T A T I V I L L E

[facteur-blog]

Rockefeller Chapel

Many in the audience stayed, long after the lecture had ended. Throughout the chapel and spilling into the foyer, small clusters huddled together and parsed Dr. Cornell West’s words. I was still trying to wrap my head around the part where he wove together quotes from Thelonious Monk, Emily Dickinson, and Michel Foucault on the nature of unconditional love. A young woman in soiled khakis and Bean Boots was sharing her recent experiences with Médecins Sans Frontières in Cambodia. She’d recently spent six weeks pedaling from village to village on a heavily MacGyvered Raleigh set up as a mobile malaria vaccination lab. “I was planning on ten weeks, but had to leave early,” she said.

The reason she had to leave early, it turned out, was that she would spend the remainder of the month in Ferguson, Missouri - protesting and tending to minor injuries and illnesses of other volunteers... before returning to her job at Comer Children’s Hospital in the trauma center. As she finished her story, I shuffled my feet and looked at the ground. We knew one another through bicycles, but not terribly well. “I like your Twitter,” she said. I mumbled something unintelligible. Thankfully, a couple of teenage community activists began talking about their fundraising drive for a new after school program in Woodlawn. “We’re thinking of using Gofundme,” said the older boy.

It began to snow as I walked home in the darkness. Try as I might, I couldn’t resist the temptation to pull out my phone. It had been off for a couple of hours, I thought. I’M PROBABLY MISSING A LOT. The screen flashed, and I pulled up Twitter. An argument about Zwift. A link to a Gofundme for delusional cat 3s. Dozens of photos of $12 socks. I put the phone back in my pocket and paused, looking back at Rockefeller Chapel. Illuminated and sparkling against a blueberry night sky, it beckoned. Taking a long breath, I turned around and walked back.

[facteur-blog]

$1 Fits

We now live in the age of the $400 fit session. Let that sink in.

There is a lot to cover, and a lot to talk about, when it comes to the business and science of properly fitted bicycles. But there are plenty of places to read about all of that, and how we have arrived at a point where there are multiple schools, certifications, and tools costing tens of thousands of dollars (let's not dwell on the fact that these methodologies are often at odds with one another) where there once was a measuring tape, a plumb bob, and (hopefully) a ton of experience and empathy.

I think it's great that there are more and more folks, both in and out of the industry, that care about properly fitted bicycles. Of course, it's odd to me that despite the segment's rapid growth, even a casual observer can see that the vast majority of even "serious" cyclists aren't very comfortable on their bikes. But maybe this has less to do with the fitting industry and more to do with what has happened to the bicycle industry itself. Maybe it has to do with the fact that high end road bikes have gone from a choice between custom geometry or one of 22 stock sizes to: XS, S, M, L, XL. Maybe we can blame Giant. But I suppose if we blame Giant, we must also blame Bontrager, and Ibis, and Brodie.

Sometimes I feel as if this entire trajectory has been intentional. Switch from metal to carbon. Switch from traditional to compact geometry. Produce a few molds, reducing SKUs throughout the supply chain. Lay off higher skilled workers, hire younger, lower skilled workers at the factory. Lower costs, increase profits. Simplify the purchasing process. Lay off higher skilled workers, hire younger, lower skilled workers at the bike shop. Is it any surprise that stock bikes often don't fit well out of the box? Well, we conveniently have a [redacted] certified fitter on staff, and we'll give you a discount on our basic package!

Or there's the power-analysis approach. Or the aero approach. Or any number of other marketing techniques. Which is to say, there's a legitimate market demand for this stuff, just like there's a demand for carbon clinchers, or aerobars on bikes with tall head tubes, or Powermeters on hybrids, or road helmets with no ventilation holes. And so it goes.

Ben Serotta started SICI back in 1998, but well before that he was a guy who knew a ton about bicycle fit and physiology. He was always very gracious about sharing his experiences and ideas, and going back to the 80s, would give free clinics on fitting at Serotta dealers and various industry events. Of course, before Ben, there were any number of framebuilders, coaches, racers, and shop guys who had strong ideas about how a person should be properly fitted to a bicycle. My first coach was a proponent of the "two fist" method, KOPS, and obscuring one's front hub with the handlebars. It's gotten a lot more complicated since then.

This was in an era when most experienced folks, and by experienced I mean legs with 300,000km in them, would scoff at the idea of a bike fit. And to a large extent, they were right to scoff. Because what used to happen, and in some ways, what I wish still happened, is you just got a bike. Maybe it was the right size, or maybe it wasn't, but you got a bike, and you'd show up on the club run. And either you had it, or you didn't. And if you didn't have it, if you looked like a spider balancing precariously on a pile of metal or child riding his father's bike, someone would point it out, and show you the way. And over time, you'd begin to see it: souplesse. Maybe it was the old Polish guy who'd mostly ride at the back, and couldn't climb, but from the hips down looked like a rider half his age. Or maybe it was a newspaper clipping featuring Laurent Fignon off the front in a stage at the Giro: elbows relaxed, back arched, eyes forward, and rad hair flowing in the breeze. But sooner or later, you knew it when you saw it, and you also knew it when you didn't see it, and you'd tinker and tweak, until you figured it out on your own. Your position on the bike, your flexibility, the roundness of your spin, where and how you gripped the handlebars, your balance, your ability to remove a gilet at 45km/hr, your eyes, your comfort level after a six hour ride: these were all things that mattered, and everyone figured it out eventually. And nobody paid anything for it.

But here we are today, in an age when the average first year roadie has a mortgage and a couple of kids, someone worried at home about concussions and road rash, a sick carbon whip with sick carbon wheels, and a slammed stem. A slammed stem, and more often than not, the spine of a younger-middle-aged individual who might have been athletic in high school, maybe. But a slammed stem nonetheless. And a slammed 130mm stem if he reads the right blogs.

Remember when folks rode outside in the winter? Remember when folks rode outside in the winter on bikes with stems you could raise in the off season, because it's a little more comfortable?

Me neither.

But I get it, I think I understand what's going on now. Folks don't want to be told what to do, or how to do it by peers. Experience means nothing. You get what you pay for! So the new paradigm is: (1) Buy sick bike. (2) Buy sick powermeter. (3) Hire sick cycling coach. (4) Buy sick bike fit. (5) Buy sick race wheels. (6) Successsssssssssssssssss.

All that said, I have a deep and abiding respect for those folks who not only have been doing this thing for a long time, but can offer something unique. Something of real value. Something that requires years of experience, and training, and practice. There are fitters today with a strong background in physiology and sports injuries. This can be incredibly important for some folks. There are fitters who are up to date with the latest and greatest aerodynamic trends and theories. And it's a great time for triathletes and time trialists looking to eke out the smallest benefits. As far as traditional fitters go, in the Chicagoland region, the story begins and ends with Tony Bustamante of Velosmith. Without going into Tony's background or methods, know that if you're looking for a minimalist, confident, and complete bike fit: there's nobody better.

All that said, there is such a thing as a bike fit service here in Tativille. And there has been from day one. Here's how it goes:

We meet over coffee at your favorite cafe. We talk about your riding history, your athletic background, your taste in music, your injuries, and what kind of person you'd like to be on a bicycle.

We put you on your bike inside, or the Serotta fit bike, or both. We take some measurements, look at your flexibility, we talk. We tweak.

Whether you're a road racer, a commuter, a bike camper, a weirdo, or a grass crit champion, I can help you. And if I can't, I can refer you to any number of local domain experts.

Most importantly, we plan to ride together, so I can see all of this in action. And we probably meet again indoors, to measure, and tweak, and swap parts, and look at your spin again.

Maybe in a week, or a month, or a season, things get better. Because they will get better.

You pay me $1. And if you think it's worth $400, or $300, or $50, that's great. Donate that money to an up and coming junior. Or a kids program like Blackstone Bicycles. Or have me build you some sick tubulars. But don't pay me $400 for it.

There's no catch. You don't have to order a bike. You don't have to own a sick bike. You don't have to be in a secret club. You don't have to be fast, or cute, or even nice. (OK, you have to be nice.) Just ride your bike a ton, and when you feel like you have something to share, go ahead and share it. Maybe one day you'll be the Polish guy with mad souplesse at the back of the club run.

