The Radavist

Stephanie’s Blacked Out 650B Straggler
Photos and words by Morgan Taylor

For what is admittedly a bit of a mish-mash build, Stephanie’s Straggler has come together with a lot of character. The parts kit borrows heavily from other bikes, so you may very well recognize some pieces from other builds. It’s the collection of parts, and the stories behind all of them, that makes this bike something special.

The number of people that roll through Golden Saddle Cyclery with nice bikes on any given day is impressive. So impressive that often times, I shoot their bikes, dump the memory cards and literally forget about them until one day I stumble across the photos. Ian was visiting LA back in February from NYC, where he works in film. Knowing that LA has dirt roads for miles, he brought along his 650b Seven Cycles Evergreen S, a titanium “all-road” bike built for long days on dirt. His bike has a few trick details, including the sub fork race-Edelux light mount and those juicy Compass Babyshoe Pass tires. With the reliability of Shimano Ultegra hydro, solid Ritchey components, a titanium post and a vintage Flite, this bike is just begging for trouble in the mountains! If you see Ian, tell him LA says hi and to holler next time he’s in town!

As a bike shop owner, you see a lot of interesting customer projects roll through the doors. For Kyle, Woody, David and Ty at Golden Saddle Cyclery, it’s this steady influx of unique projects that keeps them engaged in the day to day shop routines. Once and a while, however, something rolls through that catches your eye.

How could you miss it? A purple pachyderm. An Elephant in the room…

The customer acquired this bike in a deal from its original owner, who rode it for a few years. It has a bit of beausage after extensive use. Once he acquired the frame, he began buying components piece by piece. Personally, I like the seemingly random parts including: made in the UK Middleburn cranks, a raw Haulin’ Colin rack, SON Edelux, Berthoud saddle, White Industries rear hub and Nitto cockpit.

If you’re thinking this frame looks familiar, John from Elephant used this platform as a beginning for the National Forest Explorer. They’re strikingly similar, save for the use of cantilevers on this bike, versus disc brakes and that color.

After Woody, the head mechanic completed this build, the guys at Golden Saddle Cyclery fell in love with it… and it’s easy to see why!

Photos by Kyle Kelley

After passing away a few weeks back, Ezra Caldwell‘s work keeps popping up all over, miles away from his home studio in New York City. In fact, this bike was first built up by Golden Saddle Cyclery years back for Sean, a loyal customer living in Santa Barbara.

A singlespeed commuter is really all most people need. 650b tires provide a smooth ride and for medium sized frames, they look well-balanced proportionately. Exra had a way of proclaiming his approach with frame design by not really saying anything. While this bike may seem very straight-forward, the details in the metalwork are what first caught my eye.

The chainguard is attached by two 5mm bolts that actually pass through the down and seat tubes. Then the guard itself is incredibly elegant, especially when matched with the White Industries ENO cranks.

Stainless lugs and raw steel tubes make up the frame’s materials, with a good amount of patina forming on the steel. It must be the salt in the air. Santa Barbara is coastal, you know. The rear rack is custom, with wooden planks, which even out the overall build, especially when compared to Ezra’s signature wooden handlebars.

In a lot of ways, this bike is void of ostentation, yet meticulously detailed. Something that seemed to spill over from Ezra’s personality onto everything he touched.

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Follow Kyle on Instagram and visit Golden Saddle Cyclery in Silverlake, Los Angeles.

Joshua Bryant is a frame builder out of Portland (who looks an lot like this dude Franco650b on Instagram). He specializes in road / touring / randonneur / dirt tourers and coincidentally builds out of the old Hufnagel studios off Burnside.

This frame in particular, dubbed the Fatrob, is a special bird. Built as part of a collaboration with Matt from Folly, it’s a 650b, tubeless, neon pink, SON-powered “get rad machine” – although I didn’t see Joshua get rad on it during this ride. We’ll have to follow up at a later date.

Why do I like this frame? How could you not? It’s pink and a playful mix of old and new school components. Oh and with the Plug, Joshua can keep his iPhone charged to get the ‘gram mid-ride…

FOES‘ newest revamp to their line actually dropped back at Interbike this year and by dropped, I mean a few pounds. While keeping to their monocoque aluminum construction, Brent engineered a new, lighter tubeset and reshaped the rear swingarm, shaving almost a whole pound off the rear alone.

This 27.5 Shaver FXC is a cross country racer’s dream bike. Coming in around 23lbs complete, laced with SRAM’s XX1 group, Fox Float CTD shock in the rear and the trusty Rock Shox front fork, this 4.5″ to 5″ travel bike has adjustability built in at the rear shock. Sliding the bolt down the gusset at the linkage can change the front end.

I’ve ridden a fair amount of modern mountain bikes and I can say, this is one of the first 27.5 machines I was visibly salivating over. How can you go wrong with that color? Retail will be around $2,400 for the frameset… Expect these to drop later this spring. For now, see more in the Gallery!

The 970, one of the last made in the USA, lugged MTB frames ever produced by Trek. In recent years, there has been a resurgence in interest for these bikes. Especially seeing as how a XO-1 can set you back a pretty penny. They’re Wisconsin-made, rugged and actually pretty lightweight, considering. Frames can be found on eBay for around $200.

As I sat down to scroll through all of the Beautiful Bicycles I photographed this year, I quickly realized how diverse PiNP has become. Previous year’s lists never had a MTB, much less two and even though the site has begun to embrace dirt riding more and more, there are still three track bikes in the rankings. Most of these bicycles were made in the USA by small frame builders, but two overseas-manufactured bikes made the cut.

This year for the Top 10 list, I looked at site metrics, social media ‘chatter’ and my own favorites (which were remarkably in-line). All of these bikes got at least 100 Facebook likes and over 20,000 visits within the first week of posting. The latter two requisites were necessary to bring it down to ten bikes, from the dozens of my personal favorites. Also, I omitted my own bikes from this list.

I like to think of PiNP as a showcase for Beautiful Bicycles and how they get put to use. See the full Prolly is Not Probably’s Top 10 Beautiful Bicycles of 2013, in no particular order, in the Gallery!

This bike has a long, jaded history, beginning with the early days of the Rapha Continental. I’ll let the story be told by others, because I’ll surely miss some important detail. The short of it is, this frame sat in two separate basements for over 10 years before finally being powder-coated and built up to be ridden on the last Brovet here in Austin (literally, he built it up the day before).

650B, tubeless-ready, Shimano 105, single speed convertible, off-road geometry and a bright orange paint make this Rossman a very unique and strange machine. Is it a “gravel grinder”, a tourer, or a cross bike? Who knows.

Hahn Rossman‘s builds have past the rigorous testings of Bicycle Quarterly and I have to say, this is my favorite bike of Hahn’s to date! Catch it at the Seattle cross races as Hahn thrashes it in the single speed division!

See more in the Gallery!