We better hurry up and put this bike out right? Geared Fairdale we are calling the “Weekender” is coming in early 2012!

ESPN’s write up here.

Leif Valin wrote a very entertaining story about his daily commute. Leif is surely one our most favorite riders and now he has become one of our favorite writers as well. He puts into words what we see on our daily commute. If it’s by car the best you can hope for is to get home without being more stressed out by terrible drivers. When we make the trip by bike at least you feel like you did something and usually it’s pretty fun.

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I wrote a article for Complex on how to fix a flat on your bicycle. Hopefully it will be educational for some people.

Check it out here: Complex How To FIx A Flat.

Today I swung by the Peddler Bike Shop and had to pick up this new Kuat bottle lock just ’cause it’s so cool.

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Fairdale has now taken over Brazil. Reminds me of my Irish friends band who I helped release their CD in the USA a few years ago called “I Am Brazil“.

They are currently touring Japan.

The Redneck Manifresto Japan dates:

Got sent this sweet bit of Corgi action from Prollyisnotprobably. Thanks Mr. Prolly!

Designing and spec-ing all the parts on a bike can be a lot of fun. It’s also a constant trade off where you battle with cost vs. quality. You want to use the best quality parts available, but you don’t want to design a bike that is too expensive.

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Check out the Fairdale Messenger Bike Bag (MSRP $69.99).
We’ve taken the traditional messenger bag to the next level. Now you can actually carry your messenger bike with you everywhere you go. Let’s face it, riding a fixed gear is hard. Now you can have the style of messenger without having to actually ride the bike.

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I got sent some really cool Fairdale art from my buddy and legendary BMX innovator Afro Pat. Pretty stoked!

Bonus: I did a Google image search for Pat Schreader to find a picture of him and it auto corrected my search to Fat Shredder. Hmmmmm….

Fairdale got a little write up over at Bicycle Retailer and we appreciate it very much! Thanks guys.  I want to know why I have to get up so early for work if I’m retired.

Check out the story here.

Jim Cielencki long time BMX pro and head of Sunday Bikes (and a Fairdale rider by the way) has an interview over on ESPN about making bike frames overseas. He’s my office mate here at OTX Design (which house’s the engineering studio for Sunday Bikes, Odyssey, and of course Fairdale). I found it really informative even though I share an office with him! On my recent trip to Taiwan I was blown away by how incredibly high tech the manufacturing facilities were. It was sort of bike building heaven where it seemed like whole cities were devoted to creating bikes. …. ah… but… I am from near Detroit and with a family in the auto industry I fully understand the desire to keep manufacturing in the states. Anyway, JC’s interview has some really interesting points on building bikes and its cool to hear about all the technology that goes into a really high end BMX. Its tech we can eventually apply to Fairdale too so its good to know.

Check the story here.

NOTE: I fixed the above link so it actually goes to ESPN now… instead of back to this same post… oops.

With the outstanding success of our new Dograck for animal lovers we thought it might be appropriate to repost our concept bikes for animal skin lovers. There are other ways to carry animal carcass’s on a bike you know.

Feb 16, 2011

Thanks to Bike Snob I learned about this rather startling $27,000 fixed gear bike.

This bike is completely covered in hand stitched “water buffalo leather”. Although water buffalo leather is undeniably classy I was thinking maybe we could accomplish some of the same type of thing for Fairdale on a slightly lower costs basis. We’re always trying to bring you the latest and greatest in bicycle technology, but we believe it should be affordable.

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There’s always been a battle between man’s two best friends… his bike and his dog. And until now there has been no perfect solution for attaching a dog to a bicycle.

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I was looking around today for cool ideas and found a few that really deserved to be brought together. We could just be happy riding around on a plain old normal bike or we could invent something totally sweet!

F-1 bikes are so ready for a comeback. Can Fairdale make them please please! Imagine Crabon Fiber® fairing paired with wheel discs! It could be amazing.

I actually witnessed one of the few F-1 races at a NBL national BMX race at Waterford Oaks, MI back in the 1900′s. I wanna’ say Tinker Jaurez won just prior to taking over mountain biking. It was so weird. People racing around haybales in a parking lot with oval sprockets.

This guys got Penny Farthing shoes! An obvious natural progression from penny loafers I guess.

Testing samples in Sydney & China 2009 from Chariot Skates on Vimeo.