[facteur-blog]

Life Begins on the Other Side of Despair

I'm not really sure what's fashionable these days for introverted, Europhilic wanna-be teenage bike racers. But at 14, I'd have to rank Gitanes, bulemia, drillium, Bauhaus (the band, not the movement) and Jean-Paul Sartre as my greatest interests. Of course at 14, I knew nothing in general, and even less about French philosophy, but that hardly stopped me from spouting off at all hours about death consciousness, anticolonialism, morality, existentialism. Needless to say, I wasn't a very popular child in elementary school. And needless to say, I wasn't a very popular teammate - particularly on long training rides.

It was my second summer with the program, and I would be vying for one of only three spots on the traveling squad. We'd do a couple of stage races in the Rockies, some crits in the Midwest, and then on to New England for circuit racing, then back home. With the spring campaign completed, we all piled into a cargo van and drove out to the Eastern Sierras for a five day training camp. It would also be the final test, one final chance to make the selection and impress our coach and the elder riders. I packed a copy of _Nausea_, ten cigarettes, five film canisters filled with table salt, and my lucky size 42 Adidas Eddy Merckx kicks.

We arrived in a small town, our first basecamp, around noon. It was located along a fairly high ridge overlooking Badwater Basin, where, we were told, temperatures would reach 50°C. It felt that hot at the basecamp, but I didn't say anything. I just laced up my shoes, filled my tires with air, grabbed a copy of the cue sheet, and rolled out with five others. About an hour into the ride, just at the base of our first significant climb of the day, I flatted. Knowing that I was one of the better climbers, and confident in my ability to quickly replace my tire, I waved on the other guys, and off they went. I remember the smell of sulphur just then. I remember the smell of sulphur, and the punishing bright sun, and what at the time I imagined to be vultures flying overhead, although they probably were just crows. I peeled off the tire, uncoiled the spare from under my saddle, and was back on the bike before long.

The climb was a series of switchbacks, and the foothills was littered with weird brush, tall enough to obscure my view - so I wasn't sure where the guys were. I settled into a rhythm that I figured was pretty fast - fast enough to catch them after a few kilometers, anyway. Stopping had caused me to sweat a lot, so I removed my cap and dabbed my face, then stuffed it into my jersey pocket. Soon, the vultures were gone. Everything was real quiet, and all I could hear was my heartbeat and the bzzzzzzzz of my tires on the tarmac. Turn. Turn. Turn. Turn. Still no sight of the guys, so I hastened the pace a little. Is my cadence right? I asked myself. Are my tires too low? I checked: Nope, they looked fine. I approached a large boulder on the side of the road and noticed a fat looking lizard doing push ups. It had a green body and a dazzling purple chest. I couldn't do a single push up when I was 14. But I could climb, or so I thought.

Eventually, I reached the first crest. The switchbacks met up with a long false flat section that would dump me over the ridge and into a forested area. Still no sign of the guys. I ripped through the false flat and dropped into the forest, pedaling furiously. Where could they be? There weren't any forks in the road, so... Exiting the forest, I stopped at a clearing and consulted the cue sheet again. Another short climb, and then the road would descend into the valley, where we'd make a large 30km arc, before ascending the next series of climbs. Surely I'd either catch them, they'd wait up, or at the very least, I'd be able to spot the gruppetto in the distance. I reached into my pocket and grabbed a small baked potato, eating it with about a teaspoon of salt. And look! The vultures returned.

Finishing the valley arc section, I started to get concerned. There was still plenty of light left, but I had over 80km to go and really wasn't excited about finishing the ride solo. I took the second set of climbs at pace, counting six lizards doing push-ups along the way. At this point, I was pretty resigned to finishing the ride alone, so I checked my bidons: only a little over one bottle left, 2.5 hours to ride, and it sure as heck felt like 50°C. I hit a clearing and stopped for a nature break, smoked half a Gitane, and continued on. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that at that moment, I'd taken a wrong turn.

Two hours would go by before I consulted my Analog Seiko. The cue sheet either wrong, I thought, or my ride had gone pretty pear-shaped. The sun was beginning to set, the wind was picking up, and... what's that in the brush? Is that a coyote? I ate my second (and last potato), drank the last of the water, and... decided to turn around, retracing my route. Hustling up the first (fifth? I'd lost count) climb, a new worry popped into my head: would today blow my chances to make the traveling team? Would coach see me for the dunderheaded kid that I was? Was my failure to catch my teammates on one single, stupid ride enough to derail my Pro dreams? I noticed a lizard doing push-ups, and noticed his long shadow.

As night fell, so did the temperature. Rapidly. I reached into my pocket for another potato: Nope. Reached into the other and resignedly grabbed my cap, and put it on - tight and low, as unPro as possible. Had they forgotten about me? Were they eating pasta with mushrooms? Was I that insignificant, that unimportant? In the moonlight, I noticed another lizard. But he wasn't doing push-ups. He was looking right at me. He was looking right at me, and then he opened his mouth as if to eat an insect, but instead he spoke to me!

"Life begins on the other side of despair." he said.

I shook my head in disbelief as I rolled by. Having trained at elevation, and in the desert before, I knew hallucinations. I knew how dehydration and fatigue caused me to hallucinate. But usually my hallucinations were simply of food, like giant stalks of broccoli, or tarmac turning into rivers of chocolate milk. I'd never had an anthropomorphic hallucination before. I reached for my bidon: Empty. So I rolled on.

Finally I started to recognize the terrain. There would be one final climb to to the ridge where the basecamp was located. I thought about how I'd deal with things. Would I roll up, real cool, like, and say, "Hey guys. I decided to do an extra three hours." And then collapse on the floor? Would I go all Hinault on them? Or would I just apologize for not being able to stay with the group, and promise to do better in the morning?

I could see the little town in the distance now, and I could see the dim orange glow of out motel's vacancy sign. My tongue felt real cottony, my lips like sandpaper. Salt peppered my forearms, and my skinny ass legs were wobbly and cold. And then I heard something behind me: a car maybe? No. It sounded like an animal. A dog? I instinctively reached for my Silca frame fit. There were only a few minutes left now, a few minutes of excruciating climbing left. The grade just before town was very steep, maybe 16%, but a steady 16%, for about a kilometer. I could still hear something following me, so I looked back. And it was that lizard: the first lizard! The one with the sparkly purple chest.

"Life begins on the other side of despair." he said, shuffling behind me, urging me on, like a scaly tifosi on L'Alpe d'Huez.

I returned my gaze to the flickering motel sign up ahead, stood, and shifted into a larger gear.

[facteur-blog]

An Idli Mind Is the Devil's Workshop

So there I was: fifteen years old, sleeping in Grand Central Station with a 1978 Zeus Criterium, a smelly knapsack, and eleven dollars to my name. For three days, I'd wandered around Manhattan, exploring bookstores, bumming cigarettes, and trying to find a lift to Ithaca. I needed to get to Ithaca because, according to my careworn copy of the USCF newsletter, the city would host three days of circuit races followed by a weekend of crits - and I barely had enough money left for bread.

It was three weeks into the summer; I'd informed my mother that I was off to summer school, that I'd written a particularly persuasive essay, and I'd won a scholarship to Yale's summer intensive in French language and literature. I kissed her on the cheek, she tucked four neatly folded twenty dollar bills into my shirt pocket, and I rode into town to catch the next Greyhound. Little did she know that my Greyhound was headed to Salt Lake City, not New Haven, for a three day stage race, not a six week program studying Molière with jerks from Hotchkiss and Exeter.

Things weren't going to plan. It took a little longer than expected to make it out to New England, where I was told that the payouts were fat, and the competition fatter. And once I reached the Eastern seaboard, I discovered that the locals weren't exactly going to be the pushovers I expected. And so there I was, half way through my little adventure, sleeping in a bus station (albeit a beautiful, absolutely opulent one) and reconsidering many of the decisions I'd made in my one and a half decades on earth.

And did I mention that I was nursing a fractured clavicle?

"Excuse me, Sir." said the strange voice.

"Excuse me, Sir, but is this your peanut butter?" I squinted, and saw a small boy about my age with a friendly, narrow face and dark eyes. I took my glasses out of my pocket and sat up. With my prescription in, I could see that he was holding a jar of peanut butter and looked exactly like Satyajit Ray's Apu.

