The Radavist

Yesterday, we featured an Inside / Out piece on Moustache Cycles, a Flagstaff-based framebuilding operation headed by Richard May. Today, we’re checking our four of his bikes, with Richard describing each so enjoy!

We’re big fans of rigid bikes over here at the Radavist, especially made with titanium. Chris Corona, aka Dirt Drops, has one slick custom Caletti titanium MTB frame, best served neat with Chris King Bourbon.

If you’re reading this, there’s a high probability you’re into bikes. Being “into” bikes comes in all sorts of flavors: racers, tourers, shredders, gear heads, collectors, vanilla, chocolate, twist. However you identify, spending time and money building, fixing, riding, and re-building is all part of it. Exposure to the melange of personalization across the cycling continuum is a big part of what the Radavist does, in addition to sharing the passion and creativity of the people behind the bikes. People who are into it. People like Karl.

Wow! What a year it’s been. In the past twelve months, we’ve shot roughly 300 bikes. From gravel races, to NAHBS, the Philly Bike Expo and our normal travels, we really captured some unique builds and we’ve got a good handle on the bikes the readers of the Radavist enjoy checking out based on some key metrics.

Every year we try to do our best to sort through twelve months of archives to narrow down to this list. The first filter is the comment count, which we start at 50 comments. Then comes page views, with the minimum number being 20,000 views. Finally, we look at the social media chatter; including Instagram comments and how many times was the post shared across various platforms.

What we end up with is a list that is filled with a plethora of interesting, versatile, and quirky bikes. The only editorial decision I myself made was to omit reviews of stock bikes. So no Santa Cruz Stigmata or Cannondale Topstone this round!

Check out the full Top Ten Beautiful Bicycles of 2019 below, in no particular order…

There were a lot of practical and well thought out bikes at this year’s Super Stoke Weekend and if time had allowed – short days and long ride agendas always make it hard – I would have shot them all. My methodology was to try to capture some of the themes present in the stable of steeds. With Gideon’s bike, I was able to shoot a 333 Fab. One of four present at the ride. With Spencer’s bike, it was about a similar approach to frame design but from an overseas production perspective. Black Mountain Cycles is a shop in Point Reyes Station, California. Mike Valey who owns the shop designs bikes for the brand after he spent years designing bikes for other companies in the industry. He and Sean from Soulcraft worked on this frame, dubbed the MCD, or Monster Cross Disc, with specially-designed dropouts for the thru-axles. While this bike is a departure from the traditional monster cross ideologies (700x45mm ish wheels with wide dirt drops,) it gets the point across and thrives off the ambiguity of mainstream monster cross definitions.

Whisky Part’s Private Stock: Ben’s Rock Lobster and Steve Potts
Photos by Kyle Kelley, words by John Watson

Private Stock. A term reserved the best of the best when it comes to distilling American whiskey, Scotch whisky, and bourbon. For Whisky Parts Co, a brand within the umbrella that is Quality Bicycle Products, their aim is to design the best parts possible and get the most people using those parts as possible. Part of that comes from OE sales and the other brands within QBP using Whisky Parts when it makes sense, yet there is a growing demand from Domestic and International frame builders, to create products specifically for niche market requests. We’ve seen Whisky do so with their road, cross and mountain forks, as well as their wheels and components over the years.

For Ben Witt, Whisky’s marketing and sales director, he felt the need to not only embrace the niche market of frame building, but to use the parts for two of his own bikes; a Rock Lobster all-road and Steve Potts dirt drop mtb. We’ve seen a number of Private Stock builds from the Whisky team here on the Radavist over the years, but these two are some of the best.

Thanks to Ben for taking the time to let us showcase these bikes and Kyle for the great photos! My fingers are cold just typing this up!

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Follow Kyle on Instagram and follow Whisky on Instagram.

Jake’s Pacific Northwest Do-All Trek 970
Photos and words by Morgan Taylor

While we can easily find ourselves lost in things shiny and new, there’s no denying the allure of a carefully curated classic being put to good use. Jake’s Trek 970 is just one of those bikes, with a build that takes advantage of classic mountain bike practicality to create a versatile and stylish bike for days long and short.

Jake’s no stranger to well-thought-out steel bikes, already having a number of sweet builds in the quiver before his 970 came together. He leans toward time-tested components, durability over flashiness, and comfort over outright speed. The 970 is Jake’s Pacific Northwest do-all bike, with wide tires, loads of carrying capacity, and inspiration taken from its home in Seattle.

There were so many wonderful builds at the Karoobaix, but I have to admit, seeing this bike really made me stoked to be in South Africa. While Sarah’s Mercer Bikes isn’t as flashy as Stan’s, it’s still a locally-built frame, designed to fit Sarah and her riding style, with practical details, contributing to the overall beauty of a modern, disc road bike with classic lines.