Off Road roller skates skis? I actually used to work at a cross country ski rental place when I was like 13. I remember using something sort of like this that was some early version of a summer time cross country ski. Kind of fun and the advertising media show clear babe getting potential.

Did I ever tell you about the time I was at a dirt jumping comp in Australia and there were off road roller bladers hired to jump the jumps? It was carnage!!!

Snakeboards! Shimy, shimy and shimy for speed!

Get razor-scootin!

I know, I know.. razor scooter killers!

I guess this is kind of like riding a rolling stool around?

I’m kind of into surfing on a remote control car. Seems like a pretty cool thing to do.

I know not everyone lives in Austin or gets to ride 3 miles of the 9 miles to work on a quiet bike path along a river, but I sure am grateful I do! Just had one of those days where I can’t understand why anyone would be in a car… well, that and my car broke down again and was towed away.

I need a better dog carrying solution. I’m thinking it might time for some kind of cargo bike… or hell, we made a skaterack… maybe some kind of dog rack?

Jim Bauer is a man of many hats. Known for daredevil pro BMX riding, creative designing (for Odyssey, Sunday and even Fairdale), snazzy dresser and being an all around cool dude. Here he bombs his custom Fairdale down a hill in Long Beach that is so steep its illegal to ride a bike down it. He even gives his Parser’s Kevlar belted Continental tires a good test when he monster trucks through a broken cracked up part of the road at top speed.

Jim has done some of the scariest things ever on a bike. This Jeff Z photo is from Ride.

Always looking for new ways to see things Jim Bauer completely customized his Fairdale Parser in copper… came out pretty didn’t it?

JB’s one of a kind custom Fairdale sits on the end of the Fairdale line just to show off a bit.

Fairdale print zine 2 is now up on the interweb. Enjoy a flip through above…
Still a tiny few print versions left if you prefer killing trees to LCD radiation.

Also, if you missed zine 1 feel free to check it out here…. Fairdale Zine 1.

Unsolicited art contribution from Alberto over in Denver. Pretty sweet ride!

Fairdale zine 2 is a very limited print run. There’s a handful of them in Austin if you’d like to pick one up. After they sell out we’ll put it up as a online version, but its always cooler to have a print version of a zine. 68 pages this time!

If you’re in the USA send $3 or $3 worth of stamps and I’ll mail one to you. If you’re outside of the USA just drop an email with your address and I’ll let you know how much it would cost (info@fairdalebikes.com). We’ll throw in some stickers with the orders too.

Fairdale Bikes

4204 Machaca Rd

Austin, TX 78704

Heres the digital reprint of issue 1 just for the heck of it:

At long last the Fairdale Skaterack is finally in stock and shipping to shops. Expect to pay about $42 for the skaterack which includes everything you need to attach it to your bike’s rear rack and securely hold your skateboard.

Pedal and shred. Or something like that…. we need a good tagline.

Spandex and japan airs?

48×16 and 50/50?

Chromoly and wood?

Some of the cups backstage after the show, including the one I got to give away to Garrett Reynolds

It happened again. I thought I had escaped having to go to Interbike but a the last minute Ride BMX Magazine asked me to present an award at Nora Cup. It is a big honor and so even though it wrapped a lot of my biggest anxieties into one (flying, Interbike, Vegas, and public speaking) I couldn’t say no. I was real nervous about having to give a speech but it was also a kind of fun nervousness… it would be the kind of embarrassment I would be laughing about.

Nora Cup was held inside the Pearl at the Palms Casino Resort. The Pearl is really nice… I found it hard to believe a BMX event was going to happen inside there. Incredible sound system and really cool design inside. Backstage they prepped us for how the show would run and how the awards would be presented. I was then told I should give a 1 to 3 minute speech about street riding. I was pretty afraid of what I might say so I hid away in my hotel room to try and write something. I actually did manage to write what I thought was a decent speech but I never really got to say it.

When the awards show started I was really amazed at how positive the energy was in the building. I mean, I guess thats why you go to an awards show… to be positive, but I guess I’m just used to a little more jadedness from the world. It was awesome though! Everyone was cheering for everyone and it felt good. The first award up was ramp rider some of the very O.G. guys of freestyle Dizz Hicks and Ceppie May presented that one. I was a real treat to meet those guys. I didn’t really hear what they said from backstage but the crowd seemed stoked! Dennis Enerson who was nominated for everything this year won that one.