"Oh! Thank you, yes.. it must have rolled out of my pack." I said. (Would it be racist to mention that he looked like Apu? I wondered. Would he be impressed that I not only recognized him to be Indian, but that he reminded me of a cultural hero? Or was Apu Bengali?) He handed me the jar and kind of just stood there. And then I noticed that his legs were shaved. (Or are they really shaved? I asked myself. Maybe Indian guys don't have leg hair? Or maybe it's a religious thing? Do Hindus shave their legs? I wondered. Or, wait! Maybe he's from Pakistan. Is he Muslim? Do Muslims shave their legs? Is all of this racist?) But it was the Cinelli t-shirt that should have given it all away.

Vijay was seventeen, a junior at St. Ann's, and a bike racer. Serendipity was in fact on my side that morning, because not only was Vijay a bike racer, but he was a bike racer with an uncle who lived in Ithaca.

Over the next week, I learned that Vijay was born in New Jersey, his family was from Kerala, and nearly every male adult in his family was a doctor. But not Vijay's uncle Naresh. Naresh was an associate professor of linguistics at Cornell. He'd studied at Oxford, where he picked up bike racing (time trialling, mainly) - passing on the bug to a young Vijay. The races ended up alright. I made a little over a hundred dollars, which was less than I was hoping, but enough to slough off to the next leg of my journey: the Midwest, where an exciting series called Superweek promised big money, fast racing, and cheese!

But it was riding for hours in and around the Finger Lakes that I cherish. The three of us stayed in Naresh's small apartment on campus. We'd wake at dawn, and fill our pockets with the most delicious riding snacks I'd ever encountered: fresh little idlis wrapped in foil, each one flavored with a different delicious chutney: coconut, mint, fenugreek, lemon, ginger. One bidon would get water, and the other sambar. And a little waxed paper envelope filled with dried mango and cashews. Crushed limestone roads, wild goats, weeping willows, vineyards, horned owls, blueberries. We'd return five or six hours later, sipping mini Cokes on the benches in front of Mann Library, and watch coeds tossing frisbees until dusk.

[facteur-blog]

Out Near the Huyterhuis

I was a pretty big cinema buff as a teenager. Folks thought I was studying French and Italian because I was a junior bike racer with big dreams, but it was really because I preferred to avoid reading the subtitles at screenings of Fellini, Godard, Bresson, Truffault... The summer of 1983 was shaping up to be a pretty exciting one. For months, I'd kept track of the planned domestic releases of Zelig, Entre Nous, Octopussy, The Meaning of Life, Scarface, Un jeu brutal, Krull, Senjō no Merī Kurisumasu, The King of Comedy, and, embarrassingly, Flashdance. But I ended up missing every single one of these films on their first runs. Because I was sent to Delft to race bikes.

In fact, it was supposed to be Rotterdam. Or Lyon. Or Ghent. Or any number of other places with a cluster of development squads... but in the end I spent the summer in Delft, along with a couple of teammies. I spent the summer in Delft, riding and racing bikes. And I didn't get to watch any movies. At the time, I didn't think was a fair bargain.

The cycling itself was, well, pretty brutal. In fact, life in general was much tougher than I could have imagined. I was quickly disabused of any notion of actually being a good bike racer, but instead of resorting to drowning my sorrows in the readily available narcotics, I'd mope about town... spending time in churches, smoky cafes, cluttered bookstores, and back alley bike shops. And, for better or for worse, that's kind of where this story begins.

It was out near the Huyterhuis, on a quiet street with two dueling florists and, oddly enough, a little auto mechanic's garage. The garage opened very early, and we'd see him puttering about just after dawn, on our way out of town. By mid-morning, he'd have a little awning up, and would be greasy-faced, always clutching a spanner in one hand. He'd wave. One day he was working on a sick 911, and I really wanted to see it. The mechanic's name was Hugo - a pudgy little man of about 35. He let me sit behind the wheel. It was grand. As I was about to leave, I noticed that my brakes were off a bit and asked if I could borrow a wrench.

"Well sure," he said. "Why don't you come around back and my cousin can look at it?"

We walked around the side of the garage onto a narrow cobblestone alley. It smelled like chocolate. A kitten sat was sitting in a small patch of sunlight in front of a nondescript grey door. Hugo nudged aside the kitten and called out, knocking on a small hazy window. The door opened, and out stepped a hairy, fragile looking fellow in a crisp beige VAR apron and blue Campagnolo cap. This was Martin.

Hugo left, and I brought my bike into Martin's workshop. Oddly enough, it was almost exactly the same dimensions of the new Wicker Park TATI: about 200sf, with a tiny, airplane-sized water closet behind a hidden door. There was an old Cinelli bike stand mounted on one wall, frames and wheels hung from the ceiling, and beautiful oak work table right in the middle of the room. A home made truing stand was built into the tabletop, and there were two identical mugs on each side of the stand. One was filled with cigarette butts (Gauloises, I'd later learn) and the other, some cold and very likely, bitter, coffee. WUT.

Now the thing is, I began writing this note with the intention of explaining what's going on here in Tativille. There are big changes afoot - some good ones, I think. It's been very difficult to read the new neighborhood... It turns out that Wicker Park isn't Hyde Park... which isn't to say that things were exactly hunky dory on the south side, but at least I was operating under the illusion that I knew what I was doing. One of the changes is that the shop will be offering, for the first time, stock bicycles.

On its face, this is a terrible decision, or at least one that does not seem in any way consistent with the shop ethos over the past six years. Above all else, TATI has valued the rare and ephemeral, the ridiculous, the hand-made, the one-of-a-kind. The impossibly Euro. The inaccessible. The dopest of dope. The kinds of bicycles you only find on blogs. That aren't in English. Custom frames by builders who haven't made bikes in a decade. Modern simulacra of rebranded pro bikes from the 90s peloton. Things Fausto would ride. Or wish he did. And that's kind of where this part of the story begins.

Martin's was the first shop I'd ever seen where every bicycle was built from the frame-up. Even Shaw's Lightweights had Schwinns at some point, didn't they? Or Miyatas perhaps... He would build Ciocc, Gios, and Colnago. I remember seeing Urago, a Singer or two, Zeus, Crescent, and all varieties of small local builders' bikes. Somehow, after seeing a few dozen of Martin's bikes, I started to see how every single build bore his stamp. The way he wrapped the tape in a double figure 8 around the levers. The moto brake routing and extra cable length. The extra short bidon cage bolts. The extra twist he'd give every toe strap behind the toe clip. These are all such high end and beautiful bicycles! My own shop back home would build perhaps one or two along these lines every month, but the lights were kept on by the steady stream of Schwinns and Kuwaharas and Treks rolling though the doors. I was so envious.

It wasn't until later that summer that I realized that things weren't exactly what they seemed. On a training ride one day, I asked another junior about his rig, a canary yellow Benotto.

"It's Italian, right?"

"Well, kind of... it's made in Mexico."

I was confused. Later that day I asked Martin about the Benotto and he explained that yes, it was made in Mexico and that in fact he'd built it up. Not only that, but the bulk of his actual sales were these inexpensive imports. While not exactly a secret, I'd never actually seen one on display or being worked on.

"I build them up at night and deliver them early in the morning." he said. "In reality, the paint isn't so good, but the frames, they are straight and race just fine."

"But they're not Italian!"

"No, they are not Italian." he said.

When Martin was a boy, he'd worked in a frame factory that built utility bicycles and mopeds. But after only a few years, the factory closed, and the machines were moved to East Germany or Poland, he wasn't quite sure.

"I really wanted to become a framebuilder, I wanted to become Faliero Masi, but I lost my chance. At the time that the factory closed, I still knew very little about framebuilding, and so I went to work at a bicycle shop."

[facteur-blog]

Remembrance of Things Dugast

Among the things I've learned in my years in Chicago: Road tubulars don't corner all that well on black ice, even tenured classics professors can be fans of professional football, and you simply cannot find a decent madeleine in our fair city.

A few days ago - you'll remember it, it's the one where the mercury dipped a few degrees below zero for the first time this year - I decided to head out into the cold, Proust in hand, in one final attempt to locate even a marginal example of this buttery, heavenly pastry. I checked the weather. My phone said "lovely!" and so I fingered up a pair of black 5blings and reached for the door. But my cat was all, "I don't think so," and nodded towards the window. There was a bit of frost around the edges, and I could see schoolchildren outside, huddling. They were mittened up, and wearing huge puffy jackets. They looked sad and desperate, hungry, and very cold. "Thanks, homie." I said to the cat, and grabbed a pair of mittens and a huge puffy jacket.

