One way to look at it

First off, let me apologize for the distinct lack of content lately. Winter's ending, I have sweet fuck-all to talk about, mainly because I have no (nice, cool) bike to modify and obsess over. I WILL produce this spring, I promise.

Random thoughts: Right now, the status quo for street/park/jump mountain bikes is singlespeed, rear brake only, hardtail. Any deviance is met with questions and/or admonishments, depending on who sees it.

I started of riding with 2 brakes and gears. No good for for the gears, I rode and still ride a lot of XC and commuting, but I found out I can do both without gears. The front brake, I like doing tricks with. As I broke shit, I eventually reverted to the standard singlespeed, wishing I had gears. I took the rear brake off for a summer, that was really cool. Went brakeless for a week, killed my tires and terrified myself, finally reached the balance point. Despite my best ambitions to the contrary, I ended up with a singlespeed mountain bike with only the rear brake. I dabbled in front brakes, never lasted (because I would fuck it up, I still like using them), and so on.

But things change. Time passed, I got used to it. Kept riding trails and street, even tried brakeless again! The weight bug hit me (that's another blog for another day), and I had other shit to worry about. Now I find myself about to put gears on, from a funny situation. I have a singlespeed hub and BMX cranks (Primo cranks, know how hard it is to make that work?). People are asking me why I'm putting gears on (why not? It's a mountain bike and it'll go faster!), rather than the opposite.

I came to the interesting conclusion the other day; people asked me similiar questions whenever I rode brakeless. Why am I really putting gears on? At risk of another autbiography, my riding this season really went in the wrong direction. Spinning is cool, and I learned a lot of that, but I was going in the direction of tech everything, rather than what I'd like to be doing, fast stuff, gaps, no fakie, just balls-out speed and flowing. I put gears on, instantly I'm going faster, and I can't do fakies anymore. Perfect. Now I have to 360 where I would 180, now I clear 15 feet where I was clearing 10 before. To sum up, it's a new challenge. I have to adapt my style, right down the basic way I approach riding my bike (not tricks, just riding it). Much like going brakeless.

tl;dr brakeless is the same thing as gears.

Think about it. Weird, eh?

Onterrible

A new issue of Onterrible has dropped. I'm all for any Ontario footage, and this is particularly well done.

After watching it, I have to say I'm underwhelmed. It's set in an indoor park (and flatground I guess), that just HAPPENS to be in Toronto. If I didn't recognize the ramps from Wallace Emerson, I would have had no way of knowing at all. The first clip of Chijioke (the only rider I could pick out as being "local" was of him donig a 3-tap to fakie to indian giver. Unimpressed. The first Onterrible....now THAT was a banger.

Weight weeniedom

Sound good to you guys? I have a few more changes in mind before I'm completely happy with the gear set-up (prize to anyone who guesses correctly), but this is a damn good start. Cost me like $160 so far, all I'm waiting on is a chain now.

Adding gears will add 1.3 pounds, less even. That satisfies my curiosity. The modifications I have in mind will hopefully bring the difference down to a pound clean. It's noteworthy that my weights don't include zip ties or the electrical tape I'll be using the keep it all looking clean. However the quoted weight also includes an undrilled chaingu....I've said too much.

Well will you look at that...

I am a hugely enthusiastic amateur weight weenie. Of the many tiers of weight weeniedom (outlined at some point), I'd say I'm around Tier 3. So obviously when it comes time to put gears on, I won't settle for any old Saint shiiiet. Let's take a look at the rear wheel.

I own a Hope Pro II SingleSpeed/Trials. Great little hub, equally spaced flanges for a dishless build (unless you own a Specialized, but that's another story altogether), double the engagement points of the Standard Pro II, and a steel freehub body. Very low weight too, if you care, which I definitely do. You can even cram up to six 9-speed cogs on, should you want to run gears, which I definitely do. So..

Hope Pro II weight: 295g
Hope Pro II weight with steel freehub body: ~370g
Hope Pro II SingleSpeed/Trials weight: 375g, confirmed
SRAM PG-950 cassette weight: 450g, confirmed

Now a pound clean for a cassette is quite a fucking bit, needless to say. And I still need to circumcize it, since it won't fit. So let's circumcize...


So I knock THREE gears off of a NINE-speed cassette, and I lose more than half of the weight right there. I mean that's reason enough to do this modification. 290g is 290g, no matter what hub. As a side note, if I had gotten the normal Pro II hub and not done this modification, the supposed 75g saving would have translated to a 225g gain, a clean half-pound. Another way of looking at that is realizing that the normal Pro 2 weighs 290g. I just dropped the weight of a complete hub.

