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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Viva Las Vegas

Can I just say I found it quite funny that, in the first segment of the first day of Interbike videos on RIDE, the first product introduced was a fixed gear complete? Apparently Subrosa will be joining Volume and FBM in the fixed gear market. Which is all well and good, 'cause company owners gotta eat, and one would presume the margins are better on big-wheeled bikes. That said, the first product shown? Come on.



What else did we learn from the first-day videos? (Hopefully I'll get photos of some of this stuff for tomorrow—at which point I'll be happy to discuss it all further):

• Fit is making plastic pedals.
• They're also giving Dakota Roche a signature frame (which makes...six signature frames? Seven including the Lurch?)
  
• Sunday will be offering a cruiser frame and fork. (They're not alone—WTP and Subrosa already had cruisers in their respective lines, and Macneil will be offering a rather lovely complete 26" looptail cruiser straight out of 1981.)
  
• Sunday has also added a trails frame, which will be waveless and feature "normal" 5mm dropouts. If it's lighter, I guarantee people will be riding it as a street frame.
  
• Aside from the fixed gear, Subrosa will be offering a Kryptonite-esque chain lock. Oh yeah, they'll also be making some BMX bikes and stuff.
• The 2-Hip Anniversary Pork is just plain crazy (and Ron uses all-caps more than I do, damn). I'm not quite sure who's going to buy it.
• Although I guess retro is in, as Subrosa is doing that bashguard bike as well as a mag-wheeled 20", Haro is offering an update of the original '82 Freestyler, and Sunday's Second Wave colors are based on bikes from Haro's '87 line.

Lots of colors now, too. Almost too many. In fact, it reminds me of the days immediately before the dark days, when damn near every mailorder part listing was followed by the cryptic notation "R-B-Y-BK-W-O-L-GR-GY-BB." (That specific string was for Tuff Wheels in July 1987, by the way.)

Anyways, there will be much more tomorrow. I'm not sure whether I'd be way more on top of things if I was there or not. Maybe the exact opposite.

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I'm kind of hoping someone spots a worse complete than this, but at the same time I'm not sure whether I could handle it. Meet the Bully Impulse:


I mean, seriously, why even bother? Other than the tiny gearing and the small dropouts, this thing looks like a time traveller from 1998. It's even got the chainstay dimple for a 44-tooth sprocket (and what looks like a 65-degree headtube). I almost wish I had a kid so I could not buy him this.

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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.

Rock Solid

After yesterday's swiss-cheesed abominations, there must be balance. Something a bit more...Solid?


Spent part of yesterday traipsing through the backwaters of the BMX internets, guided by the invaluable BMXfeed.com. And after watching Alistair Whitton backflip a motorcycle and spending a few valiant minutes attempting to find the photos of Aaron Ross's new frame on Sunday (they're right here), I realized I hadn't checked the Solid site in a while. And in fact, I hadn't heard much about them at all lately except for the re-release of the OG stem.

I was not disappointed. The new news was somewhat limited—there's a 4.65 pound AAv.2 frame in the works (with 'classic Solid geometry,' whatever that is), and a new set of cranks that apparently will be called "Bitch Cranks" (wonder what Dan's will call them?), but probably won't come with a 1" spindle. Shame.

No, in this case it's the old stuff that I was excited about. There's nothing better than a company's sale page of outdated frames and parts—if you don't mind running a regular headset and American BB, the 6.1-pound Killing Machine (still available in all sizes!) is a pretty good deal for $100. And where else can you find four different versions of a three-pound fork? Those and the Iron Cross Bars will probably still be a tough sell, though, whatever the price.

(It does appear that, after long last, Dan's sold off their last remaining Solid Duke. They had one listed on their "Scratch and Dent" page forever at an utterly ridiculous $240 or so. On second thought, they probably just gave up and turned it into a bootleg Barcode.)

P.S. In the recent four-piece roundup, I forgot the ones that Standard was making for Drew York (although they're not in production...yet), as well as the updated WTP Everlites. Can't hate on the Everlites, although they were cooler when they had a v-crossbar.

P.P.S. Apparently Kink's Chris Doyle has also joined the chrome bike revolution.

P.P.P.S. I was gonna make fun of this today—something along the lines of less riding, more reading—but decided against it. Or did I? By the way, there's only room for one Mad Dog in BMX. OK, maybe two.

Port of Austin

I was really psyched a couple of years ago when Sunday came out with the Vinnie Sammon frame. Not just because I'd known Vinnie for a long time, and he deserved a frame as much as anyone, but because Sunday chose to go a different route than most companies—while Vinnie's frame had a signature paint job and sticker set, underneath it was just another Sunday Wave.

When word came out that Sunday was doing another signature frame, this time for the everfluorescent Aaron Ross, I figured it would be more of the same, only brighter. But the spy photo posted on Sunday (check out the stamped caps!) and the fact that the frame is in for "testing" makes me wonder:


What could be changed for the better? It always seemed ridiculous to me that, in the interest of having multiple 'signature' frames, companies would offer a line of four or five "different" frames that differed so slightly that you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. Hell, the welders could probably barely tell the difference. And if one frame wound up being more popular than another, well, there went the profits. Sunday, I thought, they had it right. It was like skateboarding. Just change the graphics, keep the basic product the same.

Then they released the Ian frame, with the built-in post, and OK, I sort of understood that. If you were just going to run your seat slammed anyway, there was no need for a separate post and clamp. I guess. And the rest of the geometry was the same, so it was more or less still just a Sunday—kind of like the signature T1 Barcodes from a ways back (there's still a new 21" Garrett under my bed).

But this, I'm not sure. What could they change? I'm pretty sure Ross's FBMs were 74.5 degrees with conventional rear end lengths and whatnot. Maybe a lower toptube? GPS? Built-in ice-cream scoop?

Let the rampant speculation begin!

EDIT: Added the second photo. Apparently the frame will be called the "Funday", which is totally awesome.