An hour later, I reached the shop, and then it hit me. All morning something had been bothering me, somewhere in the back of my mind there was a single important task - but it was fuzzy and shapeless, and I simply couldn't recall. And then there it was before me: a cumbersome and heavy bike box leaning against the far wall, a box which I had promised to deliver to Evanston the previous night.

The ride through the city had been pretty uneventful. I was on a prototype city bike - a steel fixed gear with a rather nice low bottom bracket, room for fat tires, and a very slick integrated front cargo basket. As I had rolled through Pilsen, the aroma of freshly baked tortillas filled my nostrils, and for a moment, I imagined what fun it would be to deliver freshly baked tortillas by bike. And how perfectly a few hundred would stack on this cute, sturdy basket. But a couple hundred tortillas and a full sized bike box are not the same thing. And... I thought to myself, even if I *could* balance the box on the basket, how could I stabilize it?

It's been a busy year for this little shop. The move from parks Hyde to Wicker in the spring, while not exactly traumatic, was a bit of a logistical nightmare. Business spiked, so naturally I cut operating hours and began mostly working between midnight and dawn, in order to avoid the hullabaloo. Built a few hundred sick wheels. Glued a couple hundred sick tubulars. And repaired all varieties of flotsam & jetsam along the way. It was then that I took a look at the flotsam & jetsam section of the store. Neatly stacked in a corner, between piled of old Rouleurs and cases of Nutella embrocation, is where I keep my busted tubular carcasses. This year there were so many that I decided to only retain the fancy stuff: Veloflex, FMB, Dugast. And then: a satori.

One of the many regrets I have in life is not sticking it out and making it to Eagle Scout. I made it to Life, or Star, or something like that, and was well on my way to Eagle, when my cycling coach put the kibosh on all that. "Racing is everything." he said. "Racing is everything." I said, and so I quit the scouts. If I'm honest, I never really liked being a Boy Scout. Sure, the uniforms were pretty sick. I liked the formality, the hierarchy, the casual hazing of inferiors. But I hated everything else about it. Except for the survival skills. In fact, very early on, I discovered a preternatural skill with knots. I might have made a pretty good sailor. Had I not been preternaturally seasick, even at the mere thought of the ocean.

Eight sick (and rotten) Dugasts and six Alpine butterflies later, I'd secured the box to the basket. "Aight, Playa." said the cat in my head.

The trip to Evanston ended up being pretty quick and uneventful. The recipient was so thankful that she offered to buy me some coffee as a tip. We walked over to Unicorn for Americanos and vegan muffins. She noticed the Proust in my pocket, and I admitted with embarrassment that it was a translated copy, that I'd never be able to get through the book in the original French. And then, for a moment, things got weird. I don't even know how this all happened. I don't even know how I awoke that morning and decided to grab the Proust off of the shelf. Because at that moment, we both realized that here we were, at Unicorn Cafe, with a copy of _Remembrance of Things Past_ between us, a zef fixed gear cargo bike piled high with rotten Dugasts leaning against the window, two delicious Americanos on the table, two half eaten vegan muffins... and her name, awkwardly enough: Madeleine.

[facteur-blog]

Mauvaise Foi

She's no Henri, but my cat is certainly more in tune with French existentialism than most folks I know. She sees right through my fragile facade, and knows full well that, like the rest of the merchant class, I'm resigned to lead an inauthentic life and to forever suffer under the weight of mauvaise foi.

Few bike shop employees view their vocation as necessarily noble, but many like to rationalize the decision to pursue a chronically seasonal, underpaid career choice as having some degree of higher social value than, say, hocking iPhones. I'm not quite this delusional, but do share some form of this fantasy. It's especially when the weather dips, business slows, hours are cut, and income plummets, that we come together and ask one another the hard questions: is it worth it? Is it time to grow up?

A decade ago or three, things might have been a little different. A certain percentage of folks have always gravitated to bike shop work for a "love of the sport," or somesuch... and many of those would classically be described as overqualified, overeducated, or both. But in today's economy, when work can be difficult to come by regardless of one's collar hue, it's not surprising in the slightest to learn that your headset is being overhauled by a double PhD.

It's a low margin business, this. And we are witnessing the slow motion transformation of an industry, shaped on the one hand by internet commerce and direct-to-consumer sales - and the other by consolidation and the growth of regional and national retail chains. Obviously, the local bike shop isn't going to disappear altogether, but the old guard is dying off (or being bought), and those few foolhardy souls brave enough to jump in now, are having to play by rules unimaginable even a decade ago. Here in Chicago, as elsewhere, the severe seasonality of the business leads to some pretty crummy and destructive practices: very aggressive discounting, the reliance on low wage temporary labor, and a remarkable tendency towards merchandising conformity. These are all bummers, but we are seeing glimmers of hope in the form of a few newcomers to the game.

Heritage Bicycles is equal parts neighborhood cafe and miniature bicycle boutique, but with several Big Idea twists. When word first leaked about the operation, I sneered at the Wald stems, amateur-looking frame welds, and overall aesthetic of their (admittedly made in Chicago) 18kg city bikes. But slowly, surely, I began to understand that this wasn't just a copycat bike cafe, where coffee was a mere afterthought to a small bike shop, or even the converse. Heritage is something altogether different, and wholly unique. Its owner, Michael Salvatore, is aiming to build a brand which is some kind of fascinating mash up of vintage J Crew, Anthropologie, the OG Schwinn, doused in artisinal coffee and swathed in fine Brooks leather. It's awesome and exciting to watch.

Many of us will remember Tony Bustamante from his days writing Belgium Knee Warmers, some from his association with Alberto's, and a few from his days at Seven. His Velosmith shop burst out of the gate, guns blazing - an itsy bitsy and unassuming pro shop located on a quiet street in Wilmette that just happens to feature Lightweight Wheels, Parlee, and Seven. Tony is one of the premier fitters in the country, a stylist among stylists, and perhaps most importantly, well schooled in the history of bicycle riding, racing, and fabrication. It doesn't hurt that he's a ridiculously nice guy. How is it, many of us wondered, that a shop with no history (not exactly true, but you get the point), very little inventory, and no marketing budget to speak of, could instantly find itself among the nation's upper echelon? Spend a few minutes with Tony, and you'll immediately understand. It's no accident.

Back home, I'm busy brewing a pour over cup of Half Wit Sulawesi Toarco Estate A and arguing with my cat.

"More authenticity, homie." she says.

"OK, but that basically means I'd only be selling handbuilt steel fgcx bikes and tubulars!"

"Sure, but you'd feel less dirty."

"I don't feel dirty, this isn't art."

"So make it art!"

"Le sigh."

[facteur-blog]

Pizza Boxes

Last week I finished up a some wheels for a new customer. He'd been pretty clear about what he wanted: Tune to 32h TB25s. In fact, he wanted two identical sets of these wheels. Both sets would get silver CX Rays and Veloflex Arenbergs. And brass nipples. The interesting thing was that the entire order took place over Twitter, in three neat, 140 character messages.

When we met to hand off the wheels, I noticed that he was wearing a jacket embroidered with the original Silicon Graphics logo. So I asked, "Did you work for them?"

And he was all, "Yeah."

"Mang, I loved my pizza box Indy." I said.

"Yeah," he nodded. "I was on the design team for the Indy and the O2."

His voice kind of dipped when he said O2. And I knew immediately what he meant. SGI was a high flying, super steezy computer company for a large chunk of the 90s. They produced legitimately top notch, super fast equipment that also happened to look ridonkulous. Even engineers who worked for competitors were known to buy SGIs and use them at home: the signature "electric blue" low, flat cases were as ubiquitous as Aeron chairs and home office Cisco routers among a certain set. But the industry shifted hard towards the end of the decade, and SGI was left flat footed: offering an admittedly well engineered replacement for the Indy in the O2 to a marketplace that no longer existed. It was a huge flop, and the company soon went bust.

