News / weekender

Fishing with Jared SwaffordJared is a professional BMX rider for Odyssey BMX and Fit Bike Co. Though he has the natural talent to kill it on just about any size bike, his first love happens to be fishing! We spent some time with him on his trusty Weekender, and hit up one of his regular fishing spots.

Upgrade your old Weekender with more gear rangeThe 2016 Weekender Drop comes stock with a 11- 40t rear cassette. With 10 different gears ranging from a-bombing-down-a-hill-high-speed 11t to the granny-gear-hill-climbing 40t you can ride anything that comes your way. Older Weekenders have an 11-36t rear cassette. If you want a bigger range of gears you can follow the traditional path and add a front derailleur and another sprocket up front.

2016 Weekender ForksThe forks on all of our Weekender models are re-vamped for 2016. We worked hard to make them better than ever. Let me walk you through some of the features…

Pictures of cool looking Fairdales from InstagramI lurked around the #fairdalebikes hashtag on instagram and found a rad assortment of customized bikes. Stoked to see them, thanks y’all!

A Beautiful Weekender OG build from No Life Like This LifeIt is so flattering when someone customizes one of our bikes. I like seeing our bikes reborn in ways that I would never have imagined. It’s also great to know that someone likes the starting platform enough to pour all that extra time/money into the bike. No Life Like This Life just posted a really pretty Weekender OG […]

New custom bike day for TajI built up a Weekender frame and fork set with some fancy parts. It’s a special treat to myself since I’m usually a riding a bike with an assortment of miss-mathced sample parts. I started with our Weekender frameset in Electro Silver (available now).

Cycling, Cameras, and Cats with Sandy CarsonSandy Carson was our first team rider back in January of 2012. “Team Rider” is a term we use very loosely at Fairdale. We don’t expect our riders to win races (though Sandy did just win a Texas State Championship on a mountain bike). Hell, we don’t expect our riders to even ride all the […]

Day 8 / Austin To New Orleans RideThis morning was actually chilly. It was wonderful, but a bit windy. After the first 9 miles, we had warmed up enough to loose our jackets. While tossing over my jacket to Phil, I lost my balance and couldn’t get my foot unclipped. I toppled right over. I landed in perfectly soft grass so it […]

Day 7 / Austin to New Orleans RideFrom Phil: I got to sleep in all the way till 8:30 today. We crashed at our friend Abigail and Josh’s last night. I was awakened by Liz jumping up and down on our air mattress until I got up. We got dressed and walked to a local coffee shop for some cold brew and cookies. […]

DAY 6 / AUSTIN TO NEW ORLEANS RIDEFrom Liz: Today was a hot one. The first half of the day Emily and I spent on our own. Unlike most days, we did not have longer than a 9 mile stretch on any road. The area we were in felt very desolate. We would go miles without seeing another car or person. It felt […]

Day 5 / Austin to New Orleans rideFrom Phil: Going down the frontage road on I-10 in Louisiana is like going down one big, long bike path. Today’s ride was pretty straight forward. Not a lot of twists and turns just one long quiet frontage road. It’s pretty nice. You can really ride your bike a long way without having to get […]

Day 4 / Austin to New Orleans rideFrom Phil: The day started out sunny with lots of twist and turns in the road. Within the first 5 miles, Emily wrapped her chain around her sprocket. I’m sure someone reading this has gotten chain suck. That’s when your chain gets wrapped around the front chain rings and wedged all in the bottom bracket. […]

fairdalebikes

For my birthday I took all my bikes to the little

For my birthday I took all my bikes to the little jumps. I know it’s nothing crazy, but it is pretty cool to me that I can still ride jumps, especially because for years after my back surgery I couldn’t. Now, bit by bit I’ve gotten stronger and I think I ride my DJ the most. But, maybe most important is that I still love riding bikes of any kind! -Taj

Thanks for the fun Elevator, Rockitship, Weekender, Taj, Hareraiser, and @sundaybikes Wavelength.

Getaway (if only for a little while) onboard the R

Getaway (if only for a little while) onboard the Rockitship.

The Rockitship is here. Available as a complete bi

The Rockitship is here. Available as a complete bike or frame in Black or Blood Orange. Reynolds 725 steel frame, ENVE fork, Ritchey and Shimano components, UDH, Continental Terra Adventure tires all wrapped together with Fairdale’s Keepin-it-simple-keeps-it-fun design sensibilities.

Available now to take you on adventures to anywhere.

