Seagull Bags has been hard at work all month making some custom bags spec’d by the OPEN crew, featuring an embroidered shop logo in addition to the usual Seagull flag.  The shoulder bags and backpacks offer hand-picked features and colorways and were handmade for us in Columbus, Ohio, with all the love and care you would expect from a home-grown company.

“Our designs are completely original, and we work very hard to offer you something completely different from the other guys’. From our 3-ply construction to our original strap designs, we are trying to change the way that people think about messenger-style bags. Our cam buckle strap system is one of a kind, and despite a lot of companies now having strangely similar systems (and weirdly coincidental constructions), ours is the original; our designs are all time-tested and are constantly refined, because we want each bag to be the best bag we’ve ever made.” – seagullbags.com

The bags will be available for purchase from OPEN and we will also be serving as Seagull’s local custom bag retailer.  The company offers a dizzying number of colors, options and features; we can help you determine the right custom bag for your needs.  They take about 4 weeks to be made, a mere fraction of the many years these bags will last… come check them out next week, only at OPEN Bicycle.

Some of the feedback has been of a different color.  A famous blogger (the irony of that title isn’t lost on us) called us “hipster Ron Popiels,” I suppose in reference to the fact that our tool has a story behind it.  Maybe I’m mistaken, but I thought that all the commotion with the “local” movement had something to do with the idea that enlightened urban consumers were tired of purely transactional lives- they wanted to know the people that grew their chard and made their furniture and brazed their bike frames.

When we had moved through the prototyping process and started looking at manufacturing, we sat down and discussed the notion of overseas production.  Taiwan could have made the tool (with nameless underage laborer and cartel-run mill factories) for a fraction of the price our one-man operation in Cambridge did.  We could have used cheaper steel and large-scale finishing for a poorer-quality and less attractive product.  There were easy pathways to anyone being able to buy the tool from Nashbar for thirty bucks.

That shit’s been done, though.  We wanted this project to be an experiment in local production, from concept to completion.  The $80 pricetag relects the real costs of making something with people you know by name, in the city you live in.  Yeah, it’s expensive.  So are those awesome $5 lattes made by the endearing barrista at your favorite locally-owned coffeshop,  the $400 CSA share that brings healthy and beautiful heirloom veggies to your door, and the $2000 custom touring frame that you had built to fit you for life by the eccentric mustachioed framebuilder.  We could have made this tool in China and we probably would have made some money that way, as well.  But, as I was told long ago when I was still a young mechanic with a glimmer in my eye, if you’re in the bike world to make money, you’re doing it wrong.

The first run of the Rotafixer was 40 pieces, largely due to being cash-strapped young entrepreneurs.  There’s a few left-we’re considering a second run but there’s a million other projects to work on so this may be it.  Big thanks to all who helped and contributed.

PS If you’re looking for a less expensive bike tool, consider the BSNYC Wisecracker.  If there is anything the bike world needs, it’s another bottle opener.

On a balmy summer evening last year, my friend and crack-shot designer/engineer-at-large Aaron Panone and I were working through our second or third Perfect Manhattans at the Indo and bullshitting about bike tool design.  I recall (somewhat indistinctly) a “Aha!” moment occurring.  The next morning, we dug a few crumpled kitchen checks covered with scribbled drawings out of our pockets and got to work.  Three prototypes, thousands of dollars, and a year later, we’re very pleased to release the T0001 “Rotafixer” tool under the Union Foundry label.

Confused as to what this thing does? Stebs at Paper Fortress shot a very cool how-to video:

The result of passion-driven collaborative design and production, the T0001 was engineered, tested, machined and finished entirely in the Boston area.  Exclusively for sale through OPEN, online and in the shop.  Details here.

A number of months ago, in the midst of a prolonged build-out on the new shop, one of the crew (now forgotten whom and of little importance in the long run of time) mentioned a blog post seen somewhere; a new player on the scene; a something different take on the whole “let’s-make-track-bikes” circuit.  A phone call was made.  I wish I had a pic of Turk on the celly on this chilly February day in the not-so-distant past.  A stand-in image:

Went something like this… (translation by the author)

Turk:  “Yo Livery peeps! Boston here- we likes what you do.  Info on the double- hand it down & let us grok the get-go!”

Livery: “We do right-right!  Brainstorm tornado alley here in the O.C.  You see the brass!  Clearcoats go on top of metal and sparkle on top of other clearcoats!  Fire up the aerospace rocket-maker 5-axis shit!  Dial up Hong Kong!  Deadstock Prestige meets space-age moderno-tech- dig mad colorways and forward-thought meets neo-retro-fuck-it’s-cool…  holler!”