We both kind of stood silently for a moment, as he held one of the wheels closely, examining the glue job. "Would you like a cup of coffee?" I asked, conveniently enough, as we were at that moment standing in the middle of Wormhole. He nodded.

"I don't live in Chicago," he began. "After SGI, I got a job at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. I've been there ever since."

"How is the riding?"

"Well, aside from the fact that there are actually four seasons, pretty fantastic. I get to ride almost every day."

"So do you have family here in Chicago?"

"No."

"But you didn't come out here just for these wheels! I would have shipped them had a I known..."

"No, no. I come to Chicago every year. I'm kind of a foodie, so I like to try out the new restaurants... and of course, grab some pizza."

"...and some nice wheels?"

"Yeah, I'll be back in the spring, and I should have my new bike done by then. It's a Bilenky touring rig, so I'll need some more wheels."

"Great! Have you thought about what you want yet?"

"Not really, but I'll tweet you when I decide."

"Thanks."

"This coffee... it's really good."

"Yeah."

I thought about our interaction later that day. And then for a while that evening, and then some more the next day. I thought about Silicon Graphics. I thought about my shop. I thought about how after surveying my customers all month, I discovered that 80% of their bicycle dollars were being spent online. And these are folks who go out of their way to support small, local businesses... but also have esoteric, impeccable taste. E-commerce is often the last (but only) resort for these folks, I thought. I stared at my shelves containing 35 flavors of embro. I stared at my drawers of Gage+DeSoto t's, Search & State jackets, and vintage Assos goodies. I stared at the boxes of now-discontinued White Industries H3 hubs I've been hoarding, at the Paul Components brake tools, at the Catlike Whispers. Am I looking at SGI Indy pizza boxes? Am I both behind and ahead of the curve? Is the TATI curve actually in its own alternate universe? I thought about the Cherubims on the way. And the Malin+Goetz eucalyptus deodorant, and I thought about Corima.

Le Hm.

And then I started working on an entirely new plan.

[facteur-blog]

Petit Malaise

Among the many stupid things I did in college in order to catch a cutie's eye was read Émile Zola. My neighbor was signed up for a French lit class that included "Au Bonheur des Dames", and, you know, in order to seem worldly and exude an effortless savoir faire, I figured one day that I'd read it first. Then weeks later, when she'd begin poring over the text, I'd casually drop references to Octave Mouret or Denise Baudu, and then we'd share a cigarette. Needless to say, things didn't quite work out this way.

But I did get obsessed with Zola and ended up reading seven or eight of his novels. The series takes place against the backdrop of the invention of the department store in mid-19th Century Paris, and what amounts to, in many ways, the coming of age of modern retail. Earlier this year, the BBC produced an 8 part miniseries loosely based on these novels, and it's fantastic.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about these stories. It's around this time of year that I consider how life in Tativille has been, and make changes and improvements. 2012 marked the shop's relocation to Wicker Park, smack dab in the middle of the city's densest bicycle commuter population and amidst a vital and exciting retail scene. For the most part, I toiled away in my little box, doing the same sorts of things that I did when I was 13: building and repairing wheels, gluing tubular tires, and listening to Miles Davis. I kind of ignored the realities of the shop's new locale, but paid very close attention to the trials and tribulations of all the other shops nearby.

The retail bicycle industry is odd. It's odd because there are vast numbers of educated, perfectly employable folks in their 20s, 30s and even 40s who choose to remain in this shrinking industry, without health care, without a living wage, without savings, and without any realistic opportunity to remedy these things. Meanwhile, things are changing rapidly. Internet sales are increasing at a rate of 18% per annum. 7% of all independent bike shops close each year. The supply chain is transforming, with chains and big box stores growing rapidly. Big brands are experimenting with company stores, mimicking the automotive industry in an effort to eliminate middlemen. The industry is growing overall, and there are surely some success stories, but real income in the industry has shrunk for 13 straight years.

Here in Chicago, we're going to see a pretty exciting 2013 on the retail scene. Several new, well financed shops will be opening their doors. A few of the mid-sized independent shops have gotten serious about their marketing: discounting, promotions, bait-and-switch are the weapons of choice. I suppose all of this new competition is probably good for consumers, at least insofar as one won't really have to pay retail for parts, bikes, or services any time soon.

I went back and read "Au Bonheur des Dames" last week. It's shockingly modern. Octave himself is a ruthless and effective executive. Using innovations such as home delivery, massive sales, heavy advertising, and an in-store cafe... he methodically destroys his smaller competitors one by one. And his customers love him for it, for at the same time his store delivers an exciting and intoxicating array of the very best products, flawless service, and an overwhelming selection. Then again, his employees are essentially indentured servants, working (admittedly at will) for pauper wages, living in company dormitories, and dreaming of better lives that will never materialize. But in this way, is it not prescient?

Of course, that my takeaway from one of the greatest novels of all time is more about its purported relevance to bicycle retail than its real intent, exploring the mysteries of the human heart, is, on this cold wintry morning, mon petit malaise.

[facteur-blog]

Double Paceline

This morning, after a thoroughly enlightening meeting over coffee with Lou Kuhn of The Pony Shop, I staggered back to Hyde Park for an atypically busy morning in Tativille. First up was a chat with a young woman planning a solo bicycle tour through the Andes mountains. We spent the bulk of our time discussing volcanoes ("I'm an anthropologist first, lepidopterist second, amateur volcanologist third.") before getting down to the brass tacks of tire pressure, portable tools, handlebar bags, and the all-important titanium spork. She left with a hour's worth of marginally useful advice and an orange Rhodia pencil.

Next up was a young Divinity School doctoral candidate. Having dealt with a number of Div School cyclists, I knew all too well that veering away from the topic of bicycles would likely prove foolhardy and probably embarrassing as well. So I tried to keep things tidy.

"Where did you grow up?" I asked.

"A town in Minnesota called Winona."

"Like Winona Rider?"

"Well, yes, but also Princess We-Noh-Nah, from the romantic legend of Maiden Rock."

"..."

"Yeah, like Winona Rider." he said.

In fact, I knew about Winona, but I tried not to let on. We only had a half hour, and in that time we'd need to get through so many things: the differences between Retul and Serotta, titanium and aluminum, Gaulzetti and Primus Mootry. We'd never make it. We'd never make it, especially if I allowed myself to tell my Winona anecdote. And like all of my anecdotes, it would be complicated, and take a while to elucidate, and at the end probably wouldn't be all that interesting.

But of course, I couldn't help myself.

"James Earle Fraser is also from Winona, you know," I began.

"Who's that?"

"Fraser was a sculptor. He designed the Buffalo nickel, the one from 1913." I said.

He didn't look all that interested in the story, but there was no going back now. We were still nowhere near the punchline.

"Actually, he moved to Chicago in the 1890s to study at the Art Institute at age 14. He lived in what is today Bridgeport and became friendly with the bicycle messengers of the day, and even himself rode solo from Chicago to Milwaukee and back one summer. He then moved to Paris, another city dominated by cycling culture. He developed a fondness for absinthe and opium and midnight rides through the city. He would carouse all around Paris from dusk until past midnight, ride back to his tiny studio and work until dawn, then sleep throughout the daylight, and repeat it again. Needless to say, it wasn't the most productive lifestyle."

"I had no idea. Not too many famous people come from Winona."

"Well, so, after several years of this, he got his act together and set up shop in New York, focusing on numismatic work. And a decade later, he was commissioned by the federal mint to design the Buffalo nickel."

"Isn't that the one that's really collectible?"

"Yeah, some are worth thousands, but most are worth about a hundred dollars."

"Well, for a nickel..."

"Yeah, for a nickel. Anyway, when I was a teenager I worked in a shop that was owned by an old Belgian guy. His family had moved to the states after the war. His father was a jeweler and a watchmaker, and his father's brother had been a professional cyclist and owned a shop in Ghent. The brothers bought a small building and set up shop. On one side, the father repaired watches and did a bit of custom jewelry - but mainly he dealt in rare coins. On the other side, and down in the basement, the brother built a bike shop. By the time I started working there, the brothers had died and Henri ran both businesses."

"OK..."

"I was far too unskilled to be of any use outside of the bike shop, where I spent most of my time gluing tires in the basement. But I was a bit of an amateur coin collector myself, so I liked to check out the glass case in the jewelry shop from time to time. One day, Henri set out an complete set of 1913 Buffalo nickels that he'd recently acquired. I had a couple of Buffalos, but they were really worn and were probably work only a few dollars each."

