Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

Let's run through some Interbike photos, shall we? Thanks again to Jacob for sending them—his comments will appear first in quotes.


1. Kink Pivotal posts.


Here we have Kink's two varieties of seatpost—slammable, and absolutely have to be slammed. I'm sure that extra inch of aluminum is all that's keeping you from triple whips. (More importantly, note the seatpost clamps in the background. Keep hope alive!)



2. Kink ceramic headset.


Ceramic bearings are all the rage in road and mountain (and industrial applications, I'm sure). They're smoother, faster, and—of course—more expensive. This Kink version is supposed to retail for somewhere in the neighborhood of $100. Let's hope they remembered to make them correctly this time. Think this is a case of killing a fly with a grenade—does anyone's headset not spin smoothly enough? Will this help someone pull a sextuple whip or 37 barspins? Is it worth spending quadruple what a "regular" headset costs? Let me think...no.


3. KHE Centaur bar/stem combo.



Uh, the handlebar is actually a three-piece bar? Color me frightened.


“At first glance this you would think this would be a seat post clamp. but you would be wrong. It's the clamp inside the one piece bar and stem combo. Looks like a seat post clamp from 10 years ago.”

Yes it does. Words cannot express my disappointment.


4. KHE freecoaster.




"Coaster hub that you can adjust with only a allen key through the middle of the axle, allowing you to adjust on the fly for how much play you want without have take anything off the bike. Pretty sweet, but I dont ride a freecoaster hub.”

Neither do I, but having dealt with a Geisha Street for a while (two washers or three?), I can see where this would be a desireable development. Look for every other freecoaster maker out there to quickly license it if it works.


5. T-1 Cyclops stem.


Ain't gonna lie, I'm pretty happy to see an honest-to-God new T1 product. And I can appreciate stems with no bolts on the back, but a traditional four-bolt cap. Not really psyched on split caps, but oh well. At least it's not carved up all to hell and back.


6. Sunday Model D


I was going to call this Sunday's long-awaited trails frame, but I'm not sure whether people were really waiting for them. I know it has "normal" 5mm dropouts and a regular non-wave downtube. I do not know whether it has longer stays. The graphics are pretty rad, though. And you can't go wrong with olive and silver. Please make padsets.


7. Odyssey sidehack


I never understood sidehacks, even in the BMX Action days. Cool-looking bike, though. Are those...Cyclecraft bars?


8. Fly grips...er, grip?

Interesting. One grip that you can cut yourself to custom lengths. Or, if you ride a fixed with drops, buy two and cut the flanges off. I'm sure there are other uses for it, too, but this isn't that kind of website.



9. 2-Hip Groove...whatever.


“quite possibly the worst eye sore at interbike... I cant really say much more...”

And I already said enough.



10. Fit forks.

“kind of hard to see but the forks get crazy tapered down near the drop outs. dakota has been riding them and that have held up. hmmmm.”

They were displayed on the Dakota Roche frame, which I don't know anything about except that it has gussets on the top and bottom at the headtube. I'd like to see the Dakota, Eddie and DeHart frames side-by-side.


11. DK Random Wrench V2


“spoke wrench built into the top, sleeker one-peice design. with a little socket nub on the side. much nicer looking. not a bike part but something to make fixing it much easier.”

I've never had a Random Wrench—if I was carrying a camera bag anyway I didn't mind loading individual tools—but it makes sense, at least. Seems inevitable that I'll wind up with one.


12. Premium 3.3 pound frame


“sooo you make a 3.3 lbs frame and you build it up and bolt it to a stand, yet have no stand- alone frame to pick up... premium you are intelligent! so the tubes are double butted and drawn in a special way. then heat treated for 3.5 times longer than normal frames. haro guy said it would shatter before it bent... so you have that to look forward to!”

I'm not sure whether I need to add anything to that, other than the low standover is disgusting and the "Strawberry" toptube integrated seatclamp may be worse.


13. Stolen Pivotal post.


“more plastic! excuse me thermalite...”

I'm genuinely torn. On the one hand, if you're going to just slam your post anyway, there's no reason it shouldn't be made of plastic or wood or cardboard or whatever. On the other hand, is it really necessary? I vote HELL no. How heavy can one of those stubby little aluminum bits be? Now, if it was a plastique post, that would be a different story. I could get behind that.


