In advance of Sea Otter, Santa Cruz and Chris King hosted an event for builders to show off their wares. Our American correspondent Fahzure Freeride (and my soon to be husband – eep!) went along to warm up his bicycle nerd antennae in advance of Sea Otter. Here are some of the bikes he snapped in between servings of free macaroni cheese and churros. I’m warning you now: they’re mostly not mountain bikes.

…

By stwhannah

Get the full story here:

Santa Cruz and Chris King Builders’ Bike Show

You done what over me?

(Sheepishly looks at the floor, as there’s a set of ingrids about to be ordered, as soon as I can get my hands on a c2w voucher for the rest of the groupset…)

Nice bikes, agree with the Retrotec comments though, an acquired taste. The head-tube isn’t far of the same length as my current El Mar seat-tube.

Y’know, beauty in the eye of the beholder an all that, but that is a ugly lookin’ parade of pointless bikes. I mean, sometimes ugly can be interesting or useful, or even purposeful, but those are just ugly nd pretty pointless- or pretend off-road bikes; aka gravel, which amounts to the same thing anyway.

Nothing unusual or weird about the Singular fork from what I can see, that is how many were back in the day (early nineties) You have clearly not been mountain biking long enough! 🤣

Nope, they were ugly back then as well, but there was at least the excuse of the fact we didn’t know any better. Now there’s no excuse* for it.

* well, that’s not strictly true of course, there’ a market for this sort of shit, and it’s 50+ year old long time MTBers who now have money and want to buy a bike that reminds them when they needed a belt for their 30″ jeans. It’s the same market that bike manufacturers have mined to persuade people to buy gravel bikes, only with even more money and even less sense.

Who’s Ingrid Gears, that’s what I want to know.

Anyway, Jayhawks – fugly bike, great band

So after the wedding, does that mean you’ll be Hannah Freeride? It looks like “Hannah for Rampage!” will be a step closer.

So after the wedding, does that mean you’ll be Hannah Freeride?

*cough* Pornstar name *couugh*

I like the retrotec swoopy top tube, but not the s bend downtube.

Also the head tube is monstorous, is it a XXL frame size on 700c wheels? If I was a massive lanky fella I’d prefer a riser stem than that 250mm+ ugly tube. Its nearly as long as the fork legs!

The Retrotec truly is a frame only a mother could love, but I doubt all the shadows on the photo’s are helping the aesthetic.