Basket bikes are our Achilles, and today, for our Readers’ Rides, we bring you Takahiro’s Panasonic singlespeed. If you’re into clean, minimal builds and photos, this one’s for you!
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Freehub Magazine: Stronger Together Identity and Endurance with Alexandera Houchin
It has taken time for Alexandera Houchin to weave layers of her identity together. First and foremost, Alexandera is an Ojibwe woman. She’s also an artist, a farmer, a mechanic, a cyclist and a person who cares deeply about her community on the Fond Du Lac reservation near Cloquet, Minnesota. “Stronger Together” takes an intimate look into Alexandera’s life while examining concepts of identity, forgiveness and what it means to merge seemingly different aspects of your soul in order to continue moving forward, one pedal stroke at a time.
See more at Freehub!
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Our 2022 Single Speed Arizona Recap Video
This video coincides with our Reportage this morning…
Single Speed Arizona is an annual event held in a different location around the state each year. It’s full of festivities and one-speed fun. In 2022, Flat Tire Bike Shop hosted on their home trails of Cave Creek. Ryan McKee of Cycling for Longevity was there with his video camera and takes us along for the ride in this immersive video…
Reportage
2022 Single Speed Arizona! Cave Creek Edition: Rattling it Around
What exactly is Single Speed Arizona? Well, first and foremost, it’s not a damn bike race. A cesspool of degenerates? Sure, but only for the weekend – some of these people are actually really good at adulting! One might argue that it’s a borderline cult with congregants making an annual pilgrimage to The Grand Canyon State each February to hike a bunch with our stupid bikes, commune, and praise Jah. The reality is that whether you’re escaping winter in other parts of the world, or your own reality for a whole weekend, being sun-drenched while riding/hiking bikes in February makes for a wonderful family reunion. Welcome to Arizona’s Premier Outdoor Recreation Conference.
Reportage
2022 Single Speed Arizona! Cave Creek Edition: Southwest Wildlife Tour and Bike Gallery
Following a hiatus in 2021, Single Speed Arizona (SSAZ) returned earlier this month – over an action-packed weekend – to Cave Creek. We’ll be hosting a full event report and photo gallery soon, but today we’re kicking off our coverage with a pre-ride tour of Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center and a gallery of bikes (and their riders), which is about as eclectic and diverse as it gets.
Reportage
The Stooge Scrambler Review: Evolution of the Modern Klunker
Rigid bikes. The roots of riding off-road, yet now the arena of weirdos, quacks, and masochists. Mountain biking started out long before telescoping forks and complex linkage designs, but the bikes of those early days are now a far cry from the activity most consider “mountain biking”.
Of course, those weirdos, quacks, and masochists still have a place in this world, and it turns out I’m one of them. It wasn’t always this way. I used to ride and write about my experience with suspension mountain bikes as a full time job. I could go on all day about spring curves and axle paths, dampers and volume spacers, sag and suspension setup.
But, in the past five or so years, my focus has shifted. I’d rather spend a weekend riding to small places and sleeping out under the stars than shuttling the local loamers and crushing parking lot beers. And in that time I’ve come to value a mountain bike that requires less maintenance.
Having ridden a lot of high end suspension bikes, I know what it takes to keep them running tip top – and I just don’t have the facilities to do that at home, nor the money to pay someone else to do it. A rigid bike makes sense for my sometimes bi-weekly, sometimes monthly mountain bike hobby.
Reportage
What It’s Designed For: Matt Acker’s Very Muddy Mid South Salsa Stormchaser SSGX
As you can imagine, the Mid South was intense this year. Between the Corona Virus pandemic and the weather, the team running the race had to scramble to adjust to the ever-changing circumstances. At the last minute, our coverage team decided to pull the plug, and we didn’t get a whole lot from the weekend, but luckily Jared Harber was able to shoot Matt Acker‘s winning Stormchaser. I wish we could have also shot Hannah Finchamp and Payson McElveen’s winning bikes, but as I said, it was a chaotic event!
This bike was just about the only thing Jared shot from the weekend and while we didn’t really get a lot of other coverage, we have a few things that we’ll be sharing shortly. I really wanted to share not only Jared’s amazing photos but Matt’s thoughtful insight into his build, which he rolled into 8th position, so read on below.
Reportage
Back Between the Tape with the Kona Private Jake – Morgan Taylor
Just over a week ago, I was meant to be racing this bike, in my first ‘cross race in a very long time. The Friday night before the race, I pre-registered to make things go more smoothly on race day, and had everything ready to go. As it turns out, I wasn’t going to make it to that race.
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Squid Bikes Oner PF30 Eccentric Bottom Bracket Review
If you are looking to build a singlespeed ‘cross race bike, or a singlespeed mountain bike, and anything in between, you can run your favorite 30mm spindle cranks with the BEER Components Oner, as long as your frame has a PF30 shell. Recently, I swapped out the older 24mm Sugino cranks and Problem Solvers bottom bracket for the BEER Oner and White Industries cranks on my Urban Racer.
