Building a Bespoke Singlespeed
Bespoke Singlespeed / ©Jason Fields 2009
I have always been fascinated by the whole fixie and singlespeed movement, ever since I lived in San Francisco in 1998… At the time, I thought to myself, thats not for me, but maybe one day…
Now flip to 2009 in London where I live now, and I start seeing the most amazing bespoke cycles all over the place, primarily in Brick Lane, but also in many other places. I thought to myself again, hum, maybe its time, but as you all know, there are so many things on ones to do list, it ended up just being added to the list…
A few weeks ago there was a TUBE strike in London and the entire city shut down for three days, long ones at that as the buses were overloaded, and many people who lived outside the central city were stranded and not able to come in for work. A huge ad campaign and bicycle awareness posters were pasted up all over talking about the ‘bike scheme‘ a government and employer funded subsidy programme to allow people to buy bicycles for their full price and get half of the value re-embursed from their employer… amazing huh!
At this point there was a bicycle event horizon and I started seeing more and more fixies, singlespeed and dutchies all over the city. I decided I was finally going to get a bike. OK now the big question, what kind exactly, what options, fixie or not, colour, wheels, grips, sprocket, pedals, etc etc etc. A friend of mine who is an avid cyclist here in the city and who knows it all, sent me to check out these Singlespeed specialists… singlespeed.angelfire.com.
I checked out their site, looked at some of their bikes and was totally sold on the idea. I went down to Bermondsy and visited Daniel a very tall and outspoken italian dood, and he broke it down for me as to what he could do, premade or bespoke, and the various prices (which were very reasonable!) around £340 for a proper singlespeed kitted out…
I had seen a GSTAR and Cannondale custom made mountain bike and there were certain things I really liked about it, so I used that as my inspiration…
After talking in more depth with Daniel at Singlespeed, we broke it into the core parts we needed…
- 21inch dark matt grey cafe racing frame
- schwalbe blizzard sport yellow/black racing tires (link)
- brooks brown leather seat and grips (link)
- vintage chromed brakes
- chromed riser bars
- vintage one piece stem
- black 2 finger brake levers (w/ front & rear brakes)
- black chain
- simple metal pedals (i am getting brown leather straps soon!)
Check out my Flickr gallery of the bike in various stages of construction and completion here…
It took a week and a few days to be built and I went down over a weekend and picked it up. It was really a treat to ride it home across London taking it home. I have already started planning my next few weekends to do rides along the canals, thames river walk and through a couple parks in the city.
I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for more deals on things to accessorize with my singlespeed and I am sure i’ll be getting bits and bops here and there to tweak it as I get more familiar with the ride and the city.
Thanks for reading!
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