14. Haro Freestyler


My friend Ian sent me this one. While the double top tube and graphics look spot-on, and the black mags are appropriate enough, I always hate the generic three-piece cranks and padded seats that appear on these throwback bikes. Not to mention the pseudo Gower Power sprocket and all-black tires. Bikes like this just end up looking like a mish-mash of styles from different eras and aren't particularly good for anything, except preying on the nostalgia-blinded. Why not do it right?

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Future Shock

Not sure whether you heard, but Eurobike or whatever the heck it's called happened recently. New products galore. Basically it's kind of like Interbike, just with more Europeans. Or, given the weakness of the dollar, maybe just fewer Americans. Certainly fewer Wayne Newtons.

Anyway, you can check out a bunch of product photos here (via Pijin) and read about them if you sprechen Deutsch. If you don't feel like clicking, here's a few highlights with my usual kneejerk (emphasis on jerk) opinions:


1. KHE Astral hubs.



We're just getting closer and closer to BMX parts being sold in baggies and priced by the gram, aren't we? I can't believe I ridiculed Alienation for listing their stuff by "street value." It's really happening! Anyway, another "you can only lace it the way we want you to" straight-pull front hub, and a bizarre Frankenstein cassette that looks like it should have rough stitches separating the left side from the right. I assume 452 grams is light for a pair of hubs—I'm glad I don't know how light. (Also, either that front hub has a REALLY long axle, or it's just happy to see me.)



2. Éclat brake


I don't know about the brake, but that scale is freaking awesome. You can weigh your coke on it, then cut and snort it right off the same surface! A mirrored scale! Man, I really want one. It's gotta be Japanese, right? Only they would come up with something so cool. Or Swiss. Maybe it's Swiss. Wait, what were we talking about?


3. Illegal BB

Let's face it—if you don't have a super-trick, machined-out tube spacer in your bottom bracket, you should probably just sell your bike and take up knitting. Then again, who's gonna buy a bike that doesn't have a super-trick, machined-out tube spacer in the bottom bracket? Man, you're fucked.



4. KHE Hindenburg Titanium cranks


I realize that KHE's cranks have been named Hindenburgs for a long time. That said, naming a super-expensive, super-lightweight part after an airship that blew up spectacularly (killing 36 people in the process) seems like it's inviting, um, disaster. I can't wait until they release the super-slim Auschwitz Bars.



5. KHE Spectre


One-piece bar/stem combo? Check.
One piece seat/post? Check.
Folding tires? Check.
Titanium cranks? Check.
Plastic BB "bearings"? Check.
Super low-slung frame? Check.
$2,242 price tag?* Check.

Wow, where do I sign up?

*By today's exchange rate.



5. NC-17 magnesium pedals.


Come on you fuckin' jerks, you couldn't get 'em down to 290 even? Seriously? Couldn't you take out four pins, or shave the ends down a little bit more? What the fuck is wrong with you fucks? Were you even trying? We're NC-fuckin'-17, not PG-13. You're all fuckin' pathetic and you're all fuckin' fired.

Oh wait, there was a fly on the scale. Good job everyone!



6. Wellgo plastic pedals


Light, cheap, good-looking. Pick two. The first two. (Incidentally, putting a plastic pedal on a scale seems particularly stupid. I mean, it's a plastic pedal. Unless the spindle is made out of lead, how heavy can a plastic pedal be?) Don't they look like the same shitty plastic pedals that have come on $120 completes since the beginning of time. Well, since the '80s at least.

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Friday Quiz

I've never been happier to post a quiz, mainly because it gets that Odyssey slideshow thing off of my mission statement. The nerve! I suppose if I were more web-savvy, I could have found a way to run it smaller. Then again, if I were truly more web savvy, I wouldn't be using a stock Blogspot template to begin with. OK, that's enough use of the word 'savvy' for one day, I think. On with the show.




1. Yarr mateys, this be the new KHE Astern freecoaster:

Kudos for the nautical-themed name (I need to run one on me Black Pearl), but boo for coming up with a name that can be easily confused with the name of another bike company. What were the other names KHE considered?

a) Unday

b) It

c) Acneil

d) Utiny

e) BM



2. Standard's prototype topload stem has the top bearing cover for the headset built right in. With an internal headset and a fork with a built-in race, all you need is bearings.