Reportage
Land Run 100 Rides: Austin from Austin’s Chumba Terlingua
The Land Run 100 draws people from all over the world, including Texas. Austin drove in from Austin, with his brand new Chumba Terlingua, ready to roll 100+ miles single speed. With no rain in the forecast – #RIPmud – he packed in a big tire and got ready to ride the rolling hills, through the red dirt countryside.
While there were many exceptional builds at the event, I have to say, this was one of the most original I saw. With Onyx Racing Hubs, an Absolute Black ring, Paul Klampers, Hope Rotors, WTB Riddler tires, matching spoke nipples and a mean, race fit, this bike looked as good in motion as it does sitting here.
Austin, great to meet you, pardna’, tell the grackles I said I miss them!
____
Follow LandRun 100 on Instagram
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The Harabas Single Speed
This video came in from the Philipines, where a shop there released a limited run of the Harabas single speed frame, designed to be ridden with slicks or knobbies, free or fixed. I really dig the reverse mig welding sequence. That’s a first for sure. Check out some photos of these frames on Instagram.
Radar
Blue Lug and Rivendell’s Frank Jones Single Speed
To commemorate Blue Lug‘s 10 year anniversary – congrats guys! – Rivendell teamed up with them to design a single speed. You might recall their Quickbeam single speed, and the Frank Jones is a relative to that bike. Blue Lug made 55 of these frames and Rivendell took in 25. There’s a lot more to be said about this collaboration, which will come at a later date once a certain someone builds theirs up, but I wanted to give all of you a heads up, in case you missed out on a Quickbeam back in the day.
Oh and if you’d like to see more photos of Blue Lug’s build, head to their Flickr!
Reportage
Junk Yard Doggin’ Around Los Angeles One Morning
All-City’s Junk Yard Dog, or JYD for short, is a do-all, hobo trail cuttin’, curb jibbin, bar or delivery bike, built with burliness in mind. I’ve seen various permutations of this bike floating around in my travels. Some people build it up as a delivery bike with a porteur rack, others a drop-bar monster cross like in Kyle’s case.
Kyle’s had this frameset for a while now and the potential build always centered around the Salsa Woodchipper 2 bar. Those bars, paired with White Industries, Paul Mini Motos and Bruce Gordon Rock n Road tires results in one mean, yet fun around town bike.
On my last day in Los Angeles, I went on a ride with Kyle (who modeled the new All-City Big Gulp Kit) as we left from our favorite pre-ride spot, Intelli Coffee on Sunset and made our way through bum trails and city overlooks.
Check out photos of the quick jaunt as well as the JYD bike-check in the Gallery!
Reportage
Jonathan’s Singlespeed Rock Lobster Cross Bike
Purging bikes isn’t fun, unless you can sell it to a friend, or in this case, a co-worker. One of the higher ups at Mellow Johnny’s recently decided to part with his Rock Lobster singlespeed cross. It was practically new and just so happened to fit Jonathan like a glove. Best of all, Jonathan finally found a place for all those turquoise Chris King bits he had been saving.
Singlespeed builds are ridiculously beautiful, especially when they have a color combination like walnut brown and turquoise. Relying on the ever-so-stoppy, Paul Mini Motos and Pacenti SL23 hoops with Tubeless WTB Cross Boss tires, this thing will be good to go next season…
But as we all know, cross bikes are much more diverse than that. We’ll be seeing more of this beauty in the coming months, I’m sure of it.
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Adam Craig’s Limited-Edition Giant TCX SLR SS
This is why Adam Craig will probably win SSCXWC in Kentucky this year and no, it’s not the bike. It’s his training! You see that Four Roses? Dude means business. Although being in the bourbon mecca might put a damper on those roosts!
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I Hope You Got Rad This Weekend
Photo by Dylan Vanweelden
SSCXWC Qualifiers: normally, that means a bunch of clipless, singlespeed warriors racing around a closed course in some city park, but this year, it was in Philly and Philly don’t fuck around. More to come, but for now, see the rest of Dylan’s photos here!
Reportage
Vicious Cycles SSCX
In the world of cross bikes, there’s something just inherently honest about a single speed race machine. It’s gotta be the big, knobby tires, cantilever brakes, unicrown fork and no-nonsense utilitarianism, right? Wrong. It’s pink and it’s a Vicious Cycles! This bike in particular is over 10 years old and it has been raced extensively over that time period. It’s been wrecked, loved, hated, spit on, puked on (maybe?) and it’s still alive, begging for more. When I was at the Bicycle Sport Shop Six Shooter, this was one of the first bikes that caught my eye.
See more in the Gallery!
Radar
Bombtrack’s Full Line of Bikes for 2014
For 2014, Bombtrack has expanded their line from track and FGFS into more commuter-friendly single speeds. Check out the full catalog above.