Getting closer.

Things are winding up at the bike shop. I paid rent there for the last time today. That's right, I own/run a bike shop right now but it's the worst kept secret among my friends that my days there are numbered. It's a really good place and the guy that's taking over is amongst the best in the industry. The shop isn't going to change that much. If anything it's going to get better because of his connections to the industry in this city and the fact that he has another shop in town already. But that's another story.

What I'm most excited about is potentially stepping up the frame building to a full time occupation. I've been selling bike "stuff" for going on ten years now and one of the most frustrating parts of it is not being in control of that "stuff" and having to depend on the whims of others to make the products I sell. Sometimes there's good "stuff" and sometimes I'm less impressed by it. The list of crap is long and getting longer and the list of good stuff seems to get a little shorter each year. It's been nice to be in charge of deciding what gets a place in my store and what doesn't and that's something that has worked very well for me for a very long time. And while there may be a lot of frame builders out there, more and more every year it seems and most of them doing really good work, few of them have committed to doing it long term and those that have seem to have absurdly long waiting lists for a frame.

So that's where I come in, I suppose. There's a few of us building bikes in Canada but not many. I know of a person here and there that is just starting out and may get to this point sometime soon, the point of being able to say "I'm a frame builder" in a way that the waitress at that restaurant in Los Angeles can't say "I'm an actress." And there's others that do it on a larger scale, respectable types like Dekerf or Marinoni though Marinoni doesn't seem to be doing as many handbuilt custom frames as they used to.

I really do like the idea of crafting items one at a time for real people. I'm meeting with a local painter tomorrow morning to discuss graphics for the bikes and paint schemes. He's a small guy doing stuff one day at a time and doing some really good work too. I like that idea, dealing with real people on smaller projects. And I'm talking to a girl in Seattle about handmaking wallets with the star logo on them and the serial number of the bike on it for those who buy frames. I tried to find someone local but no luck unfortunately but Caitlen at Moxie and Oliver seems like a rockstar and is keen to do something for me. She's a real person doing really interesting stuff by hand one at a time and I like that. It goes with the theme of what I'm doing with the bikes. Seattle ain't that far away either though it would have been really nice to find someone in town to work with.

Anyway, I got a box from the supplier with bike tubes in it, Columbus Zona tubes, enough to build four bikes and as of this morning I have five bikes to build so things are looking good. Soon there will be a catalogue, pictures, a web page, all that good stuff. In the mean time there's this blog which will probably become a busier place in the very near future.

Handmade "things"

I bought a pair of Dayton boots yesterday. They are damned expensive and I was hesitant. I stood there in their shop for a good hour wearing the boots and walking around the store looking at the artifacts that 62 years of making boots by hand in Vancouver produces. There's a photo of a sign that used to hang outside of many of the bars in Vancouver that decreed "No Daytons Allowed." Apparently in the old days Dayton boots were worn by hooligans and goons and a pair of Daytons wasn't considered broken in until there was blood on them and the way one broke in a pair of Daytons was to wear them to a bar and start picking fights. They were also standard issue for those guys that used to deliver milk door to door and you know there must be a lot of miles built into a pair of boots if it's up to that job. That's the pair I bought, the "Driver."

But it wasn't an easy decision to make. Like I said, they aren't cheap. I could have bought two "good" pairs of boots for the price of these. And to be honest I didn't care much about bar fights and milk men though it's nice to know there's a history to something but it wasn't the street cred I was looking for. What I really wanted was a good pair of boots. That's it.

I suppose I could have bought the two "good" pairs of boots for the same price and been ahead but somehow it wouldn't be the same. The Daytons are handmade here in Vancouver by real people. Though I'm sure they make a reasonable living, and everybody deserves to do so, you get the impression they aren't about making a ton of money, they really just care about making the best boots they can. They offer a life time warranty on their workmanship which means if the stitching comes out or the pull tab comes off the heel they will fix it for free. And they've been known to send back complete orders of leather because it wasn't up to their standards. I like that. You don't see that enough these days, standards for quality that is.

I've been wearing these boots around the house. There's a process involved in getting the boots to fit just like there's a process to making them. Being real leather they will stretch. The girl in the store says it like she's said it a hundred times before and will probably say it a hundred times again, "they should be tight, they are real leather and they will stretch but once they do they will fit very well. Trust me."

It's a company like Dayton that has helped me make the decision to make bicycles, or frames at least, one at a time. It's not that there isn't enough bike manufacturers out there and some of them are actually quite good, many may be much better than I am. It's not that I think I can make a better bike. But behind each bike there's me, a real person who cares about making a good bike one at a time.

Just like at Dayton where there are probably "better" ways to make a boot out of synthetic NASA derived plastics and polymers, the boots could be lighter, or prettier being made out of laser cut panels and adorned with bells and whistles and kevlar wear patches or whatever, or made by large machines chugging a pair of boots out the bum end every 27 seconds, I'm sure there are "better" ways to make a bike out of carbon or plastic or aluminum, or by robots, and with hydroforming and dampening inserts and integrated bits and definitely more exotic paint jobs and I've owned these bikes, I've paid for the paint, gotten distracted by the ad copy, bought the technology. In the end the bikes that have made me the happiest are the honest ones, the ones without glamour but with a solid soul and these are the bikes that tend to stick around for a while.

In the twenty four hours since I've bought these boots I've slept for a bit, had a shower, went for a walk with my kid to the grocery store, and the rest of the time I've been walking around the house wearing these boots, becoming familiar with them, feeling them slowly change shape just a little bit as they use the warmth of my feet to mold the leather accordingly. I feel good about these boots just like I feel good about my bikes. I like that I will probably have both for quite some time. How about you?