2010 North American Handmade Bicycle Show

Over 6500 visitors pack the hall—Show goes Tex-Mex for 2011

Richmond, Virginia—When the lights in Hall D of the Greater Richmond Area Convention Center shut down at 6 pm on the evening of Saturday March 2, 2010—Day 2 of the sixth annual North American Handmade Bicycle Show—there was noticeably something missing. There was no momentum, no motion in the hallways at all. Nothing.

Despite the calls over the loudspeaker to get moving (‘park’s closed folks’)—nobody would LEAVE! They couldn’t get enough.

The crowd had thinned considerably from the noon rush of nearly 3200 visitors who crowded the hall Saturday to see the beautifully handcrafted bicycles on exhibit by custom framebuilders but when the lights went down, the hall was still abuzz with the hum of hundreds of casual conversations and popping flashbulbs.

The North American Handmade Bicycle Show was founded by Don Walker with a little help from a group of framebuilders—now known as the ‘Original Six’—in 2005 and in six short years the show has grown exponentially to become an annual gathering of more than 100 talented frame builders.

At times Walker has been asked to define handmade in terms of custom bicycles and admittedly it can be a fine line at times.

“It could be that the calloused, cracked hands and the daily risk of mangled fingers better define handmade,” stated Walker in a note to attendees at the show. The exhibitors at this show have sold their souls to the craft, spent long nights drinking lukewarm coffee in cold workshops, rejoiced over inspiration and toiled through occasional failures to attain their hard-earned success. They are true artisans. That’s the difference.”

In those six years the business of framebuilding has changed dramatically in part due to the show itself. Exhibiting at the show has become a bit of a friendly competition (see awards below) where framebuilders try to out do each other in terms of quality and creativity. The nature of the business is that, in many cases, items are built not for their salability but rather just for the sake of pride in craftsmanship.

A perfect example is a pair of custom machined stainless steel dropouts displayed in the booth of Anvil Bike Works.

“No, those dropouts won’t be for sale,” says Don Ferris, Founder of Anvil (a manufacturer of framebuilding fixtures) in response to a question from another exhibitor. “They’d be the most expensive dropouts on the planet at this point. I just made them for a project I’m working on.”

They both laugh as if it’s an inside joke—like they had each been there before—and the conversation drifted into more intricate details about the machine work and material costs.

It’s this drive to dream, craft, and innovate—having the means and skills to do it—which makes the handmade bicycle scene so intriguing. When walking the show floor it’s easy to be overwhelmed. A brief stop at each exhibitor’s booth reveals subtle details in their bikes that will draw you deeper in: details like the clever cam-style adjustable singlespeed dropouts on a Black Cat Bicycles 29er, or a custom machined-down shimano six-speed cassette fashioned for use on a Chris King singlespeed hub on a Groovy Cycle Works rigid 29er (think about the benefits of the six-speed no-dish rear wheel). Even material innovations like viable bamboo bicycle frames from Boo cycles and Bamboosero bikes stand out in a world of bikes dominated by carbon fiber, steel, and titanium.

The innovations being exhibited by these framebuilders are not passing by the greater bicycle industry unnoticed. Brian Fornes of Raleigh Bicycles was in Richmond to see the show, and more specifically the ideas on display.

“We like to go to NAHBS to see what creative ideas these builders are coming up with,” said Fornes. “Especially ideas we can adapt and implement into our line of bikes and bring to the masses.”

Not all of the items fall into that category of course because part of what makes the bikes so special is the amount of work that goes into the details. It’s these special details in craftsmanship and ingenuity that are honored each year with awards in a variety of categories that recognize the best of the best (please see 2010 awards below).

One tradition at NAHBS is to keep the following year’s location a secret until the end of the awards ceremony on the final day. While this frustrates some, the anticipation buildup has a punch-line effect and when Walker announced Austin, Texas as the host for NAHBS 2011 the response was electric.

“There is already a considerable amount of buzz around the news of NAHBS coming to Austin,” says Rich Staley, manager of Austin’s Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop. “Anything the NAHBS crew needs – we’re hear to do it and the whole bike community and network of bike shops will be behind it. There is already talk of organizing other events around the show – parties, rides, maybe even a criterium in downtown Austin. It’s going to be a fantastic event and we can’t wait for it to hit Austin.”

When the lights shut down for good on Sunday evening and exhibitors began to disassemble their bikes to pack up and ship home, voices in the lingering crowd could already be heard making plans for Austin 2011.

NAHBS 2010 Award Winners:

• Bilenky Cycle Works - Best Road Frame
• Richard Sachs - Best Track Frame
• Crumpton Cycles - Best Carbon Fiber
• Kent Eriksen Cycles - Best Titanium
• Kirk Frameworks - Best Fillet Brazing
• YiPsan Bicycles - Best City Bike
• Six-Eleven Bicycle Co. - Rookie of the Year
• Engin Cycles - Best Off-Road
• Calfee Design - Best Tandem
• Spectrum Tandem - Best Steel Frame
• Dinucci Cycles - Best Lugged Frame
• DeSalvo Cycles - Best TIG welded Frame
• Llewellyn Custom Bicycles - Best Paint
• Ellis Cycles - Best of Show
• Cherubim by Konno - President's Choice
• YiPsan Bicycles - Peoples Choice

Images from NAHBS 2010