Saturday, May 29, 2010

When the name Schwinn meant something.

Sometimes I even get a little jealous over stuff that people bring me to build for them. This baby is my precious, 1973 Schwinn Paramount track frame.

And to make it even worse it is a totally sweet color.

In case you haven't guessed I was born in 1973, so I have wanted a Paramount as old as me for a while now. I guess it just feels like the quintessential bike of it's day.

When the customer brought it through the door I just knew what it was, and it made me a little sad. Being so close to it, but so far from having it.

I should be happy for him, I know I have plenty of bikes that make people drool.

Just knowing that one day I can find my very own is a small consolation.

I will post some finished pics, but for now just wanted to share my envy with all of you.

Friday, May 28, 2010

my infinite suckitude

so here it is, 4th Friday and I should be reminding you to come to our event tonight. Instead I am making sure you all know that there is NO PARTY TONIGHT. I know, it is lame and I am sorry. I promise it will be rescheduled (probably for next Friday, June 4) and you will be able to see and buy all of the great drawings that were done at our Maypril Fools checkpoint. You know you want to get your hands on some of these, they are rad!

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Huckjam, Bike of the week.

Since Bryan started the blog, I have been saying I was going to, on a weekly basis, do what I do best, complain about awesome bikes I have to fix.



Weighting in at just under 46lbs fully outfitted as pictured, the Tony Hawk "Huckjam" features likely the largest steel bicycle tubeset in the world, rounded out with a one inch head tube, and threaded headset. I can't wait to take this thing off some sweet jumps. Awesome.

-Rusty

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

New Batch Of Profile Spline Drive Sprokets Here!


Just received another small batch of 36t and 42t black sprokets. I also still have 1 36t silver left in stock. The 36t are going for $84 and the 42t $89. Get em while you can.

Friday, May 21, 2010

A Water Street Kinda Night

The air was a little thick last night, made the cold beer go down a little sweeter. The weekly water street session was jumping.

After the kids "built" a little launch pad it was on.

Big John was in town, shooting some pics and visiting the shop. The crew was out riding most of the day before water street, and Tony was still after it. I believe John got some more photos to add to the "Tony on the ground" series.

Tom was hitting mustache height off the "ramp" I know there are some sick photos that will surely pop up later today.

And then there is Jesse, official mascot of the Sweathogs Cycling Team. Always cheesin' it up for the camera.

Yesterday was a lot of fun, hanging in the shop with all of the kids, riding late into the night. Summer is starting off quite nicely.

This was one of the sickest photos from the evening. Tom getting WAY UP! Photo by Gary Wilpizeski, More amazing photos from Gary here...

Thursday, May 20, 2010

First Meeting of the BRevs Fixed Gear Team.

Today was the first meeting of the newly founded Bicycle Revolutions Fixed Gear Team, The Sweathogs! Our new Captain Dr. Tony Fast, Drew Leshko is the Rear Admiral, John Watson the Secretary, Jesse Johnston (not pictured) the Mascot, Jacob Gilinger is currently pledging, I am the team mechanic of course. Look for big things to come from the crew this summer.

Monday, May 17, 2010

The Maypril Fools Bicycle Revolutions Boutique Checkpoint!

What a great weekend! Thanks to RE Load for putting together another successful event. The Boutique hosted a checkpoint, we managed to get quite a few Fools in looking for POINTS! The deal was you had to draw a portrait of your bicycle in crayon. The our panel of judges would critique your portrait and decide if you got 20, 40 or 60 points. Those who were most creative and had the most colors and elements to their portrait got the most points.

Mr. Houser got maximum points for his use of elements and the added Haiku, even though it was plagiarized. He went on to win the overall big prize! Congrats Brett.

This Foolish racer, Darian, got max points as well. His bike was in the woods, for real. He went on to get the second Big Prize of the day! Congrats to him, enjoy the orange wheels.

Andy Zalen was in town looking for points as well. I have known this dude for the better part of two decades. Damn I'm getting old. He is the poster boy for DC Couriers, and international messenger super star. He is definitely one of the people keeping the dream alive. Check him out, he is making it happen.

And then Brutaltron arrived. Thanks for bringing all of your friends Ralph...

And of course we were very happy to see some of our BRevs alumni. Miss Megs showing off some of her creativity for maximum points!

So much fun! And to end the weekend at Tattoo Mom's for Cycle Sunday and the World Premier of Bootleg Sessions 4. There was a little riding and lots of beer drinking.

You can check out some more photos HERE. Thanks again to everybody for playing and having FUN! Keep an ear out for our next Art event which will be highlighting the cream of the crop from the bicycle portraits.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Maypril Fools Prize Wheels!

Greetings Maypril Fools! You all ready for the fun tomorrow? I hope so, here are some of the prizes that you may win if you are foolish enough. I just finished them up yesterday, y'all are lucky I am working and not racing because I'd have to try and win these for myself.

Velocity was kind enough to contribute two pairs of rims to the event. Aero rims in frost blue and tangerine orange, my rims of choice lately.

All-City contributed two sets of hubs, I chose white because I thought it would be extra special.

DT silver spokes just to keep it classy, I threw in some polished stainless cogs and lockrings.

Some sweet Continental Ultra Gatorskin tires, one of my longtime fav's. The lucky winners will be able to roll away on these if they so choose!

And some fun fancy two leading two trailing spoke lacing just because I like to keep it interesting.