After that came Woody Itson Presenting Flat. Woody lives in Dallas TX now and it was really amazing talking with him about the origins of freestyle and his Porsche ad I was messing with in photoshop just the other day. Hollywood Mike Miranda presented racer of the year. Hmmm… I think I’m forgetting the order, but Todd “The Wildman” Lyons announced the Dirt jumper of the year. When I was 13 or 14 and still racing BMX Todd was always one of the my favorites. He would have photos in the mags doing tricks in races. It was rad in the truest definition of the word. Chris Doyle won dirt again and that was really cool. Chris is the dirt jumper’s dirt jumper and rides the way we all wish we could. Then I was up to present…

Aggroman partially dressed

They started up by playing a video of some of my old video clips. I was real stoked see they put in a one handed tail whip from the end of my Fox Expendable Youth section from Palavas. That was a real memorable moment for me since I ended up winning that contest and really throwing caution into the wind on that particular trick (and survived). When I got on stage there was a lot of loud cheering, and then some more, and then some more. I couldn’t hear myself think and I totally couldn’t talk. Seemed like the more self conscious and embarrassed I got the louder it got inside my head. The truth is it was probably just the drunk dudes in the front row yelling the loudest, but even so it was overwhelming and really flattering. Kind of felt like I had won an award. My speech was supposed to say something about how street riding is unique in that its progression is not linked to the terrain. If you think about it dirt jumps and ramps keep getting bigger and better and that leads to new types of riding, but the streets we ride haven’t changed. Some of the guys who got nominated had filmed video clips on spots I had rode almost 20 years earlier and had come up with new ways to see riding those spots that I could have never dreamed of. Thats really the amazing part of street riding. Its all about how the rider sees the world and how they can apply their skills to ride it.

The envelope before I had opened it.

Anyway, I got out about one or two sentences of that before bursting out laughing because it was just SO loud and at least partially because Mark Losey kept yelling monkey boy. The less of you who get that joke the better!

I got to open the envelope and incase you were wondering the presenters really truly don’t know who wins. They gave me the envelope right before I walked on stage and I was as curious as anyone. This years group of street nominees were all very possible winners. Dennis Enerson, Sean Burns, Dakota, and Nathan Williams are all amazing riders. Garrett Reynolds ended up winning and I am in total agreement. Everything that kid does is amazing and he’s so full of original riding it blows me away.

Bit of a blur for me after my job was done. Mat Hoffman dressed up in the original Aggroman suit and ran around and gave away best video part. It was complete with Eddie Roman backstage doing the voice over for Aggroman just like the video. If you’ve never seen Aggroman and don’t know what I’m talking about I highly reccommend you give yourself a history lesson and get the HB Triolgy DVD here or here. There’s some riding in there that will blow you away when you think about how long ago it was, and, you owe to your BMX roots to watch Aggroman and with that confused look that we all had the first time we saw it. Its an amazing video and if anyone is a super hero its Mat Hoffman!

It was dark and blurry backstage but I thought this photo has some cool metaphorical significance. Eddie Roman showed us we could make our own video anyway we wanted, and here he is making the hand off to video maker Will Stroud.

The awards wrapped up with Will Stroud presenting best video part. Will was real nervous but he made it through and really got to cap off the night by awarding Anthem 2 the best video of the year. I was so happy for my friend Stew Johnson and all the Anthem guys. I do wish I had been healthy enough to have filmed some for that video, but I can take some comfort with a having a spot in Anthem 1. Stew’s words about Aitken (who was injured during filming for Anthem 2) was inspiring and backstage it was really cool to see how stoked those dudes all were on the very hard work they had all put into filming that video. They hung out for a while back there and I had to think it felt really good to work that hard on something and then have it be recognized in such a big way.

Nice job Ride mag! I was really stoked and honored to get to be a part of it. Sorry again I didn’t deliver my speech!

Look what I finished today! Stoked.

I don’t actually have any copies yet but I should have some tomorrow that I’ll be taking with me to Interbike when I go on thursday. Maybe see you there if you want one?

I’ll post some info on how everyone else can get one next week once I’m back in town.

Zine 2 is 68 pages of stuff.

Poke poke poke. Gonna poke that ego til it pops!

Complex had me write a story about the top 50 BMX logos of all time. It was really hard since I have a terrible memory for this stuff. Anyway, its up on the internet… check it out if you’d like:

http://www.complex.com/art-design/2011/09/the-50-greatest-bmx-logos

Also, I bought this koozie today: