finally a good fixed video

"I was just ridin' along..."

"and all of the sudden my fork broke. This is covered under warranty, right?"

Bonerjamz from Ian Roche on Vimeo.

i'm scared

of 45 degree banking. I guess riding any banking on a track is intimidating at first, but holy crap is that steep. The new indoor track in Boulder is 142 meters long (that's right) with 45 degree banks. There will be some crazy spectator races there.

kendo saddles blowout

I've put the last few Kendo saddles at a blowout price of $30. I have black, brown, pink, silver, red, and blue. These are on keirinculture.com. After this there won't be any more at all.

Orange 20 Bikes

Kazane frames and parts are now available in LA. Orange 20 has their first shipment of frames on the way now. They recently moved to a new bigger location at 4351 Melrose ave. The link to the shop is on the right of this page. I don't really need to say anything about the shop because everybody knows already.

What the hell happened to Bottecchia?

In 1924 and 1925 Ottavio Bottechia won the Tour de France. The next year he started his own line of race bikes. They made some nice bikes over the years. And they were very Italian.
A few years ago, I think in 2004, I was working for a small road bike distributor. We already had a Taiwanese brand that actually made really nice road and track bikes. The builder was small and we needed another brand to sell to shops in the US. The logical choice was an Italian company because there were a few with no US representation. I can remember Bottecchia's booth in the Italian pavilion of the Interbike show. It was twice the size of most other booths but only had 4 bikes. They did, however, have a giant backdrop with a picture of one of their bikes beside a semi-nude woman. Right away we were impressed. The bikes themselves were beautiful and very Italian. The problem was that the prices just too high, higher even than the better-known Italian brands like Colnago and DeRosa. We left the meeting empty-handed and Bottecchia's Italian bikes never found a home in the US.
Fast forward to this morning. Being a lover of Italian bikes I occasionally search different builders on ebay to see what's floating around. After searching this revered brand's name I found out there is now a "Bottecchia USA" selling discount Chinese road bikes on ebay. Bottecchia, like other brands like Tommaso, sold the use of their name to some US company with Chinese connections that just design the cheapest bikes they can and sell them to unsuspecting ebayers (if there is such a thing). Ottavio must be spinning in his grave.

chrome forks

I've set up an email list for people who want kazane chrome threaded track forks. I'm not sure when they'll show up so I'm not taking pre-payment. Send me an email at njs@keirinculture.com and I'll put you on the list. These will sell out fast (again).