attending all bicycle events from this point forward because you never know what to expect.
Thanks Marty and crew!
Our autograph from Keith Bontrager!
Journey to Philip Roth’s house
February 22, 2010 – 7:20 am
Philip Roth, arguably America’s greatest living writer, grew up in the Weequahic neighborhood of Newark and wrote about it extensively in the Pulitzer Prize winning “American Pastoral”. His home at 81 Summit Street was the destination of today’s ride.
It was a gorgeous day for the eight adventurers who showed up to ride. Bright sun, light traffic and remnants of last weeks’ snowfall that, seeming out of place at forty-four degrees, were a clear reminder of February’s fickle weather. We chose this predominantly north-south ride today because it faced us into the warm sun initially and kept us, for the most part, out of brisk western winter winds.
Among the sights we took in were both sections of Weequahic Park, a general tour of the Weequahic neighborhood, Philip Roth’s house, Weequahic High School, Newark Beth Israel Hospital, beautiful old houses along 11th and Littleton and the NJ School of Dentistry.
BCBC gets statewide props
January 28, 2010 – 5:50 pm
BCBC received an excellent write-up in the most recent edition of NJ Walks and Bikes, a newsletter and website dedicated to all things bike and pedestrian in New Jersey. Compiled by the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University, NJ Walks and Bikes is distributed statewide, and read by many planning and transportation professionals.
In the article, Andy Besold gives readers a little bit of Newark’s bike history in addition to our own organizational history. Its a great read if you’re new to the group or thinking of joining. Maybe it will inspire you to come to a meeting! (See calendar for details) So, we hope you’ll take a moment to read our feature and check out the photos.
And as always, ride safe!
New Contact Info!
January 13, 2010 – 5:04 pm
You can call me whatever you want, just don’t call me late for the bike ride… or something like that. Just wanted to take a minute to let everyone know that BCBC has a new phone number!
“Why?” you ask, because even though you clearly can, not everyone is able to access the interwebs.
So get out your little black books and tell your friends. Our new number is:
(973) 937-8443
what would je(rk)sus do?
November 12, 2009 – 8:36 pm
So, as reported earlier, I bought this folding bike, and it’s 30 pounds, so pretty heavy compared to the sirrus I’m used to carrying around on one arm.
To get to my apartment, I have to climb a flight of stairs adjacent to two other apartments. Tonight one of my new neighbors (I moved recently) opened the door to let someone in from outside (not me! I swear) and saw me lugging this folded bundle of bike upstairs.
“A little cold to be riding bikes, huh?” she asks me.
I’m sort of taken aback and say, “Huh?”
“Isn’t it a little cold to be out riding bikes?”
For perspective, I’m wearing a wool coat, black tights and a knit dress. I feel like I’m dressed pretty appropriately for 49 degrees (even if it feels like 43, according to my friends at weather.com).
“… um … not really … ” wound up being my response.
Which was probably a jerk thing to say, but riding a bike to me is so second-nature, her question sounded as ridiculous as someone asking me, “Don’t you think November is a little bit cold for driving a car?” or “Isn’t fall just a little chilly to be just walking around outside with a coat on?”
I should have just said, “Oh, I ride my bike year-round, it’s a main form of transportation for me,” but I was just so stunned (and I was tired and in the middle of lugging 30 pounds of aluminum and rubber up a flight of narrow stairs and her tone just sounded so haughty) that I didn’t think to say it.
Next time I’ll be nicer. Promise.
Still, that interaction probably put the brakes (har har) on any friendship with the new neighbor. I’ll roll (ugh, allison) with it.
So now I’m about to go running. Probably too cold for that too. (And so dark!)
A little piece of Broadway
November 8, 2009 – 9:31 pm
I had a big North Newark route planned out today but spent much of my time checking out three places on just two blocks of Broadway between 2nd and Arlington.
First, the old Benefit Mutual Life Insurance Building on the corner of 2nd.
Next the Mt Pleasant Cemetery, by far the most interesting cemetery in Newark. It’s very old, historic, beautiful and well maintained, and is a perfect place for a stroll. Shown are the front gate, a large mausoluem, a cobblestone path and the Newark firemans’ graveyard.
Then right across the street is the feudal gothic style Newark Police 2nd Precinct building.
Needless to say I didn’t complete my trip but tomorrow it’s supposed to be 70º so . . . .
Mutual Benefit Bldg, Mt Pleasant Cemetary and 2nd Precinct bldg.
I Fold or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Folding Bike
November 7, 2009 – 5:54 pm
A decision several weeks in the making came to fruition today.
Last month, I decided I wanted to buy a folding bike to celebrate another marvelous year on this planet. I tried a full size dahon at our man nelson’s store, al’s cycle solutions, which was fun and I knew it would be convenient.
But then I got a little sidetracked. I fell in love … with a cannondale synapse. I felt like I was willem dafoe in spiderman, gliding purely by the power of my hands and feet.
I was siding with the road bike. I mean, this was love, right? All you need is (the bike you) love.
But love is a battlefield. I started to have doubts. I take the path every day to Newark, and I hate having to leave my current bike exposed to the elements locked up at Grove Street. Did I want to go from a specialized sirrus I’ve been beating around for three years to a fancy road bike I’ll barely let myself touch? Or a bike I love so much that I’d be pathologically nervous about someone stealing it? Or a bike I knew in my heart of hearts I couldn’t properly take care of. Women who love (bikes) too much, on the next Oprah.
And then, no joke, it came to me in a dream. I had been visiting my family in this dream, trying to get all around the baltimore/dc/annapolis/western maryland region, relying on the kindness of strangers (and their cars), and I was so frustrated that I didn’t just have a folding bike that I could tote along with me.
Reader, I bought it.
(If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with. No, but really, I love my new bike.)
After a week of waiting, it arrived today. It’s a Dahon Cadenza, 8 speed hub, 26″ tires, and a ride as smooth as an opcao custard cup.
Still. Bikes are expensive — dreaming is free … at least until my dreams drive me to eventually buy the $1,000 road bike I (not so) secretly pine for.
Just writing that made me feel like I was making my new bike a cuckold. I think there’s something wrong with me. (Okay, or maybe a lot of things.)
Biking the Baltimore-Annapolis Trail
October 30, 2009 – 7:50 pm
The leaves were at autumn peak last Sunday in Maryland so a friend and I biked 12 miles (24mi. r/t) of the Baltimore-Annapolis Trail, an old railroad right-of-way now bike trail that runs from the BWI Airport to Annapolis. It’s part of the East Coast Greenway.
It’s a beautiful trail that winds through deep woods, over streams and behind some rural residential areas. You end up just over the bridge from historic Annapolis near the Naval Academy. The path is in excellent condition, is well maintained and had very light and polite bike & pedestrian traffic. The only down side was a 15mph speed limit because your bike really wants to cruise at about 22mph.
Our total trip was 42 miles…21 miles to Annapolis, eat a sushi lunch, then 21 miles back to his place just off the Chesapeake.
Trail Info:
The trail is red on the map