"I don't mean to be rude, but... I need to get to class in about fifteen minutes."

"Right, almost done here." I said. "So... where was I? Oh, right. This was around the time that I started to ride with the other guys at the shop. I wasn't racing yet, but was starting to pick up all the little skills, like riding rollers. We had a few sets that Henri had built himself in the basement. They were really tiny and narrow, but had steel supports, so they were impossible to move. This, I found a little unnerving, because you'd end up essentially elbow-to-elbow if more than one person wanted to ride."

"I don't want to ride rollers."

"Oh, I know. This isn't about rollers. Actually, it's about what you learn after you learn to ride rollers. It was maybe a month later, after I'd gotten pretty comfortable riding indoors, that the winter training began in earnest. It was really fantastic, actually. Fifteen or sixteen of us would go out for two hours at a time. We all had exactly the same gearing on our fixed gear bicycles, so it was so smooth, and quiet, and perfect. We'd do a double paceline the entire time. It's kind of sad to say it, but those first few years might have been the best riding of my life."

"Wait, how does the nickel relate to this?"

"Oh yeah! That was the point, wasn't it? So, one of the drills we used to do on these training rides was to take a penny and stick it between two elbows: yours, and the rider's next to you. And you couldn't let it drop!"

"No way, that's impossible."

"It's not as hard as it sounds, but yeah, they'd drop and you'd have to pick it up. And then you'd get dropped, and it wasn't so easy to catch up, so you learned pretty quickly. Anyway, I was pretty bad at this one. So to teach me a lesson, one day Henri showed up to the ride, but instead of a penny, he gave me a mint condition 1913 Buffalo nickel. It had to be worth hundreds of dollars, even then. It looked to have barely been in circulation at all. I was so afraid! But I made it through the first sector of the ride without dropping the nickel. That simple experience gave me so much confidence on a bike. It sounds dumb, but from that point on, I felt like I could do anything."

"Wow, now I kind of want to try that."

"You should, it's a lot of fun."

"Hm, I kind of need to get to class, and we haven't even talked about bikes yet."

"Really, I think we just did!"

[facteur-blog]

Sometimes a Schleck is Just a Schleck

Ever since the photo of Andy Schleck in his national champion flavored Radioshack-Nissan kit was released, it bothered me. The design itself was appealing enough, clean and simple and structured as it is. No, it was a nagging image buried somewhere in my brain, just one more piece of cycling ephemera buried under layers and layers of equally useless nostalgia and trivia.

But before long, I gave up, and the quandary slipped my mind. Weeks went by, and this being cobble season - Andy wasn't very visible in his tidy little tricolor kit, so I wasn't reminded of the question. And so I forgot about it entirely, until this morning.

I was chatting with a friend about Roger Sterling's office design, and how I really admired the discipline necessary to design completely without color. "But aren't you color blind?" he asked. "Yeah, pretty severely." I answered.

The conversation turned to cigarettes, elevators, wingtips, and then back to the interior office design. "Do you remember the episode with the painting?" he asked. "Um, yeah, it was an Ellsworth Kelly, right?" I said. "Oh come on, did you even take art history in college? It was a Rothko," he said.

But just as he said those words, an image popped into my head. It was a real Eureka! moment. The image in my head was of a dress that Kelly had designed in the early 50s during his time in France. Surely the Radioshack-Nissan kit designer also had this image in his or her head too.

I mean, this can't be a coincidence, can it?

But boy, do I like me some Color Field painting. Even if I can't really discern the colors themselves. And maybe even more so because of it.

[facteur-blog]

The Definitive 2011 Correct/Incorrect List

INCORRECT CORRECT Di2 Playing Wii Tennis while riding rollers Oakley Fauxley Assos Zegho Vintage Oakleys Expensive carbon race wheels Recycled carbon race wheels Getting Doored De Cross Gaat Door Hot Pants Hoogerland Hot Pants Guns N Roses played at races R. Kelly played at races Chinarello Deng Fu Speedvagen Humble ENVE EDGE Rapha Rin Project Shifters that break when you crash Shifters that don't break when you crash Sandbagging the 4s Sandbagging the 4s if you're 11 years old Tallbikes CX Tandem Tallbikes Flyovers Muddy Runups Jens Ten Dam

[facteur-blog]

Finding My Religion

Freshman year in high school is rarely a bowl of cherries, and mine was no exception. And so that summer, I buried myself in bicycles: racing, repairing, reading, and recovering. It was my third year racing, which according to my coach (and Eddie B. and all the other Gods of European Cycling) was the year where it would ALL COME TOGETHER and he'd be able to really sort the wheat from the chaff. "If you're still racing by sixteen," he said, "then maybe you aren't going to terrible."

"But most of you should quit before then."

Unfortunately, I spent the spring nursing a broken clavicle and wrist. Early summer results were promising, but a downhill finish crash resulted in a second (and this time compound) fracture, and a solid six weeks off the bike. I was crushed. And like a billion fifteen year olds before me, became an overnight cliche by dying my hair, taking up imported cigarettes, developing fashionable anorexia, dabbling in self mutilation, and tossing all my Air Supply and Foreigner out for Black Flag and The Clash.

And that was after only one week.

Having seen this before, my coach decided to have a chat with me. He began as gently as he possibly could. "You are an idiot," he said. "But all boys are idiots. You don't have anything in your life other than cycling, and so this is why you behave like an idiot when it's taken away."

I shrugged, and began to worry that he was going to force me to come to his church again. "All the great cyclists are Catholic," he had said at the time. He was correct, but my new found religion didn't fly at home. But instead, he handed me a greasy spiral bound notebook. 

"We need barriers."

"Barriers, like cyclocross barriers?"

"Yes."

"But, we have them already." I said, referring to the wooden planks and railroad spikes we'd use at races.

"We need portable barriers that you can ride with, and practice with." he said, tapping the notebook. "The specifications are written here. You will build them."

The notebook, it turned out, was the entirety of coach's cyclocross coaching manual. There were pages with cornering diagrams, and pictures of footwork that looked like dance move instructions. There were crude sketches of shouldering technique, and miniature gear inch charts and lists of cadences for racing and training. He had one page for each of us that listed our height, weight, and tire pressures used at every race, with an asterisk next to our names if we'd made the podium. And he had one page with a drawing of what looked to be portable cyclocross barriers constructed from plumbing equipment. 

Two weeks later, after filling a sketchbook of my own (using grid paper of course) with properly scaled renderings of the portable barriers, making a half dozen trips across town to the hardware store, and finally a weekend of experimentation, cutting, grinding, and assembling and disassembling the final product: I was ready. 

Coach met me in the shop basement. I had built two barriers. One was disassembled and stored in a potato sack to which I'd sewn a long shoulder strap. The other was on top of a work bench, covered in a tarp. I walked over to the bench and set the potato sack on the ground. The pipes made a loud clanking sound as they settled, and I noticed coach glance at the bag with an odd expression. No matter. "TA DA!" I yelped, as I removed the tarp to reveal the coolest, shiniest, most perfect portable and compactable 40cm tall BRASS & COPPER BARRIERS you'd ever seen.

"What are those?" asked coach.

"They're portable barriers!" I said, motioning to the joints. "See? They split into smaller pieces, so you can carry them in the bag."

Coach stood up, and walked over to the bench. He looked at the barrier. Then he looked at me. Then he looked at the potato sack and picked it up. "How many barriers are in here?" he asked.

"One." I said.

"It weighs a ton! And they won't last a day! See how easily they bend?" he asked, as he took a piece and turned it into a U before my eyes.

"But..."

"Plastic, you idiot. P.V.C. Like for gardens. Do it again."

In the end, he was right. And thirty years on, we're still making PVC barriers. But it wasn't a total loss. I ended up using the brass bits after all, and got to learn brazing in the process. And it made a fine trellis for my mother's sweat peas.

[facteur-blog]

Mavic & Me

The Mavic brand meant a lot more in simpler times.

