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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Odds and Endos

Who was it that called a section Odds and Endos? Was it the original BMX Action? I think it was, but I'm too lazy to walk 20 feet to my box of old BMX mags and check. Good name, though. And in BMX, even those who learn their history are eager to repeat it.

Take Subrosa. Despite the fact that they've only been around for—well, not very long—they posted something rather interesting under History 101 (August 29th): what appears to be a prototype bashguard frame:



I e-mailed Subrosa and have yet to hear back. It's probably just another hoax, who knows? But still, the image triggered something in my leaky memory. And a quick Google search revealed this:


Hm. Subrosa straight-up copied Bully's bashguard design. Hopefully that's all they borrowed from Bully, seeing that they had a nasty habit of breaking at the downtube/headtube junction the second the warranty expired. (Although, come to think of it, some new Marc McKee graphics would do Subrosa good.)

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Quick! Who makes this bike?


If you said "Deluxe," you'd be wrong. They're not offering complete bikes...yet.

Nope, this is a United (link here), just with the model name more prominent than the brand name. Which wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that the model name is also a brand name. Ah, confusion at its finest.

(What makes it even funnier is that it comes with a straight cable and a front dirt tire, and is thus something of a trail bike, while Deluxe is a trails-only company. Coincidence?)

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Mirraco is not content to sit idly by while other companies put out countless disgusting-looking seats. Although they chose to use earth tones instead of letting Rainbow Brite shit on them, they're still pretty fugly.


Available soon at Banana Republic right next to the khakis. Love the utterly superfluous stitching. Jay Miron must be laughing all the way to the bank.

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The best under-a-minute BMX video posted on the web this week, or possibly ever? That's easy. Paul Buchanan's T1 Props commercial from 1999:



How many 10-year-old edits stand up today? Feeble to sprocket is so freaking good. Hm, maybe that explains the Subrosa frame.

(For the record, Taj's blog in general should be required reading. 2010 Giant prototypes? Of course, Brooklyn Machine Works already does an elevated drivetrain, but not on a BMX bike.)

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Pollcraft

Just from checking BMXfeed compulsively on an hourly basis (more often than it gets updated, I think), I've noticed there have been quite a few polls in BMX lately. Profile asked what limited color you all want to see next—personally, I couldn't decide between "waiting room beige" and "vulva pink"—and Orchid posted a bingo-card like offering of former models and (gulp) colorways for potential re-issue in recognition of their fifth anniversary:


My reaction to that one was swift: Orchid has been around for five years?

Polls have been part of BMX forever, of course—from reader polls to NORA Cup voting. I think I may have even voted for Greg Hill and Mike Dominguez once. And if I didn't, I definitely meant to. This recent rash of polling made me think: why don't more companies look for direct input? Instead of telling us what we want, why don't they ask us? I've come up with poll suggestions for a variety of companies. Some are too late, but others could still do some good.


• EASTERN: What part of our frames should we cut full of holes next?

a) Downtube
b) Toptube
c) Seatstays
d) Whatever Kyle Busch thinks is best

• S&M: Should we destroy the 21" Stricker by lowering the toptube and eliminating the anchor brace?

a) Yes
b) No

Additional question: What country's flag should we wrap around our stems next?

a) Canada
b) France
c) China
d) Angola

• Odyssey/G-Sport: What part should George French entirely re-imagine?

a) Headset
b) Handlebars
c) Grips
d) Bolt-on framestanding platforms

• Fly: Should we keep re-inventing the bottom bracket?

a) Yes
b) No
c) Dude

• Terrible One: Should we manufacture the Barcode overseas?

a) Yes
b) No
c) You still make the Barcode?

• Primo: Which rider should we kick off the team next?

a) Tony Neyer
b) Josh Stricker
c) E-Man
d) Someone who isn't even on the team yet

Additional question: Do you think Josh Stricker would ever run plastic pedals?

a) Hahaha
b) No, seriously, hahaha

• Giant: 我們為什麼要作出為BMX自行車?

a) 為愛
b) 為錢
c) 為犬

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Great song whether you know where it's from or not.

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?

Little Things

• Animal is releasing a butted version of their Light pegs (Lighters?), which shaves 0.7 ounces per peg. It'll also mean they'll wear out faster, but hey, that's your problem. When companies like Animal are starting to put weight first, the Apocalypse must be right around the corner. I've actually been thinking about throwing on four OG pegs in defiance. (Oh noes, then my bike might weigh all of 27 pounds!)

Also, didn't MacNeil make butted steel pegs years ago and call them "Park Pegs"? With Animal making butted pegs and Kink making aluminum ones, I'm not entirely sure what's going on. Vic Ayala and Troy McMurray need to come back and start a parts company with Sean Burns and call it FUCK YOU.


• Apparently the new S&M Dirt Bike, which I've written about twice already, will retail for $370. While that's $30 cheaper than the flagship LTF (and the Fit S3.5), it's still more expensive than the Sunday Second Wave or the FBM Maneater. Which is a bit of a disappointment. I thought the new Dirt Bike would fill the low-budget void left by frames like the Standard Cashius, the FBM Outsider, and yes, the original Dirt Bike. Although I suppose I should have known different when I saw "SuperTherm" and "five pounds". It's a bit like Honda producing a new $40,000 two-seater and calling it the CRX (which wouldn't surprise me either, actually). Unconfirmed word is that the Dirt Bike will replace the Black Bike in the S&M lineup, which means it's more of a name change than anything. Oh well, some things are just too good to be true.

(Then again, given the horrorshow that is the US economy, it's amazing that BMX frame prices have stayed the same for so damn long. I just picked up a 2001 Dan's catalog that was next to my couch—don't ask—and an S&M Call Girl frame was $370 way back then. How much was gas in 2001? Then again, the Dirt Bike Classic was $200.)

• I only became recently aware of the ever-sinking toptube of the Terrible One Barcode (which, by the way, is also cheaper than the Dirt Bike). Tragic. Jack! Rose! If only weight could have been trimmed in a different manner—say, by decreasing the diameter of said toptube. Or not worrying about weight at all. Which manufacturer will be so bold as to no longer list frame weight? (I'd also entirely forgotten that Taj was riding for Giant until I saw this bike check. I know it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but it's still sort of like Fugazi signing with Universal.)

• This has been bothering me for a while: Spanish or Mid, people. Pick one. Is it really necessary to maintain two near-identical, yet incompatible, bottom bracket standards? If one is truly superior, pick that one. And if it doesn't matter, flip a coin.

• Stop the madness! WWJSD?