What sort of problems does this present?

a) You can't run that cool carbon topcap.

b) You can't run your stem inverted.

c) You can't run 17 spacers with your Sky Highs.

d) All of the above.





3. This is the Primo 330 Pivotal seatpost.

Why would you ever want such a long post?

a) To use as a weapon when cornered.

b) You can keep your weed in it.

c) As a reinforcement for Grim Reapered seattubes.

d) To raise the seat on your Killorado to the height of a regular slammed seat.

e) Haha, there's no way that's a real product.





4. What is this?

a) One of those things they bolt into your bones if you break one really badly.

b) A septum piercing.

c) The newest Skull Candy headphones.

d) Blue.

e) I have no idea.




5. Remember when the Fit Edwin was the only frame you could buy stock with no 990 mounts? Now seemingly every company offers a brakeless complete (with CPSC-mandated caliper brake)—even MirraTrek is joining in for '09 with one of their own.
Who makes the above bit of instant street cred?

a) Verde

b) Kink

c) FBM

d) Fit

e) We The People





BONUS QUESTION: Who's better at t-shirt design?

a) Me.



b) Primo
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How the hell is it the end of summer already?

Over My Head

I spotted this Harry Main KHE complete on the Pijin blog last night, then traced the image URL (wow, am I interwebz savvy) to this Nike 6.0 "insider" blog post. Not sure where the 3.1 pound frame weight came from, unless Mark spoke to someone directly, because I couldn't find much about the bike on the horrifically designed KHE website (would a news link up top be too much to ask?). Harry does mention it in his Ride UK 20 questions interview, but only that the complete is going to weigh under 21 pounds (and that his first riding memory is from 2002—ouch). Anyway, yeah, photo:

Harry's a 17-year old, and this bike looks like is was designed for one. Light, bright, steep, low-slung, with big bars (I presume they're KHE's Centaur bar/stem combo), the new one-piece seat/post (the pedal looks almost bigger than the seat) and, of course, KHE tires. Basically it's every current trend in one easy-to-buy package that you should be able to find at Tailwhips 'R' Us. Blech.

I know the kid can do 720s and 900s and stuff (only because I looked at the 6.0 and KHE sites, since before last night I'd never even heard of him), but I still find it funny that a 17-year-old is getting a signature complete. Wouldn't it be best to wait just in case he decides to quit riding and take up autocrossing or Wii golf or heavy drinking? He is really good for being 17, though—does young Harry have a lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead?

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Simple is putting out a production frame with that shaved-headtube thing that Sunday's been testing on prototypes. Hmm.

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Gonna do something new for a while. Every day I'm going to post one Youtube video of a video/live performance of a song that was used in a BMX video. Guess which video (and which rider's part) and you win the right to be proud of yourself for the day.

Some will be easy, some won't be. We'll start with...well, you tell me.

Hollow Pointless

Have you ever had a chain snap on you? It's not fun. Usually it happens when you're really stepping into it, which makes the results that much worse. Knee to the stem, thigh to the crossbar, usually you go over the bars. If you're lucky, you land on your hands instead of your head. If you're not lucky, it happens when you're trying to sprint through a busy intersection and you get run over by a bus. Either way, it's not much fun. But hey, chains break. It happens.

That said, isn't the chain the last thing you'd want to lighten up on purpose? There was a time not so long ago when BMX chains were judged the same way hip-hop chains were: Heavier was better. There was the KMC 415h (or Kink chain) and the massive Sharp 420—which was better suited for a motorcycle or a garage door opener. Had things continued in that direction, we'd all be riding chains that look something like this (minus the feet):


They didn't continue like that, of course. Gearing dropped, so you didn't need to worry about your 45 bashing into everything anymore. And with chainrings out of harm's way, chains were free to get lighter. People went with traditional KMCs, like 410s, 510s and 710s. But that wasn't good enough. Oh no. Road chains had long used drilled-out pins and hollow plates. Izumi made a hollow-plate BMX/track chain back in the day. Why not do the same with new BMX chains? So KMC introduced the 710sl:


It came in at 365 grams as compared to 420 (!!!) grams for the regular 710 (according to Fat). Not much of a difference—less than two ounces. Of course it comes with enough links to run 48/16, so the weight difference is presumably less if you're running 28/10 or lower. And it, um, looks cool.

