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.

• 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!

For more information or to preregister, email:

brickcitybikecollective@gmail.com

We grabbed our tandem (purchased off Craigslist for $35 and fixed up complete with a sparkly “Just Married” sign), about 20 friends and family grabbed their bicycles, and the photographer hopped in front of the tricycle. We all met outside 407 Mulberry at 4pm. The ride departed at 4:30pm, heading across McCarter Highway and into the Ironbound. After a quick stop at the Murphy’s Varnish Building (a gorgeous yet contaminated building that is being torn down), we headed around the lot with the chickens (show chickens and roosters) and down Ferry Street (where it smelled of bbq-ed meat). We continued under Penn Station (ring ring ring) and rounded the corner of Market and Broad up towards Washington Park. Then past the cute abandon of Halsey Street and turned right up Hill Street. We should have been forewarned that Hill Street is named thus for a reason – as this is where the tandem’s chain could not hold both a bride and groom. Stopped in front of the beautiful Kruger-Scott mansion (the man who built it built one of Newark’s velodromes!) on MLK Boulevard with chain snapped in half, we decided to half-roll/half-hitch a ride home. Thanks Mike Christoff for the ride on the trike!

Overall, a super fun ride with lots of bell ringing and celebration. Lots of people on the streets and in cars turning their heads wondering “What is going on?” then cheering when they found out. No flat tires, a broken chain (luckily, close to home), and, after nap time, an after-party. Why is it that bicycle rides are so great for celebrating?

The mapped route can be found here.