So now I have a 11-23 spread (mated to a 33t up front) that weighs 160g, on a singlespeed hub. Any questions?

The Masters

When Kenneth pokes his head above ground and makes a post, he makes it count. You'll see more of what I mean when my fork is done. Speaking of thinly-veiled teasers, we have an exclusive interview on the way. Not Cedric Gracia or Bearclaw, but someone who actually has opinions and insight that matter to us.

Core bike shop (Coxwell & Queen) recently renovated, with a beautiful paint job and fantastic set-up courtesy hours and hours of sleepless nights spent painting. Imagine Chris Taylor's surprise upon seeing his ceiling pouring water a few short weeks after the paint fumes dissipated. Wishing him all the best in getting Core back on its feet (again!)

Custom, part II

Tons of photos coming this weekend. Call it the weekend of TS. We're moving into our new digs, the Streatworks. Lots of modifications getting finished up, weighed (you know it!), and maybe painted. Maybe even ridden, who knows...maybe Kenneth or Duran will even post on this blog!

Custom

What does that even mean? If you buy a bunch of components and slap 'em together, is that a custom bike? The word custom is overused in the bike sense these days....changing your tires does NOT make your bike custom, nor does putting on a different set of handlebars.

Hell on the topic of handlebars, I'd argue that immediately going out and buying a set of 3" rise steel bars (with a dropped stem, go figure) or immediately buying a Deity bar/stem combo is actually counter-custom (not a word, I know)...All you're doing is conforming to the street trends of the day. How do these kids know that they like the angles on Deity bars, that they're going to like having silly amounts of rise? Letting the internet build your bike is NOT custom.

Lacing up some hubs, spokes, and rims of your choice? In the ballpark, not quite custom enough for TS yet. Lowering your fork? Now you're playing the game. But why stop there? Let's look at the Rockshox Pike Air U-Turn. Originally built for AM, it has an optional remote lock-out, which is slickly routed through the crown. It has adjustable travel, 110-140mm, and obviously, brake mounts. Now obviously travel is determined by how you ride, but 110mm is the highest you can run on a modern street frame without ruining the geo. Many people don't run front brakes, and almost no-one runs a remote lock-out. So why bother with all of those mounts? 15 minutes with a file and sandpaper, and they're gone. Crack open that fork and lower it if you don't want 140mm of travel.

Now let's look at frames. This is where it gets dicey, because if you're like me, you want a long warranty and you want to take advantage of it. There goes your chance to modify the frame, right there...But if you're the second owner or just don't care, why run what the factory gave you? For starters, the paint is almost guaranteed to be hideous...and many people don't run gears, which leaves you with unnecessary tabs sticking out of the top tube. Hell some people don't even run brakes.

Look at your drivetrain...chainguide, cassette, cranks, the list goes on. Expect something more concrete this weekend.

Use your imagination!

Bike riding at long last

Occasionally, we do ride. My frame has been broken for a few months, but just today I (mostly) built my other bike. Said "Fuck it!" and rode instead of worrying about details.

The Kona you see here isn't in spring shape quite yet...she needs a chain (obviously), but that's waiting until I figure out how I'm maintaining tension, and that's waiting until I decide on a ratio. No sweat! She's also waiting on a front brake. Stay tuned, you'll get a full speclist when she's done.

TS team rider Duran produces with a footjam tailwhip in the grimy, poorly lit garage.

TS team manager and manly man CR takes a break from finding shit to blog about and chucks a tailwhip in the grimy garage. Courageous decision to wear a white shirt. Early snap from Duran, but we'll forgive him this time.

Anticipation

One of my bikes is coming together, at long last. Feeling all tingly, haven't ridden a bike of my own in a few months, haven't ridden this bike since mid-summer. So let's get some history, and pictures.

First off...history. This bike came to be courtesy a "Free Stuff" thread on Dropmachine this summer gone by. She was offered up by the user Stephen, and I quickly snapped her up. Turns out he lives close to me, so I was able to get her before he left for Fort McMurray or somewhere even more rural. Then I slapped on a few of my own parts (seat and pedals) and gaver.