Our Rockitship will officially launch on Friday. B

Our Rockitship will officially launch on Friday. Bike shops are getting their orders in starting today.

Pre-orders starting soon for bike shops to bring i

Pre-orders starting soon for bike shops to bring in our all new Rockitship. Hit up @fullfactory. Complete bikes will begin shipping soon after. Frames will be available too. Check in Monday for all the details!

Rider (Taj) says he’s not high enough, and photo

Rider (Taj) says he’s not high enough, and photographer (Josh Root @evilphotoeye ) says he should have used a flash to make things pop, but we like seeing our Hareraiser DJ in action.

New shirts have arrived! The first shirt I drew (O

New shirts have arrived! The first shirt I drew (Out of Step) has a clear message. It leans into Minor Threat’s famous words of wisdom, ‘Bow your head in submission to your phone like the rest of us.’ …Or, something like that.

The second shirt (Iron Fairdale) also has a clear message. I drew the word “Fairdale.”

Enjoy some new torso covers!

Summer Bike Launch: the Weekender Archer in new Le

Summer Bike Launch: the Weekender Archer in new Lemon Grass. The Weekender’s chromoly steel frame can be adapted in so many ways. Here it is set up for a little bit of everything in its base model form. Ride some trails, urban commute, long haul rides… yes to all. Add bags, bottles, racks, fenders, and/or our Skatetack. On sale now via your favorite bike shop.

Summer Bike Launch continues with the Lookfar mode

Summer Bike Launch continues with the Lookfar model in Matte Coral Red. This color is now available in a full size run from XS-L and in a step-thru version (which fits in our line as a S/M size). $649

“Look true, and look far, but don’t forget where you are.”

Summer Launch’s new Taj bike. A special one to m

Summer Launch’s new Taj bike. A special one to me, not just because it has my name on it. I first started making ‘zine’s back in the late 80s. Later I even had a ‘zine store where I would collect assorted ‘zines from around the world. Eventually, I graduated to helping make real magazines, and books with the help of computers, but the high-contrast art of ‘zine making holds such an important place in my memory.

I love the feeling of being able to tell my own stories and see them in print. You’ll hear people say ‘zines were a way to communicate ideas before the internet… home made magazines at a time when everything topical came from real magazines. That’s true I suppose, but I fell in love with the making of them. The trips to Kinko’s at 3:30 am. The stoned guy who worked there would let me make copies for free if I fixed his bike. A sea of Xerox machines to play around on. At least one of them probably had good toner in it. Creating different techniques and cool looking effects with nothing but copy machines was a lot of fun.

For this bike’s graphics I went back to those old techniques. Copying art, crumpling it up and recopying, tearing it and copying again, dragging it along the path of the copy head to stretch the art, and bunch of other trial and error tricks I was pleased to remember. I eventually had to get this art into the computer so it could end up as decals on the bike, but I did make it all in the old school way.

As far as the bike itself goes, the Taj is chromoly 27.5” BMX bike that looks a lot like the “BMX cruiser” my buddy at Kinko’s rode to work. You can jump it and have BMX thrills on it, but its real purpose is to be a fun, timeless, and tough bike that you can “just pedal around on”. That might sound like we are downplaying the bike, but “just pedaling around” is what it’s all about! And, a simple bike that keeps working is often the most enjoyable one to ride.

Check out the new Taj in Xerox White along with the rest of our Summer Launch Bikes via your modem on the www.

Summer Bike Launch continues with the Dark Metalli

Summer Bike Launch continues with the Dark Metallic Silver Weekender Nomad. We are extra pleased with how this color came out–it has a soft glow to it without being too loud. We all know the color of a bike doesn’t technically matter, but we also know that the bike that looks the coolest is the one you’ll want to ride. This Nomad model dresses our versatile Weekender frame with crispy 1x11 mechanical shifting, 700c wheels, and shallow drop bars.

Check out our whole Summer Bike Launch on the ‘net.

Summer Bike Launch continues with new Hareraisers!

Summer Bike Launch continues with new Hareraisers! The Classic White Hareraiser with a rigid fork is shown at the bottom. The steel fork gives the bike a more BMX feel thanks to its non-squishy-ness, and a slightly shorter axle to crown (which steepens the head angle of the bike). Odyssey lever and a mechanical brake without a liquid inside the cable will also make sense to a BMX brain.

The Hareraiser FX (top), uses the same frame and comes with upgraded cranks, a hydraulic brake, and a tough Manitou DJ fork.

Check them out and the rest of our summer launch out there on the internet.