There are differences between road and BMX, however. Small as BMX drivetrains are, the chains still take hits every once in a while. And running it on a eight-, nine- or 10-tooth driver places a lot of stress on the chain, even if it doesn't have drilled-out plates and hollow pins. KMC can give you numbers for "pin power" and "breakload" all they want, but those don't take into account bashing a drilled-out link on a rail or ledge and then cranking full-out towards something else.

Look, I appreciate that plenty of people run drilled-out chains, and a majority of them are still very much alive. But of all the things to drill out, the part on your bike that arguably takes the most stress? What's next? Steerer tubes? Pedal spindles? Heck, even the Grim Reaper makes more sense to me than this. There are certain things I'd rather not see drilled out. Chains. Stem bolts. Forks. Anything that, if it snaps, will probably send me to the hospital or the dentist. And even barring injury, I'm not a big fan of liamfahyhamptoning around. So I like my chains like I like my teeth and my Alaskan wildlife preserves—undrilled.

(Of course, seeing that half-link chains have seemed to have more problems with snapping than regular chains, there's no way anyone would come out with a drilled-out halflink chain. Well, no one except KHE. Lovely.)





P.S. Sean Burns only rides Wipperman chains. Their 1G8 is apparently the strongest chain on the market, according to—um, them. This video has nothing to do with chains, but a minute of Sean Burns never hurt anybody. Well, except him.

Gotta Know When To Fold 'Em

When KHE introduced their folding freestyle tires, I thought they were stupid.



Yes, folding tires with Kevlar beads have been made for road and mountain bikes for years. (As usual, BMX is only a decade or so behind the times.) All sorts of pros run them with minimal problems.

Yes, it's an easy and relatively cheap way to save a fairly substantial amount of weight—rotating weight, even!

But, as stated here on several occasions, I'm not particularly enamored with KHE and their BMX "innovations." (Remember the proprietary Coke-can headtube internal detanglers?) The idea of buying a lighter—and more expensive—tire that would no doubt wear down faster just to save a couple of ounces wasn't really appealing. Not to mention the whole folding thing was entirely inconsequential unless one was embarking on a long road trip or planning on mailing them to people. Who carries extra tires on a regular riding day? There was no way this whole expensive folding tire thing was going to catch on in BMX.

As usual, I was wrong. Laughably so.

They sold like crazy to the gram-conscious (and bike-check obsessed) crowd, and now there are no shortage of companies making (read: putting their logo and tread pattern on) folding tires—Fit, Fly, Animal, We The People, even Revenge Industries. (I envision Sean McKinney unravelling stolen bulletproof vests to harvest the Kevlar for them.) The Kevlar beads alone, according to the late, great Sheldon Brown, save roughly 50 grams—two ounces—per tire. Of course he was talking about road and mountain tires, which are larger in diameter. So lets say it's more like three ounces per pair. That's not too shabby. For example, it's more than you'll save by going from a steel to ti rear axle (according to the Profile website, their solid chromoly 14mm rear axle weighs 8.1 ounces, while a ti one weighs 5.3 ounces).




But according to the ever-reliable Dan's Comp website, the weight savings are actually more substantial than that. A regular old 2.1 Animal GLH tire weighs in at 26.9 ounces, while the identical size GLH Type R is 21.2 ounces. That's 5.7 ounces per tire, almost 3/4 pound for the pair. A 20x2.15 KHE "Park" tire saves you even more weight—it's only 13.4 ounces, four ounces lighter than their "Street" tire. A pair of the big "Park" tires weighs less than a single 20x2.1 GLH. Absurd.

So there's obviously more to this than just Kevlar beads. Thinner sidewalls, lighter casing, different rubber compounds, less rubber overall, crystal meth. BMX tires went straight Star Jones. What's not to like?

Well, how about flats? I hate 'em. Used to hate 'em so much that I would run an old tire with the bead cut off inside another tire. The upside was that you could run over Kerry King and not get a flat. The downside was that my wheels weighed about as much as the ones on a Harley-Davidson. Not that anyone was overly concerned with that sort of thing. Obviously priorities have changed. And while many of the folding tires also offer sturdier lightweight casing to reduce flats, that's not going to help much if you run over an industrial staple. Or, for that matter, if you let your PSI get too low. Folding tires aren't like Primo Walls, which you could safely run down to approximately eight psi. If you're going to go the folding route, invest in a decent floor pump. You'll need to keep that pressure up.

(By the way, if you couldn't tell, I absolutely love the pillbug product shots that accompany all the folding tire announcements and advertisements. "Our tires roll up 4.6 percent tighter than the competitors!" "Our tires can be shot out of a cannon!")

Price is still a bit of a deterrent as well. Sure, folding tires are only $15 or so more per tire than their conventional brethren. But if you go through tires in a hurry, that adds up quick. The cost per ounce saved will only go up over time. It's up to you to decide whether it's really worth it. If you primarily ride smooth indoor parks, folding tires make perfect sense. If you primarily ride glass-strewn city streets, maybe they're not such a great idea.

As of now, at least you still have a choice. Folding tires haven't totally supplanted "normal" tires. If you want a $35 lightweight tire that can be sent to you in an envelope, you can get those. If you want a $17 unfoldable tire with steel beads and enough tread to endure a summer's worth of skids, you can get those, too. (And you can also get a $22 tire that falls somewhere in the middle—non-folding, but lighter than a "conventional" tire.) If you want to pick your tire by weight, you can do that (if so, I recommend you also pick up one of these). If you want to go by price, that's fine, too. Which means the tire market is healthier than the frame market—imagine if you could still choose between, say, a Tierra and an Angel of Death. Choice, in this case, appears to be a good thing.

But I can also still think that folding tires in BMX—at least in their current incarnation—are more trouble than they're worth for the average rider. Like too many things these days, folding tires are great if you're a sponsored pro who gets them by the case. Not so much if you have to dip into the rent money every time you need a new one.

Turning Titanium Into Garbage

I would love to hear a rational explanation for these pegs.

Let me see if I have this right: KHE (who, in case you forgot, are also in the process of bringing us the one-piece bar/stem combo and the baseball seat) developed a plastic/fiberglass peg called the Alchemy. Relatively cheap, apparently slid on everything. Yet somehow they decided that the plastic compound wasn't durable enough for street riding, so they made a titanium-sleeved "street" version.

This is odd because no one even makes titanium pegs anymore. Odyssey, Macneil and DK all discontinued theirs. Heck, you can't even find ti sprockets or bolt kits anymore. Remember RNC? Titanium is prohibitively expensive, grinds slowly, and wears down quickly on rough surfaces. What's next? Gold- and platinum-sleeved versions? Ones with $20 bills glued to them? Apparently there will be a steel version, which actually DOES make a fair amount of sense if you want light, inexpensive pegs that still feel 'normal'. But the ti version just seems like an awful waste of money and material. Is there a titanium glut in Germany that I'm not aware of? Is this what we're doing with the remaining F117s?

It would make more sense to me if they made a titanium-cored peg with a replaceable composite outer sleeve (kind of like this but different). That way you ruin the cheap part.

UNIfied Theory

In the beginning, there was the Uni Seat. And it was awful. Part of it was that it looked like a mutant duck, part of it was that most bikes were way too short and required layback seatposts, and part of it was that you needed a shim to run one in pretty much any frame.

But most of all they just sucked. A plastic seat bonded to a fiberglass post, the Uni setup was considerably lighter than the usual '80s seat/post combo (which normally included heavy steel guts), but hardly anyone ran Uni Seats. Not even many big-name pros used them. It wasn't worth running something disgusting looking just to save a few measly ounces.

Perhaps the following photos will better explain:


So of course now that LITEWAIT is the be all and end all, style be damned, companies are falling over themselves to bring this atrocity back from the dead. Never mind the fact that the Macneil Pivotal design is both light AND adjustable (and you can choose from 4,892 different seats), the good ol' BMX industry is once again providing a solution to a non-existent problem. Different seat angles? Who needs them?


First off we have an offering from Eclat, the new, pretentiously named parts division of We The People. (The name has an accent mark on it, but I couldn't be bothered.) If you look online, you can find an equally pretentious 70-page 'book' that shows their whole line of entirely unnecessary and derivative (but oh-so-refined) products.