So we did.  I started chatting with Nate and Scott at Livery and a new relationship was born.  Today an enormous box arrived via UPS (thanks to our driver, Tony) and we excitedly dug in.  After unearthing the David Hasselhof-emblazoned thank-you card (that played the Baywatch theme when opened), we got into some serious frame action.  Behold.

LDG uses an assortment of Reynolds and Tange tubing built into some of the most classy and innovative frames we’ve seen.  Designed in Orange County and built to their exacting spec in Japan and Taiwan, Livery frames and components offer top-shelf craftsmanship, dialed geometries,  beautiful finishes, and subtle but definitive touches.

First order of business after cleaning up all the drool was getting the Toyo-built Livery Fillet-Brazed frame up in the stand for our friend Benny, owner of Savant Project.  Benny and I sat down a bit back and banged out a clean build kit for his new Livery and it came together like crunchy peanut butter and raspberry jam:

Dusted-off NOS Tange Prestige tubing fillet-brazed to Livery spec by Toyo.  Raw torched finish with dumb-clean wet clearcoat.

Perma-classy build includes San Marco suede Regal and Velo Orange sew-on elkhide barwrap.

I hand-built the wheelset- Miche lows to Velocity bight silver Aeros, DT comps.  Radial up front for some sexy, 2x in the back.  Low flange is the new high flange, kids.

Livery pursuit bars in the Rb-021 style.

The rest of the kit was sensible-yet-turbo: Miche, EAI, Izumi, and VO bits.

Benny looks happy.  This is the reason we do what we do.

We are Livery’s new exclusive Boston area dealer.  We are extremely proud to offer this well-designed, carefully built, and reasonably-priced finery to the East Coat. Come by and let us talk your ear off about how much we like this stuff!

I was asked to review some Arnhem Suede Shoes by Chrome, but they do not make them in my size. So I gave them to my Co-Habitant, the gentleman pictured below.  He has been wearing the Chrome Arnhems for a month now and is surprised by how much he likes them. He wears them without clips, and the soles grip the pedals firmly in all but the worst weather conditions. They are also comfortable to walk in: He has spent 12-hour work shifts on his feet in these!

But the really interesting thing, is that the suede is fairly water resistant, as well as road-salt resistant.  I though for sure the shoes would get ruined if he wore them in the snow and slush, but they are fine in the winter.

Open carries the Chrome Arnhem Suede Shoes in men’s sizes 7-14. If you are female, I believe that a size 7 translates to a ladies’ size 9.  I wish Chrome made these in my size, because they sound like great cycling shoes.

I saw this ingenious idea that’s being implemented in Barcelona- street sign bike rack converters.  The two piece steel halves are bolted together with shear bolts and effectively transform an existent street sign post or meter into a secure bike locking point.  The brightly powdercoated design stands out and signals the availability of bicycle parking spaces.  As the Wired article notes, the most impressive feature of this very smart urban space hack is perhaps the fact that it legitimizes an activity that normally occupies a legally gray area, e.g. locking a bike to whatever permanent structure one can find on the street… Mayor Menino, Ms. Freedman: take note?

I have been on a huge basket and fender kick this spring, yet I prefer riding my Reminton track bike around town – so this definitely catches my eye.  The bar and basket integration solution fits the aesthetic quality that most track-bike riders adorn, smooth lines, tight geometry and lots of shiny bits.  As the Selectism article does, I question the structural integrity and also the size.  Removing the weight from the fork mounts and placing it all on the stem and headset could prove problematic when hauling around multiple bottles of Pinot or cans of PBR.  As for the size, exactly how many bottles or cans could one stack?

I appreciate the integration of the bar into the basket, while Joshua seems to think that with a set of Velo Orange Belleville Porteur bars, a few yards of 4130 aircraft tubing and the flame from our oxy-acetaline torch he could do better – and that folks, is why I love him.  As I was finishing the past sentance, I heard something pop a few feet behind my head – well worth this quick photo:

Joshua just snapped an arm off the shop vice pulling a stuck crank arm off of our pal Joe’s new, used Peugeot project.  Cameo in the back!  Brek.One has also been spending a lot of time in the shop – he’s getting ready to buy a Lexus (with a bike rack!) and drop his first major mixtape, so look out.

Every time I visit OPEN, Joshua’s hands are perpetually covered in bike grease. When I see him, we dance through our customary social greeting which habitually begins with him saying, “Sorry man, my hands are dirty…” — followed by a hand slap that tightens into a tug-of-war style embrace, which leads into a shoulder-to-shoulder connect for the finish.