Have tons of fun this weekend, ride safe and be smart. POINTS!

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Mike's New Salsa Pistola!

Mike, one of our favorite Philly messengers, decided to build a new road bike and try his hand at some road racing. We got him hooked up with the Salsa Pistola, a sweet steel road frame made of True Temper OX Platinum.

He already had some Ultegra 10 speed parts to hang on it, but was going to some wheels.

So I laced up some Chris King P45 hubs to some Velocity Aerohead rims.

The Pistola is a real road warrior, light and quick but still comfortable.

So we got the bike all dialed in.

And then got Mike dialed in on it. Have fun, and don't forget your helmet. That bike is super fast.

So yeah we do get to build some road bikes too...

New Cinelli MASH In Green!

We sold our last 55cm MASH a little while ago when Tony decided he needed a new "FAST" bike. I had been waiting for more of the grey fames to come back into stock but it is going to be a few weeks before that happens. So we grabbed a green one instead.

I had not ordered any in green as of yet because when I saw the sample at Interbike in September I really didn't like the color. Some pics have been surfacing of the new production version, and the color is sweet. A very nice bright green with a little sparkle.

So if you have been wanting to check one of these out now is your chance. Just the one in 55cm for now, we still have a 53cm in grey.

She looks very nice!

Water Street, if it is broken it must be fixed.

Another great week at water street. Gary got some more great pics, check them out here. CJ and his whole posse rode over from Jersey to hang, it was a great turnout.

For me it usually starts earlier in the day as people roll through to get spare tubes or repairs. This week Jesse rolled through to have us tighten up his new cranks and bottom bracket he had attempted to install himself. Sure, no problem right? Wrong, when the crank bolt snapped and shot out of the spindle like a bullet. I have never seen anything quite like it before. And of course I didn't have the right sized bolt to fit it. (note to self, order profile gdh crank bolts)

Fortunately Tony had one for Jesse but Jesse still needed to get home and down to Water St. So a rear quick release skewer did the trick to keep his crank arm from falling off.

And he was happily riding again, that is Jesse's happy face.

Oh yeah, then Soap broke his PK Ripper in half. Apparently he was shredding some dirt jumps earlier in the day and something didn't sound right. Then on a bunny hop 180, CRACK!

Now Soap has a new uni-cycle.

So Fridays are spent mostly fixing stuff that happened on Thursday night. Jesse bent his frame in half, I got it rolling again but it ain't pretty. And we got a 2010 ripper frame in for Soap that we started putting back together on Saturday. I have a feeling that this is just the beginning, Water Street is going to be claiming many more victims this summer.

Cool Bikes That Visit Us

We have been pretty crazy in the shop the past couple of weeks. I don't get to update every day, but I try to grab some cool pictures to use once I get a minute.
This one is definitely pretty cool.

The customer that came in with it got it from his father. His dad built it himself in the 70's. I still have my mom's original Trek 460 from 1985, thanks mom HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! But this is way cool.

Integrated rear rack and a triple triangle, this guy is riding his family legacy. I'd have loved to shoot more of this one, maybe next time I see it...

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Sunday Cruisin'

Met up with my pal Adam, it has been a while since we got to hang. He just moved back to the city and we figured we would take a spin and play catch up. So we rolled out on our Cinelli's down to FDR.

Nice spot to ride around the lake and stop to enjoy the breeze.

FDR neighbors I-95 and is home to one badass skate park.

I wasn't about to carve the concrete on my Super-Corsa Pista, but there were plenty of kids out shredding on this awesome Sunday afternoon.

After we left the park we rolled up Broad St and hit up this new-ish coffee spot Ultimo, very good coffee, I can understand why everybody has been talking about this place.
It was great to get out and stretch the legs a bit and catch up with a good friend. When I work six days a week, gotta take advantage of Sunday!

Chris' New Cinelli Gazzetta!

One of our favorite health care professionals, Chris Fox, decided to treat himself to a new track bike this spring. He saw my earlier post about the new Cinelli Gazzetta framesets and headed on down to get him one and plan the build.

I was super excited to build him another bike and to use some modern yet classic pieces to make it proper.

I built him some Velocity Aero rims to some Halo Track hubs for a very clean and classic wheelset. The Aero rims are one of my all time favorites, they remind me of the old Araya and Wolber track rims. A really sweet wheelset if I say so myself. I am building two pairs of these rims courtesy of Velocity and All-City as prizes for the Maypril Fools Ride!

Drop bars, cloth tape and Challenge Skinwall tires, and a Turbo saddle!

This is one smooth ride, thanks a lot Chris for letting me put this one together for you.

Oops!

Out in front of the shop this week, two SUV's got the boot at the same time. It was like our own live parking wars. The vehicle owners tried to remain in the car to keep it from getting towed, the police were called to the scene. They both got towed...

And yes, we work on those too...

This is a funny moment for us at Bicycle Revolutions. We do a lot of fixed gear and urban transport builds and repairs, but we also service just about everything. Two of our regulars happened to be in the stand at the same time as I came in to start my day last week and I just thought it was an interesting moment to share with you all. Tony from the Latest Dish/ Fluid came in for his annual on his Litespeed Unicoi, and Mark "Elk" had his IF SS 29'r in for some post race triage. Two very different titanium mountain bikes in the stand at the same time. Just another day at the office.