Tough job, trying to give out three awards for the bikes that most appealed to us at grit.cx at the Bespoked Show. But after several laps of the show, we found some bikes that appealed to us. Actually, we found a whole load of bikes that appealed to us. Just some of which are below…
Let’s start…
Some of the Bespoked rosettes
The awards ceremony took place at the end of the first day and a big crowd gathered to see 40-odd awards given out to a huge range of bikes and builders. There were awards for technical excellence, innovation and just nice bikes. Ted James takes the award for his 953 ‘cross bike Ted chats to Tobias from Exzentriker, another winner Richard from Evanson takes the award for his N-1 machine Every builder was happy to share tips and secrets with other builders there.
Let’s look at Ted James’ 953 bike. There was a lot of hidden work involved once you got past the smart, but plain paint. 953 is hard stuff to work with, so kudos to James for making a welded and ground two-piece seat tube Internal cables are shot out to miss the head tube and avoid cable rub Jed’s a lucky guy Machined bullet ends call to mind ’90s Fat Chance Yo Eddy chainstays The complete bike had a purposeful stance
The Bicycle Academy had a stand with many of its alumni present. It has done much to educate and promote framebuilding as a viable job for people who thought ‘What if…?’ Lots of different bikes on show at the Academy stand
Andrew from the Bicycle Academy and a panel of fellow builders and advocates got to put over their view in the small, but packed auditorium for talks like ‘So you want to be a framebuilder’. Seems a lot of people do want to, yes… A happy (and tall) Tobias from Exzentriker We loved this big, beautiful (and dirty) monster cross singlespeed This calls to mind the top tube protectors that some keirin bikes have Matte pink? Why not? We loved these simple cable guides
Evanson Cycles also showed a monster cross/off road touring bike. Also dirty and also a bike that won our hearts. With the skinniest seatstays ever, but with front and rear thru-axles to re-add stiffness, it looked ready to take on some serious miles. A clever rack mount attached the front panniers to the thru-axle so that the carbon fork was untouched. The rack then attached up top by the stem. Neat. Another dirty bike. There’s nothing we don’t like on this beauty
There was another bike on the Evanson stand too – this Klein paint-inspired rough road machine. Not for the shy That’s a lot of pearl paint With this many colours, of course purple hubs… If you can’t have a showy show bike, what can you have?
There were stunning paint jobs aplenty, like this patchwork wonder from SVEN Some builders preferred to just let their metal speak This sausage-dog bike from Mercredi was a crowd favourite though We lost count of the sausage dogs on this, but there were a lot There’s one Or this simpler Mercredi – campaigned all winter and still shiny Chris King and Jay Sycip were at the show in person to promote the Cielo and King brand King launched this new Emerald colour as well as a matte finish for green, black and slate colours This digital-backed, analogue bike computer/watch comes from a Kickstarter campaign This Nichols was in the new-builders room. Ready to race? While it’s not all about perfect paint, it certainly helps. This bike on the Winter Bicycles stand shows the results of some long, winter evenings and an engraving tool This intricate head badge is just the start… We hope it comes with a matched pair of Purdy shotguns Those evenings must just fly by…
And that’s just a sampler. Really, you had to be there, but we hope that it’ll give you a taste of what was on offer…
More details on the many winners and exhibitors can be found here.