The fact that Joshua’s hands are always grimy is comforting to me. His greasy hands are symbolic of Joshua’s creative passion for what he and Zack, both, hope to bring to the familial and collaborative space they have created with OPEN.

For Joshua’s hands, gloved in filth, hardened and sometimes scarred from a day spent repairing and building bikes, the grease represents his pencil and is the one tool that feeds [your] creativity and is so essential that without it [you] feel naked and unprepared (Tharp, The Creative Habit).

What is the pencil for your creative habit? For me, quite literally, it is a pencil. True to my hustle, it is called the perfect pencil. As a writer, my pencil helps capture the world around me through finished narratives, or by sharing the fractured elements of stories without a voice.

Where’s your pencil? What creative spark to your habit will it bring to keep your fire burning? I suspect that once you discover the tool, the only thing left to pursue is your passion. Like Joshua, with his hands perpetually covered in bike grease, this is one habit you will never have a need to apologize.

There was a time when wizened economists held court in the parliment houses and ivory towers and envisioned a world ripe with possibility.  The vast verdant forests, the broad rivers, uncharted lands; these were the raw-stuffs of fortunes and industries yet to come.  Built capital was the limiting factor for this pregnant growth- social and natural capital was abundant.

I hope I’m not stating the painfully obvious by suggesting that the world has changed dramatically.  We find ourselves in the midst of a dense human-made infrastructure- millions of miles of interstate highways, countless billions of tons of carefully shaped ferroconcrete structures, and extremely concentrated and socially stratified human populations- the (recently accelerated) urbanization of our civilization means that, in the contemporary situation, it is now precisely social and natural capital that are the limiting factors to economic development.

If there is anything that the “Great Economic Slowdown” has taught us, it is that top-down and international business and financial models only serve to fall longer and spread farther when they fail.  We look now for ways to build our local communities from within, be it locally farmed greens at the market, used books from the corner seller, or pints from the city brewery down at the bar in the Square.

The methods by which we, denizens of these recent megolithic people-piles, move around our own communally made density play an important role in the cybernetics (in the original sense: the language and design of control) of cities.  This effect on this control on our everyday lives, the vectors and future of our communites, and the less tangible element of our individual experiences is inherently tied to a sense of economic vitality, and unfortunately the measure of our economic health has been, since what seems like forever, been tied to this outmoded measure of infinite (and thus impossible) voracious growth.  We stand at a crossroads- we can reevaluate ourselves as social actors, rethink our cities, remake our habits.  In this way- bicycles can be revolutionary instruments, or not.  In this way- bike shops can be revolutionary points of social (inter)action, or not.

OPEN strives to be more than just another business doing the same thing and hawking the same stuff as everyone else.  We attempt to source as much as possible locally, and if not immediately local, made by companies committed to fair labor practices.  From hand-crafted steel straight out of Allston to LA-made cycling cut denim, OPEN strive to support small community-owned businesses and connect craftspeople, producers, and users on a real and human scale.  This isn’t some silly boutique concept- this is about building culture and creating sustainable relationships, communities, and cities.

Taking this one step further:  contemporary popular belief holds that custom bicycles are for the moneyed and trend-seeking.  We beg to differ:  riding a bike made by someone who lives down the street from you isn’t a new concept, and it’s not terribly expensive compared to buying off-the-shelf once the hidden costs of globalized consumption are taken into account.  Being able to interact in the process of designing and building a bicycle made expressly for for your body, riding style and habits affords a much richer user-producer experience that picking something out of a catalog, and the resulting machine is something that the rider will treasure forever.

This week, we’ll be interviewing three local framebuilders and showcasing their individual talents and visions here on the OPEN blog.  We support local builders because they are the future of Boston cycling-  we invite you all to share with us the wealth and history of their art and craft.  Together, we believe, we can create a unique, vital and enduring local bike culture.  Stay tuned- at the very least, we’ll have close-up pictures documenting the growth and development of Marty Walsh’s moustache.

I just got around to opening mail and packages, which seem to be coming more frequently.  My boy Liam at Burton sent down this US Open hoodie to congratulate & celebrate the shop opening – god knows I love purple & gray!  If you happened to catch any of the Vermont / Stowe foliage shots in the last issue of Cog Mag, Liam was a part of the shoot. (Sorry, I couldn’t find any of the photos on Blotto’s site!)  I also happened to be up there (without bike) for the annual Jake Burton party that weekend, and witnessing track bikes on the overpass just before winter set in makes riding there next fall an absolute must.  Thanks Liam – see you in a few weeks, can’t wait to ride!