The Radavist

Yesterday, we shared a profile of Rob Roberson that traces his storied bicycle fabrication career from the 1970s to present day. Today, we’re taking a look at seven bikes Rob built during that impressive 50-year window, from early track bikes to road frames and his most recent personal all-road build. There’s a lot of intricate eye candy here, so let’s get to it!

Rob Roberson is an enigma in the handmade bicycle world. Some would consider him “the greatest known unknown bike fabricator” of the American frame building movement. His career, which spans nearly 50 years, puts him among a very small pedigree of builders that have both mass-production experience and have also built custom bikes under their own name without giving up the ghost. Yet, with such a significant trajectory, Rob has remained largely unknown. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be featuring bikes made by Rob and the stories about them. Today, however, Zach Small and Josh Weinberg are honored to introduce you to Rob Roberson. 

While earning, or enduring, her Ph.D in Environmental Life Sciences, Courtney Currier began spending more time on the bike as a way to further connect to the places she was studying, and as a way to just spend time outside during the very inside days of the pandemic. In a very real sense, her time on the bike was inspiring and she began making art again. Building up and custom painting a unicorn fixed gear commuter brought everything full circle! Below, as she plans for what comes next in life post-Ph.D, Courtney reflects on bikes and joy, along with Tobias Feltus’ overview of the build process.

The Red Bull Bay Climb is pure and simple: straight line it up three of San Francisco’s steepest blocks, rinse, repeat in a new heat. If you’re a finalist, you’ll be one of the lucky ones who gets to go through the process four times. Erik Mathy covered the event in his usual, stunning, photographic fashion. Check out his full photo gallery and event recap.

Earlier this year Amy Danger blew us away with the story of her intricately restored and documented dumpster find Cinelli Laser Rivoluzione Prototype. Today she’s back with another stunning historic track bike from her personal collection, a Custom Gianni Motta Personal 2001r low-pro track bike with Mondrian-inspired color scheme and Columbus Air tubing. Let’s check it out in detail below!

In 2011, a little over a year after I found my passion for cycling through riding fixed gear bikes through the concrete jungle of New York City, I found myself, camera in hand, at Monster Track. The event is one of cycling’s most famous, most dangerous, and most significant alleycats in the world. Fast forward to 2022, and here I am again, camera in hand, at the 23rd edition of the annual brakeless urban street race.

Today we’re pleased to showcase a build from our friend Martin at Second Spin Cycles. Martin works on restoring old mountain, road, and yes, track bikes for his clients by speccing the period-correct components and more.

The 80’s and 90’s were a wild time for track bikes as design teams competed for gains through technological innovation. Cinelli was right there in the melee shaving power loss through aerodynamic design in partnership with Columbus tubing. The resulting Cinelli Laser changed bicycle design forever, winning more track world championships and Olympic gold medals than any other bicycle in the history of the sport. Andrea Pesenti’s hand-hammered steel gussets curved elegantly between tube junctions producing a fluid, edgeless art that slid through the air and whose DNA can be seen in all of today’s curvy carbon racing machines. Antonio Colombo brought vision and fidelity to art in design. Paolo Erzegovesi brought revolutionary engineering through liberation from lugs telling him where tubing should intersect and at what angle. These customizations nudged riders over the finish line first and set off raging bike crushes on Lasers that some of us never recovered from.

It wouldn’t be Philly Bike Expo coverage without a Bishop Bikes gallery and for 2021, photographer Jarrod Bunk selected this beautiful Columbus tubing track bike.

Where do I even begin here? At first, I thought Chris brought back the 2013 NAHBS track bike I photographed, and then I thought it was his personal blue track bike, stripped raw since it has the same Drillium Revival stem. Upon closer examination, this is true-to-form Chris Bishop doing his thing with the simplest form of bicycle. I just got off the phone with Chris Bishop where we spent a good forty-five minutes discussing this bike. There’s a lot going on with this “simple” machine so let’s get to it!

Since we posted Two Wheel Drive yesterday, we thought it’d be nice to feature one of the shop employee’s personal bikes. Bryan is a mechanic and his Mash track bike is too slick, laced with Albuquerque’s own DOOM bars and some other nice details. Check out our friend Nick’s photos below with words by Bryan himself…

In what I hope will be the first of many monthly(ish) articles, of varying lengths, Nikolai and I visited (in)famous bicycle designer Mike Burrows, who has been a constant in terms of support, inspiration and taking me down a peg or two when I need it (always). Nikolai filmed our trip on my Sony A7iii as part of an ongoing project, so I decided it would be especially fitting for Mike to document our trip on celluloid with my Mamiya C330, and a little Olympus rangefinder on Kodak Portra 800 film.