Thursday, August 14, 2008

Unshaven

First things first: a correction.

(Not sure about you, but I hate that newspapers and magazines hide their corrections way at the bottom of a page. I'm gonna buck the trend—and this one wasn't even my fault!)

Turns out the new Simple frame I talked about on Monday won't have a shaved headtube after all. I got an e-mail from Jimmy Röstlund at Simple/Eject that cleared things up:

I saw a short little note on about Simple going into production with the "shaved" headtube thing. I know that Sidewall posted that on their news page, but it's a miscommunication and I have taken the appropriate action to get that corrected.

We did do prototypes with that style headtube, but we decided to go with a normal style headtube after testing. If you look at the photos that were posted of the frame you can clearly see that it's the same headtube as we've previously released. I've attached a photo that shows the headtube more.



Thanks, Jimmy. I'll be curious to see whether Sunday goes forward with it.

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Heat-treated. Colorways. "Super Bake." What could I possibly be talking about? Frames? Bars? Nope—try stem bolts. Hollow, powdercoated stem bolts. They're the 21st century equivalent of dice valve caps.

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If you're like, a downhill/freeride/urban MTB type or a fixed-gear freestyler, now there's a stem to go with all your pink Chris King stuff. Pretty and strong indeed. It's Hollywood Mike Miranda!

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I meant to link to this earlier—Brian Tunney recently posted an interview he did with Joe Rich about the future of Terrible One. Seems like some production will be shifting to Taiwan. Makes sense to me. Knowing the little that I do know about frame production and profit margins, it's hard to believe any company can survive selling US-made frames that aren't produced in-house. BMX frame retail prices haven't increased appreciably in the past decade, while the costs of everything—from raw materials to transportation—have increased a great deal. Factor in that the framebuilders and company owners (not to mention sponsored riders and other employees) probably like eating a couple times a week and living under roofs with luxuries like electricity and hot water, and either prices need to go up or costs need to go down. Probably both.

(I wanted to sprinkle some quotes in here, but assblasters isn't loading for me right now. Shame.)

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Went and saw The Dark Knight in Imax last night. Not bad, although they could have easily cut 10 (or maybe even 20) minutes without doing any damage to the main storyline. And while Heath Ledger was really good, I feel like his portrayal of the Joker wouldn't be getting this much attention if he was still alive.

Anyway, did this remind anyone else of something like this? Flat black and fat tires, woo hoo.

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Easy one?


19 comments:

Anonymous said...

the song is from a joe tiseo part after his death i think i saw it on props issue 50,great rider! r.i.p.

Anonymous said...

well joe tiseo was a great rider but that's not the song i thought,although i have seen the video part with that song but...

Anonymous said...

Props on your correction, there is nothing wrong with being wrong but there’s loads wrong when it’s not righted. Here in the merry old land of Oz the state funded broadcaster has a policy of allocating a percentage of time to a correction based on the time of the original article, on that basses you have gone above and beyond. And this is why I not only keep coming back but actually look forward to your updates, ethics and satire, there is no better combination.

Anonymous said...

got it! bob scerbo, s&m video please kill me

Stephen said...

Road Fools 12 is how I prefer to think of Bob.

Van, why? Why?

Anonymous said...

http://forum.pijin.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=94

Anonymous said...

Scerbos part in S&M please kill me. Songs so chill.

G.S.GUCCILIFE said...

Ok now,i wanna go all out,and publicly call T.F.A about the Van Homan ad.Todd,tell me/us...how you gonna fix the mispelling on that ad?They got FUCHSIA spelled wrong!!!God,gonna email Morales,and ask for a free stem now...

Anonymous said...

they've already gotten an e-mail from me, haha. and the funny thing is that our web site is absolutely lousy with typos and errors. i personally don't write the product description and when i mentioned it once to the one in charge he pointed out that no one has ever called us out on even one misspelling. i never thought being dumb would amount to street cred.

Russ said...

Spelling is for suckers.

G.S.GUCCILIFE said...

Yeah dude,typos are the new brakeless....

Anonymous said...

Bobbay!

nickdawg said...

Am I going to be the only guy commenting about the recent rim craze? Well Ill tell you this much if you go to interbike or your in the BIZ Loop the taiwan catalog for rims is looking quite decent this past few months and they have some kooky and not so kooky stuff in production... If you can meet the minimum orders they are worth the trouble of putting your logo on them :) haha true shit mayn.

Anonymous said...

Bob Scerbo-S&M Please Kill Me..., i'm late

Boston George said...

death metal batman

Anonymous said...

Sunday will go a head with shaved head tube, G's very keen on it.

Loop said...

What's the story on the shaved headtube? I seem to have missed a memo.

Also, if anyone everyone comes across a way to see one of these fabled 'Taiwanese Catalogues' post it up.

Anonymous said...

riding and music go together so well on that section.

scerbo rules.

bk said...

the shaved headube just eliminates more metal. the bearing sits on the machined headtube and is partially exposed.

www.bicyclesb2b.com is the TBG link, but it wasn't working for me.