Like a lot of folks, I guess I fell off the Mavic wagon somewhere after the MA40 and before the Helium... but the ride was already getting pretty bumpy years earlier. As a junior, I raced exclusively on a pair of hand-me-down 36h GEL280/330s. They were crashed and taco'd repeatedly, rebuilt a half dozen times, and eventually passed on to another junior for further abuse. They even won a few races along the way. And so from the beginning, the Mavic name represented the kind of grit and glamour that I'd associated with my heros: Coppi, Anquetil, Hinault. While not wholly indestructible, Mavic's products were at the pinnacle of performance, while being durable, at least in the right hands.

Things changed.

I grew up and rode for teams with sponsored equipment. Even raced a little on clinchers. Watched in horror as Mavic released Zap, MTB components, and eventually: prebuilt wheels. It was during that I admittedly strayed from my Europhilic roots, discovering the joys of J-Disc, American Classic, HED: the cycling equivalent of glam rock. My closet full of seasonally rotated GP4s began to accumulate cobwebs.

The estrangement has lasted a couple of decades, but over the past few years, I've been thinking a lot about my old friend and wondering what he's been up to. I almost picked up the phone back in 2008, but then the whole R-SYS debacle happened, and I thought it better to give it some more time. But then things started to look up. Adidas discontinued some of my favorite kicks of all time, disappeared, and then resurfaced as rebranded Mavic shoes. Last year, Mavic sponsored the Garmin squad, and was reminded that tubulars matter. And an unoffensive clothing line was launched.

And so it follows that over the coming weeks, with much trepidation, I'll be revisiting and reviewing, testing and thinking about all sorts of new and old Mavic. The known good: Reflex CD, Open Pro CD, iO/Comete, Cosmic Carbones (SRs mainly), the non-yellow shoes. The unknown: The Vittoria-made tubulars, the new pedals, the entire clothing line. Could care less: Ksyrium & R-SYS, anything MTB, Wintech.

It wasn't long ago that I viewed Mavic as an entirely diluted, wan and desiccated brand. Please prove me wrong.

[facteur-blog]

Ten Grams and Ten Years

"I heard you're trying to build more wheels than any other shop in Chicago." he said.

I shrugged. "Where did you hear that?"

"Um... you know, around. Maybe on Facebook."

"And you believe everything your read on Facebook?

There were four neatly arranged piles of metal on the coffee table between us. And a digital gram scale. Each pile had 64 spokes and 64 spoke nipples, and they were arranged from heaviest to lightest. He was furiously taking notes in one of those gigantic sketchbook moleskines as I spoke. 

"Well, we can forget about straight gauge -- but I did want to show you how much heavier they are." I said. He nodded, and held the pile in his hand. "These are all double butted. They're Wheelsmith DB14s and the nipples are all brass. It's kind of the default setup, but it's a pretty good starting point. Your wheels will get lighter, more expensive, and more fragile from here." 

That's what Luca used to say. He was the wheelmaster at my first shop. Born in Romania, but raised in Italy -- Luca hoped to one day join the professional peloton (just as I secretly did) as a young boy, but was quickly disabused of the notion. By the time he was 16, he'd been tracked into sportive racing, so he gave up cycling and became an amateur boxer instead. His father worked in a tire factory, and he soon joined him, but the strong stench of rubber and punishing physicality of the job forced him to leave within a year. He continued to box, and ended up traveling all around Italy that summer. It was in the Dolomites that he witnessed Koblet defeat Coppi. But it was in fact the service course mechanics that impressed Luca the most. They wore grey smocks and worked with amazing precision, speed, and control... usually with a cigarette dangling from their lips. They drove tiny Fiats and Lancias at breakneck speeds up and down mountains, spanners akimbo. They seemed to him the epitome of style and he desperately wanted to join their ranks. And so he did.

For the next decade, Luca worked his way through several teams, eventually settling with a Dutch outfit based in Nijmegen. It was a second tier squad, but had the distinct benefit of racing full road and cyclocross calendars, providing year-round employment. Even so, these were hungry years, he used to tell me. The team didn't have a lot of money, and it was Luca's job to stretch the paltry equipment budget from the especially troublesome cobblestone miniclassics and kermesses in spring all the way to muddy and icy northern European cross races. It was here where he honed his wheelbuilding expertise, inventing not a small variety of ingenious tactics for strengthening and reconditioning lightweight race wheels.

"Why are these blades so shallow?" he asked, pickup up a single Sapim CX Ray.

"Well, there are wider bladed spokes out there... but besides the fact that they're heavy, you'll need specially slotted hubs." I said.

"I like the way Mavics look." he said. I nodded.

The first time I met Luca, he had soot all over his face and forearms. "There was a small fire," he said. "Some of the chemicals caught fire. You should be careful down here." We walked down into the shop basement, which is where he did all of the wheel work: truing, building, gluing. It had a low ceiling, was lit by two dim bare bulbs, and you could see narrow shafts of light coming through the floorboards from the shop above. Along one wall were several dozen completed wheels, and I was taken aback at how perfect and identical each one appeared. Luca handed me a coffee can filled with what smelled like gasoline, a clean rag, and a small metal brush. He gestured to the opposite wall, where a half dozen nearly-as-perfect wheels were hanging. "How your wheels look is very important," he said. "Make sure that your spokes are shiny, the rim faces and tire sidewalls clean, and there most importantly, no excess glue. That's your job today: clean off every last bit of glue until these wheels look like those wheels. It's a sign of respect."

"So basically I want to know if we can do better than Ksyriums." he said.

"It's a pretty common scenario," I began. "The Mavics are very good wheels, but it's pretty easy to build something with a better balance of weight and durability when we go handbuilt." 

"No -- I know. I want custom wheels, but... you know, I want them to be at least as light." 

"Well... you have broken two of them this year."

Luca refused to teach me to build wheels for months. Instead, I cleaned the bathroom. I cleaned the parts cleaner. I cleaned tubular glue, scraped rims, and took out the trash. Every week I'd bring it up, and every week he'd shoot me down. "You're not ready yet." he'd say. "This isn't child's play."

We had several wheel stands in the basement: two old and heavily customized VARs. A cast iron getup from Japan (perhaps it was a Hozan, but I don't remember.)... several clamp-on Cinellis, and Luca's personal stand, which was little more than what appears to be half of an old track fork. Sometimes he'd to start wheels on the other stands, but he'd always finish on the fork stand. His movements were so rapid, that it took a while to mimic them in my mind. It seemed as if each hand was working independently of the other, speeding up the process. 

And then one day, Luca handed me a couple of very rough looking Mavic rims. "Do you know what these are?" he asked.

I nodded. "Gel280, 330. All the guys race on these."

"Correct, but these are rims that have been crashed. They're Bill's rims, but he wants new ones. I told him I can make them right again, but he wouldn't listen. So I guess it's your lucky day."

That sure was my lucky day. I spent the entire afternoon meticulously cleaning, prepping, and lacing the wheels. And then I brought them to Luca. "So will you show me how to do the rest?" I asked.

"No. Let's see how you do." he said.

A few days and two tacos later, Luca sat me down for some actual instruction. That was many years and a few thousands wheels ago, and I still can't build a wheel nearly as quickly or as cleanly as Luca. But I keep trying.

"Why didn't you just tell me that it wasn't my choice?" he asked.

"It is your choice!" I insisted.

"Not entirely." he pouted.

"Well, 20 holes is stupid. I mean... it's stupid for what you want, which is reliability. And besides, they're still going to be lighter than the Ksyriums."

"By, like, 10 grams!"

"10 grams and 10 years." I said.

[facteur-blog]

Gigi

This afternoon, about an hour before the storm hit, I rode over to Hyde Park Produce for some blueberries and a bag of loose spinach. I set my bike against the wall out front, "locked" it with my helmet, and dashed inside. When I returned, a couple of the stockboys and Reggie, one of the shopping center's security guards, were huddled around the bike. 

"There aren't any gears." said Reggie.

"Or brakes." said Paco, the younger of the stockboys. He looked impressed.

"I usually have a front brake..." I protested, but decided not really to go into it. 

"This is from the shop down by Ellis?" asked Paco. 

I nodded.

"I like the lights." he said.

"You should get some. You're crazy to ride all the way home after work in the dark without lights." said Reggie.

The older boy nodded. "I have a light on my bike."

"How much do they cost?" asked Paco. 