At this point, she was SS, lite trials set-up...22:13 ratio, derailleur tensioner, 2 rim brakes, all fine by me, but the deal-breaker was really up front...a rigid fork, threaded, with a quill-type stem. I cannot ride rigid to save my life, and just looking at that quill-type stem, I just couldn't bring myself to spend money to remedy the problem. So she really got neglected for the most part, I rode some XC on her, rode her when my Specialized was in the shop, but really didn't like it beyond the novelty. The chain would jump all the time, and the rigid fork just killed me.

Then my Specialized frame cracked. Off to Specialized it went, and I was left, mid-summer and mid-stoke, with no street bike. So the Kona got pressed into street duty. I ditched the derailleur tensioner, turns out 22:13 is a perfect ratio with a new chain, which I bought (710SL for the Specialized). Even if I didn't really like the ride, those two weeks are really when I got an emotional attachment to the bike. She kept me riding when I otherwise would've gone crazy. Slow, unwieldy, but I still made it to every Wednesday Night Ride.

Then I got a new frame from Specialized. I haven't ridden the Kona since. That new frame is broken, no replacement for another month at least, and I've got a bike sitting in my basement. I'd really been annoyed at myself for getting this bike and not riding her, Stephen gave her up because he wasn't riding her, and here she was in my basement. Then I discovered the headtube was 1.125, not 1" as I originally thought. The rest is history...


Full specs and a full shot coming soon. Frame is a 2001 Kona Scab. She'll be built for XC and generally versatility. Finally, FINALLY, I'll be able to really ride her and enjoy it.

Here's some art.

I'm still learning to use the calculator as a medium and there's no eraser tool.

In the news

If you read any of Toronto's papers, that partisan clueless bullshit rag the Star in particular, you know Toronto is in the process of mounting a bid for the 2015 Pan-Am Games. I don't know what the hell those are, other than what I've read in afore-mentioned populist rag. I do know that it'll be stupidly expensive, like $1,770,000,000 expensive, presumably because of all of the facilities you have to build. The idea of these games is to showcase Toronto's superiority as a city or something...

• The capital investment made to stage the 2015 Pan/Parapan Am Games represents a legacy investment of close to $1 billion – the largest ever contribution to Ontario’s sport and recreation infrastructure

• Brand new facilities will be developed to host competitions; a combination of existing and renovated facilities will be used for a variety of events, all facilities for the games will meet or exceed international and Olympic standards

• All venues will use green technology, be fully accessible be available to spectators, high performance athletes, community groups and members of the public during and after the Games

So. $1 billion dollars worth of flashy shiny new facilities being built, fully acessible to the public. Can you see where I'm going with this? Build it and we will come.

In other news...expect some original content from our corner in a week or two.

And on the topic of dicking around....keep clicking that CORE link over there, eventually it'll take you to an actual website.

The waiting game

Most of us just play the benches when snow comes, shred the forums, you know the deal. And that's why most of us ride the same old spots year in year out. So get off your ass and explore, who knows what you'll find.

Worse comes to worse, you've seen a new part of the city, experienced some new streetlife. Hardly a day wasted.

We've still got a good month or two of this shit left, but when the season comes it won't be waiting, so find yourself a nice new ledge. These spots won't ride themselves.

A new era.....

Hey.

Come on in. Take off your coat, pull up a seat, crack a beer. Let me welcome you to Toronto Streat Solutions, the start of something different in our little scene. A lot of people bitch and moan about the Toronto street scene, a lot of people plan rides that are never meant to happen, and a lot of people waste time and money worrying about bullshit bike matters. Forget the Toronto Street scene, and welcome to the Toronto Streat scene. You're witnessing history being made, so jump along for the ride.

Basically put, we think for ourselves, and associate with like-minded individuals.

So what do solutions have to do with it? Everything and nothing. We aren't just another suspension tuning company...if you want your suspension to get some seals and air pumped into it, send it to Push. If you want your ride overhauled, send us a message, we'll figure it out. Solutions means just that, our MO is to get creative and damned if we won't. Gears on street bikes, custom suspension, front brakes on jump bikes, whatever. Get in touch, we'll make it work. Hell, bored and want to ride? Chances are we're down. Many of you Toronto residents probably know us, if you don't live in Toronto, follow along anyways, who knows what you'll learn. We've got more than a few hours of bike shop labour behind us, and more than a few hours spent riding like men. We're not a bike shop, we can't guarantee anything, and we have nothing to back us up but our records and our work. That's more than enough.

Streat. It's not a typo, it's a way of life. And I'm out.