NAHBS Wind-Up

As many of you probably saw, the shop was closed last weekend as we went down to Sacramento to see the North American Handmade Bicycle Show. This was purely a business trip. This was work. We did this for you, our loyal customers. We did not try a single beer, mojito, or crazy delicious nitro brewed coffee. We also didn’t take in any of the sunny California weather, and one of our staff members most definitely did not get a sunburn. Instead, we spent our days scouring the convention centre floor, searching for the coolest, craziest, and most beautiful bikes, accessories and ideas that we could find. There were plenty of noteworthy bikes (we tried to grab some photos of the most worthy), but with the distraction of so many shiny things we were often left wandering the isles with glazed eyes.

Besides wanting to see what NAHBS is all about we did have another purpose; and that was to visit with the fine folks known as DeAnima. They were our first stop once we got to the convention. Upon meeting Gianni, Antonio, and Matt, I can say for sure that they are some of the nicest guys you will ever meet, and their passion for bikes is incredible. They were not only excited to meet us and make sure that we knew how happy they were to have us on board, they were proud to show us what they had been working on. For anybody who has seen the bikes in real life, you know how gorgeous and intricate their paint work is. I can assure you that this is something that hasn’t changed. They had tons of custom painted builds showing off their skills, plus they unveiled a new paint scheme they had been working on called “labyrinth.” This wasn’t the only big news that the boys at DeAmina had for us. They also had a brand new bike that they were debuting: the OQOC. A steel, “no bullshit” (their words, not mine) bike, with clean lines and welds, and a smaller diameter tubeset compared to the DeFer. It was also nice to see that we weren’t the only ones excited about DeAnima, their booth was always busy, plus brands like Rotor, Campagnolo, and CeramicSpeed were all showing off DeAnima builds in their booths.

As for the rest of the show, there was lots of interesting and flashy (even bedazzled) paint, plenty of Campagnolo, and tons of Ti. Some of the standouts (which can be viewed in the gallery below) were English Cycles, whose bikes were somewhere in between ingenious and insane (it turns out that a bike doesn’t need a non-drive side), Enigma Cycles who had tons of clean lines, and custom re-painted Campagnolo groupsets, and Hartley Cycles, a former jeweler, whose attention to detail on things from seatpost clamps to QRs to cable ports was unparalleled.

There is plenty to talk about, so if you want to know more, swing by and we can have chat. We’ll order that DeAnima at the same time.