Impressions of NAHMBS
Feb 11, 2008 · 03:23 PM · permalink
I took the family on a quick trip down I-5 to see the show. My little guy made it a little “interesting” as he was on a mission to turn every crank and wheel he could reach. At most bike shops, this is cute and fun. At the show…not so much.
A couple impressions:
Lots of people complaining that it’s $18 to get in the show, and yet they are oogling at $10k bike frames. The detail on these bikes is certainly amazing, but it seems that this doesn’t make sense as a business model. The pricing on even the lower-end frames at this show are well over $1k, but it’s not the doctor/lawyer set clamoring for these things. I hope there’s enough folks out there to pay for these amazing rigs.
Bike parking was a mess. I was rather surprised to see this in Portland where all the locals rode there. There was even a sign saying that if you locked your bike to a tree or a handrail, that it would be “towed”. Ridiculous. My wife did mention that “man there are a lot of Surly’s”.
Paint these days is truly incredible. Vanilla Cycles has a new group called “Coat” with some amazing work.
Racks are big - I was surprised to see how many clever options were shown by the various builders. There were even a couple guys just pitching racks.
The trend is City bikes, and not necessarily commuter bikes. I take a pretty common route that’s ~20mi each way. There is a large group of folks who follow the same route, and I can’t say that many of the bikes there met the needs of the longer-run commuter set. I mostly wanted to see comfortable road bikes with fatter tires, disk brakes, etc. I only saw 2.
Somebody needs to invite Robin Williams or some other loaded bike nut to this thing to buy up all the stock to keep these guys in business. The creativity in the room came up with some really innovative work and hopefully there is enough dollars to keep it rolling.
Actually, Robin Williams WAS there… as was Lance Armstrong. I agree about more people with the ‘bucks’ needing to be interested in these kind of bikes… as well as the hard core biker crews.
“Rack is the new Track” Function with fashion.
Actually, Robin Williams was there! A friend got his picture taken with him.
hey, ya i totally feel you on that one. My commute is only 20 miles round trip, but its very hilly, there isn’t a flat stretch on it your either going up or down. So for me city bikes don’t cut it, too heavy. But i do love the stopping power of disc brakes for commuting in traffic/ weather I would love to see some high performance road bikes that actually feature disc brakes and wider tire/fender clearance. How about mechanical brakes that acutely feature duel articulation, instead of just pressing from one side and bending your disc rotors, causing them to constantly rub leading to endless frustration. I mostly blame the lack of innovation in that department on the UCI though, for making disc brakes illegal on cross bikes and basically destroying the market for high end light weight road bike with disc brakes. Here’s a pipe dream for ya, how about a hydraulic STI lever, ya drop bars and hydraulic disc brakes on a under 18 pound bike,, ahh that would be soo awesome
Erik - I hope you got to check out my friend Brian Marcroft in the back row at NAHMBS. He had a performance commuter bike on display for the first day. I’ve had good luck with my Trek Portland with mechanical disc brakes and Marcroft’s setup is quite similar. I’m a little surprised that there are more folks building to that spec. Brian has the bike setup with 28mm tires and 35mm fenders with plenty of clearance. He uses some of the fancier new steel, so the bike with SRAM Rival came in under 20lbs.
I love me some Robin Williams. I used to live in San Francisco and would see him out for a run or a ride on occassion (that’s one hairy fella). One day when I saw him coming back from Marin, he had a Mercedes G-Class (before anybody) with a rear rack loaded up with a Seven, a Trek, and a Serotta.
I hope he picked up something cool at the show.
Greatly enjoyed the show and was pretty excited to see the continual development of Randoneer and cargo style bikes. As these independents try out and tweak frame design, the big guys are watching and then following suite at an affordable level. In this way, the designers and builders are affecting the world at large.
The greatest point of concern are the “Orange County Chopper” bike builders. There were a number of bikes, including the show winner, that were beautiful but totally impractical for the real world. I am concerned that the industry will become to focused on a rarified audience and loose touch with the aficionado that supported their development.
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