Among them is the seat below, a one-piece molded horror that Charles and Ray Eames wouldn't piss on if it were on fire. I'd actually prefer to see kids running the newest FBM innovation than this lame excuse for a seat. This seat is like a cosmetic artificial limb—it makes everything look right, sort of, but it's no replacement for the real thing.




This next fine piece of bike-related sculpture comes from Fly, who have given us such fantastic items as delicate $100 Ruben pedals and 2.5 piece cranks that—surprise!—became three on a regular basis. Note the cover, which makes it LOOK like a 'regular' seat/post combo, but—surprise!—it isn't. This is like a cosmetic limb with nail polish and a wedding ring.




This last new creation comes courtesy of KHE, who apparently are trying to develop a one-piece bicycle. That way, when you snap an axle or a pedal spindle, you can throw the whole thing out and buy a new one.

These are probably the worst of the bunch. For starters, they look like beanbag chairs you'd buy for a five-year-old. (Baseball stitching? Seriously?) And they're actually a two-piece design just stuck together. Allegedly the seat and post combined will cost the same as a seat alone, but we'll wait and see on that. And I'm curious to know how much less it weighs than a stump Pivotal post with a lightweight seat. I'm also curious as to how strong the bond is—will it hold together when you dump the bike? (When you inevitably break/bend it, you get to throw out the seat AND the post.) Not to mention it's obvious that NONE of these combos are made for those of us who like to run their seats high enough to, you know, sit down. But hey, there I go being practical again.



P.S. Of course, if you really want, you can always track down the (updated) original. Twice as light and four times as disgusting. At least you can run it high.

Supersize Me.

Combos. The simultaneous sale of multiple items which enables the seller to make them available as a group at a cheaper price than they would be individually. This is a good thing, yes?

Not necessarily.

Today, let us address the KHE Centaur bar/stem combo:


The concept is simple enough, I suppose—it's basically a set of Macneil Silencer XLTs welded to an Odyssey Elementary. (Of course you couldn't actually weld those two together since the Elementary is all aluminum except for the bolt, but I digress). First, let's review the positives:

• Cheaper
• Lighter
• You can chrome the WHOLE THING!

That's about it. And that's not bad, really. (I'm assuming the combo will cost less than your average lightweight bar/stem, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of $130.) Because usually you only get cheap AND light at the cost of strength, and in this case—well, you probably get those two at the cost of strength. Which brings us to the negatives:

• No adjustability

This causes two problems, actually. Let us, for the moment, disregard the fact that people normally run their bars at many, many different angles, even if they appear the same. One could get used to a few degrees difference quite easily. That said, there is a big difference between, say, straight up-and-down and even with the fork rake. So one would think they'd have to make at least two variations to account for that. Then if you want to have versions with different sweep or height or width (cutting down butted bars that have holes drilled in the grip area doesn't seem like such a great idea), you're getting into an awful lot of variables.

Then there's the second problem, which is this: When you have steel bars bolted into an aluminum stem, and you crash/land hard enough, they shift. It's happened to everyone, I'm sure. This won't happen when your bars are welded to your stem. One of two things WILL happen, though. They'll either bend, or break. Add in the huge amount of leverage you get with tall/wide bars, and the fact that these are butted AND have holes drilled in them, and—well, I wouldn't run them unless I had health insurance.

Which brings us to the second point.

• More expensive

I realize this directly counters one of the positives, but bear with me. The bar/stem combo may very well be cheaper initially, but it'll cost you in the end. Look at those bars again. Wide, drilled out. Quite light, I'm sure. Now think about bailing and watching your bike bounce away. Where does it hit? The tires, the seat...and the end of the bars. Which in this case are built like crumple zones in a car, and will probably work in much the same way. One hard hit and they're done for. Which is fine—bent bars have been an issue since the first days of BMX—until you realize that when that happens with the Centaur, you have to replace your bars AND your stem. All of a sudden the whole package deal doesn't seem like such a great idea, does it? Like many of today's products, fine for a team rider who gets them free, not so much so for someone who has to pay for everything.

And then there's my final point:


Yes, a company called Vector did a bar/stem combo back in the '80s. The one shown is a Bob Haro signature version that was quite popular with, um, Bob Haro. Can't say I really remember anyone running them back in the '80s. And I can't help but think the KHEs will have the same fate—seen more on "vintage" builds in 2040 than on bikes that are actually ridden.