“That bike will be chopped up and buried with me someday!”

Last week we looked inside Santa Fe’s Mellow Velo, a shop with a unique business model, and today we’re featuring David, the owner’s Vicious Cycles singlespeed MTB which he’s converted into a ’round town bike.

David has a special relationship with Carl Schlemowitz, the owner of Vicious. You might even call them good friends. He knew Carl from when he lived in New York and has a ‘grip’ of bikes from Carl down in the Mellow Velo archives. It’s not often that you see a Vicious in the Western United States, so I was surprised to find a basement full of them when I first toured Mellow Velo back in December of last year.

What I love about bikes like this is the wear and tear. The faded anodizing, the vintage components, and the practical permutation of what would be considered a rather uncomfortable XC race fit from the 90’s. For being such a simple frame, there are so many banger details, like those bullet-capped chainstays! What really trips me out is that we’re still building up bikes that look almost identical to this today, with many of the same manufacturer’s components. Long live the era of the maker!