The Radavist

When in Berlin, photograph German frame builders, right? Troica Cycles is a Berlin-based builder, specializing in tig-welded, steel cyclocross and road bikes. While their website’s offerings look beautiful, Florian‘s bike is a little different. This all-road, light tourer, randonneur, or what have you, features a beautiful segmented fork with a custom rack to boot. Its paint job is accented by the sour apple Chris King, ENVE M50 wheels and a bright turquoise Chris King headset. This bike is colorful, yet subdued at the same time…

Today I got to spend four hours with Florian and his Troica, admiring its subtle style and capabilities. Check out more for yourself in the Gallery!

More and more people are tuning into the advantages of a road bike with bigger clearances. With brands like ENVE, designing forks like the GRD, specifically after frame builders requested it over and over again, it’s now easier than ever to tailor a custom bicycle to your own style of dirt riding.

Over the past few days, I’ve been riding in Barcelona with Mattia of Legor Cicli. He’s been thrashing this Porreca All Road model with ease as he shows us around his city. It’s a looker for sure but it’s got details to match its aesthetics. After all, looks ain’t everything.

For starters, Mattia designed a custom Columbus tubeset for this bike and utilized those stylish Syntace dropouts to run his SRAM Red Hydro setup. This bike also features a t47bb (which I failed to get a good photo of!) by White Industries and that new n nifty GRD fork by ENVE. The production frames will fit a 43mm tire, offering plenty of cushioning for rough roads and trails.

I’ve had a lot of fun riding with this bike and a lotta fun photographing it! Thanks for being a great host, Mattia!

Yes! Europe and not just Europe, Barcelona, an incredibly photogenic backdrop to explore by bike. This week I’m visiting the shop of Legor Cicli with ENVE and Crema Cycles. We’ll be doing local rides on dirt and sealed roads, testing out the new Crema Cycles Duo all-road bike. The overlying theme of this trip is framebuilders, bikes and dirt. Lots of dirt!

Yesterday began at the airport, first thing in the morning and ended on the bike. Not a bad way to intro a trip like this and attempt to rid myself of hellish jetlag. Stay tuned for more, but for now check out the Gallery!

The Whisky Six Select Frames
Photos by Jarrod Bunk, words by John Watson

Photo via Whisky

Each year at Frostbike, Whisky builds bikes, both custom from frame builders and production from one of the QBP brands. This year Whisky had six builders and brands at the Frostbike booth to show off their new rims, bars and seatposts. Dubbed the Six Select, the collection debuted a variety of veritable dream bikes, including: Rock Lobster, 44 Bikes, Retrotec, Moth Attack, Salsa and Engin.

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The technology is there and a few builders are utilizing it for sure, but you don’t often see a 3D printed frame with elegance like Bastion Cycles‘ titanium and carbon road bike. This thing is a beauty and for me, was a pleasure to photograph. I love the contrast of materials, the 3d-printed NAHBS insignia on the driveside dropout and the mean fuckin’ stance of this road bike. See for yourself in the gallery!

Mitch from Map Biycles in Chico, California has always been one of my favorite builders. The dude just oozes a cool, confidence that always shows in his work. From customer builds to his own, Map never ceases to impress. Even when his bikes have digi camo on them. The Rambonneur has popped up on this site before, but it was nice seeing it in person for the first time…

In my opinion, Demon Frameworks is doing something few other builders achieve: a unique, almost signature lug pattern. You can spot his bikes a mile away thanks to those meticulously carved, almost buttress-inspired designs. This year at NAHBS, this nickel-plated road accompanied him and people couldn’t get enough of it!

2015 was an amazing year for the Radavist. Not only in terms of traffic, or stats, but in terms of content. We take pride in the site, the rides we record, products we feature and yes, the bicycles we document. This year was huge in terms of the places we traveled to and the people we met along the way. With people and places come Beautiful Bicycles and a lot of work!

Without rambling on too much, here’s a list of the Top 10 of 2015 ranked by traffic and social media chatter, from highest down…

I’m lucky to know so many makers. People who take a raw material and manipulate it to fit a specific use and aesthetic. Like frame builders, bag makers are able to look at a table full of parts and visualize the whole.

Garrett and Vince are Strawfoot Handmade. They’re two guys working out of a garage in Santa Cruz making everything from Dopp bags to totes for everyday use and kit bags, riding wallets or saddle bags for cycling. It seems like an obvious or easy job for someone who can sew but there’s a lot to the production process and that’s not even counting the development of new goods.