At that moment, with the skies darkening, a tornado watch looming, and two hours of wheelbuilding to complete before my commute downtown, I paused and tried to think of a way out of the conversation. But I was too slow.

"Those are, like $25 each." said the older boy.

"I like how the rear one moves like that." said Paco. "I'm on my break now, can I follow you to the shop?" he asked.

"Sure."

Three years ago, when the shop was located in the sub-basement of an asbestos-filled brownstone, it was meant for precisely this type of interaction. These were dark days, when you could barely find a properly sized tube, let alone a decent selection of lights in the neighborhood. Or helmets. Or tires. Or panniers. But thankfully, the south side retail landscape has changed, and the rise of Blackstone, the Bike Doctor, and Blue City Cycles has allowed TATI to focus on niche products and services. The need to be all things to all people has long since passed.

Or has it?

When we got back to the shop we found Gigi standing out front, ogling the orange Public roadster in the window.

"Oooooooohhhh Weeeee!" he said, pointing at the bike. 

Hunter, the barber-next-door, and a fellow octogenarian, was, as always, not impressed.

"Tati. Tati. Tati... do you have that yellow saddle for me?" asked Gigi, as he saw me approaching. 

I nodded, "It's right here." This particular yellow Regal had been hanging around for some time, and Gigi's blue Vitus seemed as perfect a fit as I could imagine. "You can try it out first," I said. "But I think you'll really like it. Super comfy."

"I'll let you gentlemen do your business," Gigi said. "Oooooooohhhh Weeeee!" and he walked away.

A healthy portion of the TATI's limited open hours are spent referring folks to other (perfectly deserving and capable) shops. That's just a fact of life. And so the question is, how does one identify customers who are in particular need of the shop's understandably limited palette of products and services? This has always been a tough call, and an evolving one at that. But in the last year or so, it's started to come into focus -- as drop ins have been eliminated, mandatory service appointments instituted, and emergency concierge services explored. But then there's Gigi.

I've never seen Gigi wearing fewer than four (bold) colors at a time. He is often sporting a cravat or ascot and sneakers. He jogs through Washington Park every morning at 4am. He loves bicycles, especially 80s steel. Gigi doesn't own a computer and has never purchased anything online.

Why deflect 90% of the shop's potential business, but cater to every whim and folly of a slightly nutty eighty-two year old roadie?

The shop was a mess, and I apologized, before leading Paco to the lights.

"Oh, hold UP!" he said. "What. Are. Those?" he asked, nodding towards the Knog display. 

"Those are lights, too." I said, holding out a pink Beetle.

"Are they really expensive?" he asked. 

"Nope. Actually, they're a little less than the Cateyes. They work just fine." I said.

"I gotta have blue." he said, picking up a Beetle and a Skink. "Perfect."

As Paco walked back to work, Hunter poked his head out of the barber shop. "He a bike racer?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"Didn't think so, he too god-damned FAT to be a bike racer." he said.

Last summer, Hunter, who is well into his eighties, decided to re-roof his house. On the second day of work, he fell off of his roof and caused all sorts of havoc to his back. But naturally, he returned to work at the barber shop right away. But anyone could see that the injury had slowed him quite a bit. So a few months later, when the first big snowstorm of winter hit, I offered to clear away the snow from his shop's entry. "No f-in way." he said, insisting that he could still do it, but I prevailed. 

Afterwards, I returned his shovel when in walked Gigi, dressed in an orange and red sweatsuit, yellow cravat, and green puffy jacket. 

"You two have the same shop." he began, "You have the same shop for the same reasons..."

"F--------k." said Hunter.

I winced, but realized that Gigi was right. Except for the bookmaking, he was spot on.

[facteur-blog]

Standards

I've been fortunate enough, over the years, to work in a half dozen shops in various shades of PRO. These experiences have informed and shaped the way TATI has evolved and though very much a work in progress, over the past year or so, I think it's finally found a bit of a groove. This year, we're fortunate enough to have Hyde Park's most talented young mechanic on staff -- a move that has already brought smiles and nods of approval from the shop regulars and the local club scene. One day we were chatting a little about shop standards. His experience back in Colorado is with a large and established service department with clearly articulated service standards and a resultant high billing rate. TATI, on the other hand, is an extremely low volume, mostly custom shop that has existed in something of an operational bubble until now.

I thought for a moment, about all the shop's inefficiencies, about my glaring shortcomings, and bit about my mentors and previous employers. My first experience in a bike shop was working for my coach. He was a grizzled, decidedly pre-war Belgian immigrant with gnarled knuckles and two missing toes. Back then, we learned to do everything by feel: perfect tire pressure, spoke tension, and torque were products of experience, repetition, and practice. Every new employee spent a couple of months down in the basement, gluing tires, overhauling bottom brackets, and chasing and facing frames before the *real* mechanics built them. Eventually we'd get to move upstairs, where we focused on cleaning and detailing completed repairs, topping off tire pressure for customers, and other glamorous jobs such as cleaning the parts washer and restroom. Quality standards weren't written down anywhere, but we all understood what was expected of us and our work. 

"Every customer is Eddy Merckx" the boss used to say. 

A few years later, I worked in a shop owned by an Italian family. All sorts of wonderful steel rolled through that shop: Masi, Colnago, De Rosa, Pinarello. It was strictly a roadie shop, and a purely Campagnolo-affair. I am pretty sure that the monthly bill for shop grease (Campagnolo of course) was higher than the utilities. The head mechanic was obsessed with light weight builds, and went to great lengths to customize nearly every bike that came through the shop. It was here that I learned the art of drilling out chainrings and brake levers, shaving excess material from saddles, and building Mavic GEL280/330 wheelsets that wouldn't buckle in the first corner. Contemporary carbon heads might be amazed to learn that it was quite possible to purchase a 7kg race-ready road bike over two decades ago. 

While both shops were run by mildly demented European perfectionists, the Italians, perhaps because of their position in the pecking order of neighborhood shops (and the vast storage room upstairs), were famously slow in turning around bikes. I spent a lot of time apologizing to customers in those days, and swore never to run a shop in the same way.

I suppose it's a good thing to not have spent a lifetime working in the industry. Like most startup shops, my original standard of service quality was self referential: perhaps a bit lower than the Merckx standard, but not by much. I want things done correctly and safely and beautifully, but not necessarily quickly. The latter is a bit of a problem for most folks, though. And that's why I'm so glad to have some help this year. 

Another local wrench once told me about his experiences at a well respected, high volume Chicagoland shop. I was stunned to learn that the service manager had assemblers overhauling bottom brackets and headsets on new $300 hybrids. That's really great, I thought. That's really great that I don't work there. But he had a point: in many ways, it's actually the cheaply made, pre-fab bicycles that need the most care and attention in order to properly work. Pride in worksmanship, and all that.

Not dealing with such bikes, I'm happy to not be faced with such a dilemma. My personal neuroses include tire wear and overall aesthetics. The former is a function of coming up as a very poor young racer in the age of sew-ups. I absolutely despised fixing my own tires, especially after spending many hours each week at work inhaling tubular glue. Not only could I ill afford to replace my tires more than two or three times per year, but it wasn't until my third full year of racing that I had a spare set -- so a flat invariably meant down time. And so I learned to religiously clean and inspect my tires every night, patching and smoothing over cuts and abrasions with super glue. It's a habit that I practice to this day, and it's proven especially useful for those customers running what are essentially race-day rubber (Schwalbe Ultremo, black chili Continentals, Veloflex and Challenge open tubulars, Michelin Pro3s). It's included at no charge on every repair, and easily extends the life of a tire 20% or more.

Aesthetics are more complicated, and it's one of the reasons that I prefer to build bikes from scratch rather than sell prefab. But every once in a while, a customer will bring in what *could* be a drop-dead gorgeous bike, were it not for one or two small details: mismatched stem/seat post, glossy and matte black on the same bike, a 3K weave fork on a UD frame, or worse. I try to be diplomatic, and bring up the issues carefully and respectfully.

I tell myself: "Maybe he's colorblind." or "Maybe he doesn't know better." or "Maybe it was on sale."

It does take a while, these but eventually... slowly, but surely... the offending bits wear out, or are "upgraded" with more aesthetically and logically appealing stuff. It's a pretty simple indicator of the number of visits a bike has made to the shop, actually. Few customers even realize that it's happening, but it keeps me sane.