Over here in the wild wild west, people build their Space Horse discs up in all kinds of ways. From dirt drops, to upright Nitto Albatross bars, to flat Bullmoose and everything in between, these bikes are incredibly versatile commuters and tourers but perhaps Kyle’s is one of the most unique builds I’ve seen. Sure, it’s got 27.5″ wheels, with Maxxis Refuse tires, Salsa dirt drops, Sim Works stem, Sim Works post, Sim Works Paul Klampers, Sim Works Paul skewers, a Berthoud saddle, a SON hub, White Industries Cranks, Camo Cinelli tape, Velocity Cliff Hanger rims, Pass and Stow rack and Gevenalle shifters, but the thing that was the veritable cherry on the cake, or milkshake, or whatever is the rudeboy rockabilly Outer Shell rack bag.

How can you look at this bike without seeing that loud-ass leopard print?!

Finding a way to describe bikes is one of my favorite parts of this whole process and usually my initial reaction is the way to go. With this bike, I wanted to fight the rockabilly label so bad, yet it just fits. It’s like a pair of creepers at a Cramps show. In fact, it’s like a bike Poison Ivy would ride. Kyle, you’ve really outdone yourself with this one.

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If you want a custom build like this and live in Los Angeles, hit up Golden Saddle Cyclery.

The touring world is changing, no doubt about it. Steel frames are still the norm for obvious reasons, but disc brakes are now widely accepted and people are venturing far and wide with component choices that only a few years ago may have been considered imprudent.

One group doing this is the young and adventurous among us, arguably oblivious to their equipment’s lack of serviceability. Under these pioneers, bikes go into the wild with sometimes ugly, yet highly functional home-hacked solutions that get the job done. They are out there for the pure experience, pushing the boundaries of equipment that only a few years ago was considered cutting-edge technology.

Another side of this coin is people at bike companies, with access to the newest stuff before it hits the market, building custom bikes to their own specs to push the limits. It’s not uncommon to see mountain drivetrains on road frames, tires that are too big to pass safety standards, and so on. These bikes, however, rarely make it past the engineers’ and product managers’ personal collections.

When product managers spec bikes, they are held to account by bean counters making sure bikes will sell through – and that means sticking to tradition and not taking chances. I love it when companies have the guts to spec a bike in a way that’s pointed at radness rather than tradition. When I see a production bike deviate from industry norms in this way, my eyes light up; the Kona Sutra LTD is one of those bikes.

While we took a look at my own touring bike yesterday, I will say this with confidence: had I ridden the Elephant Bikes National Forest Explorer prior to ordering my Woodville two years ago, I would have drastically changed my views on 650b, disc brakes and trail.

The National Forest Explorer is a low-trail, 650b bike with disc brakes and a decent, not copious amount of tire clearance. These NFE’s are made by Glen Copus in Spokane, WA and pack quite the wallop of versatility in a beautiful, forest service green package. They’re made from lightweight steel for just the amount of liveliness.

Without getting too far ahead of myself here, I have to admit the giddiness flowing through my veins at the moment. I’m in Banff, Alberta at the start of the Tour Divide Race, arguably one of the most intense self-supported off-road races. I’m here with Salsa Cycles, and while we’re not doing the entire TDR, we are riding a three-day section of the race. Why? Because Salsa has supported racers and riders in the TDR for years and all the time and energy put into supporting athletes who train for to events like this has culminated in a bike that’s just being launched.

At this point, if you’re even reading this still and haven’t sprung right into clicking through the gallery images, I need to point out that Salsa champions the drop-bar off-road touring and racing bike. They love the hand positions, the unique stance and the options for drivetrains. That said, over the years, they’ve perfected what is arguably their best “all-road”, dirt-tourer: the Cutthroat.

Literally seconds after walking into the 2015 Sea Otter Classic, I ran into Nick and Matt from SF. They had driven in that day and rode their lock-up MTB commuters down to the show. In SF, with bike theft at an all-time high, having a beater that is both cheap and functional is key.

Matt’s Trek 890 features porteur bars, a rear rack, a porteur rack and a Strawfoot bag for cargo. Meanwhile Nick’s Mongoose utilizes dirt drops and barcons. Both bikes have a fair amount of beausage and can both be maintained with a local bike shop’s parts bin.

Thanks to Matt and Nick for embracing my request for a wheelie photo!

The stick that held up the bikes in this Gallery…

I shot a lot of bikes this year. In fact, I shot more Galleries this year, than any other two years combined. From April 1st’s launch of the Radavist, until last week, the entire team worked hard on bringing a full photo gallery just about every weekday, sometimes twice. Pulling in those metrics took some time, but rather than limiting this year’s selection to just ten, I found the following bikes to be all within the same realm.

Some of these bikes never dropped a chain in terms of year-long momentum, still churning in pageviews and social media chatter to this very day. Surprisingly to me, a few were completely stock bikes. These were all chosen for their Facebook likes, social media engagement, comments and overall traffic. I feel like there were a lot of bikes that were flops as far as traffic was concerned, but I wanted to be fair in selecting the list.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s back up a bit.

We began the year with a few big stories, all leading up to one of the busiest weekends of the year, NAHBS. After record-breaking traffic, the world of Beautiful Bicycles culminated in the 2014 NAHBS Drive Side Gallery. From there, it was onto traveling for stories and documenting Beautiful Bicycles along the way… We’ll start off in Prescott, Arizona for the Whiskey Off Road.