I built this bike over the winter from parts I had laying around. The company I work for moved offices over the Christmas holiday to a building that doesn’t allow me to bring my bike up to my office. Instead, we have to store our bikes in a shady loading dock that’s open to 43rd street / Times Sq. So I needed an inexpensive “beater” to commute on every day. More on the bike build and additional pictures after the jump…
My first bike was a Ross Bicentennial. I was six or seven years old when my father brought this bike home. He had found it in his scrap yard, which was on North 5th and Kent in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
I remember three things about it: First, that it had training wheels on it and when I rode it, it made a grinding noise that my friends and I thought sounded like “a real motorcycle”. Second, I knew it was a girl’s bike and was embarrassed to ride it. Finally, I remember doing the mental calculation that 1976 was two-hundred years after 1776, and from that, I realized what “bicentennial” meant. I can also remember being impressed that the two-hundredth anniversary of our country’s founding was already so far in the “distant” past.
Around second or third grade, I remember coming to a realization about bicycles during “show and tell”. A kid was showing off his broken arm, which he’d gotten riding a bike. As a child, I was deathly afraid of “getting stitches” or breaking a bone, and I correlated my classmates’ various injuries with their stories of falling of their bikes. So I decided if I never rode a bike, I would be safe from harm. Unloved and unridden, this bike was eventually given away to one of our neighbors’ children, who I hope loved it more.
I finally learned to ride a bike when I was twelve years old. Mrs. Cooney, a neighborhood stay-at-home mom who babysat me after school, taught me to ride. She shamed me into it by pointing out her eight year old daughter Erin was already riding. I still remember that little pink bicycle with a yellow saddle, and the brief exhilaration of my first ride before crashing into the pavement. Mrs. Cooney picked the asphalt out of my hands while I bit down on a rag, crying in pain but also planning my next ride.
I just finished restoring this 56cm Cinelli Corsa, serial number M9141, after scooping it up on eBay. This is a fairly mysterious Cinelli for a number of reasons. First of all, I haven’t been able to find much information on it online, other than a post on the Italian MilanoFixed blog that didn’t shed any light on its origins. It’s made from Columbus Cromor tubing, placing it in the mid-range of Cinelli road bikes. This blog placed it as a 1989 model, alongside the “Deus Ex Machina” time-trial model which has similar lugs and pantographs.
The bike came with a mish-mash of parts which I replaced or upgraded (Shimano 600 cranks, 105 RD, Campagnolo FD). Now the bike has a full Shimano 600 tri-color groupset, with a Gipiemme seatpost and Cinelli bars and stem. Wheelset is Mavic Open 4 CD rims laced to Shimano 600 hubs. I replaced the original lime green Selle Rolls saddle and bottle cages with a new white Turbo and matching cages. I refreshed the lime green bar tape and cables with pink cork tape and cable housing.
The phrase “Mens Sana In Corpore Sano” means “a healthy mind in a healthy body” and is featured prominently on both sides of the top tube. It’s not a decal, but rather part of the factory paint job. All of the lugs are stamped with the Cinelli “C” as well as pantographs on the seatstay caps, fork crown, and cast into the bottom bracket. I think the nicest feature of this bike are the fork crown lugs, which have a swept-back “wing” shape.
I’ve had this bike for a couple of months now, but I only recently got around to taking some pictures. It’s an original Grant Petersen-designed Bridgestone RB-1 from 1990, and when I found it on eBay, it came with all the stock parts: Suntour GPX drivetrain, Hatta Vesta headset, Dia-Compe BRS 400 brakes and levers, and Sansin hubs with Wolber rims.
A month ago I switched the groupset to a NOS Shimano Santé group I pieced together. Santé is a rare and misunderstood groupset – in 1987 Shimano created it with the idea of appealing to consumers who wanted pro-quality parts with a slicker design. Perhaps due to the cheesy name and white powdercoated parts, many people assume Santé is low-end stuff – not so! Mechanically, it sits between Ultegra and Dura-Ace., and the Disraeli Gears site enthusiastically calls it “most innovative and influential derailleurs in recent history.”
Santé performs beautifully – after switching the groupset this bike went from “very good” to a truly remarkable and amazing ride. It’s now my favorite bike, the kind you look forward to riding, regardless of the weather. The shifters are set to friction and it shifts and coasts smoothly and nearly silently.
I held onto the original parts for the RB-1 in case I ever decide to sell it, but it will take a pretty special bike to replace this one. More pictures after the jump…
I’m back with another DJ mix – this time it’s all about the 80’s! Electro Classixxx is a non-stop megamix of 34 of the best electro jams from 1980-84, and is a great introduction to this massively influential genre. According to British DJ and music historian Greg Wilson,
Electro is the missing link of Dance music. All roads lead back to New York where the level of musical innovation and experimentation throughout the early 80s period was quite staggering. It wasn’t one narrow style that never strayed from within the confides of an even narrower BPM range, Electro-Funk was anything goes! The diversity of records released during this period was what made it so magical, you never knew what was coming next. The tempo of these tracks ranged from under 100 bpm to over 130, covering an entire rhythmic spectrum along the way.
There was no set template for this new Dance direction, it just went wherever it went and took you grooving along with it. It was all about stretching the boundaries that had begun to stifle black music, and its influences lay not only with German Technopop wizards Kraftwerk, the acknowledged forefathers of pure Electro, plus British Futurist acts like the Human League and Gary Numan, but also with a number of pioneering black musicians. Major artists like Miles Davis, Sly Stone, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, legendary producer Norman Whitfield and, of course, George Clinton and his P Funk brigade, would all play their part in shaping this new sound via their innovative use of electronic instruments during the 70s (and as early as the late 60s in Miles Davis’ case). Once the next generation of black musicians finally got their hands on the available technology it was bound to lead to a musical revolution as they ripped up the rule book with their twisted Funk.
Download here (right click and “save as”)
time – 65:06 /// 149mb /// 320 kbps .mp3
Track List after the jump… Continue reading
This mix bounces a number of different musical styles off each other, building up steam into high energy dance party. I was inspired by some fascinating interpretations of the blues by Kenny Larkin (in his Dark Comedy alter ego) and an Akufen track from the Blu Tibunl remix project. Then after a short detour into the “heroin house” style, I got down to business with some jackin’ house and then electro from Riton, Beck, and a medley of classic Prince tunes.
Where do you go from there? Ghetto house, Bmore breaks, and some straight up dance rock from folks like Blues Explosion, LCD Soundsystem, Blur, The Libertines, DJ Mujhava, and much more. I did lots of edits throughout this mix and even threw in a remix of Juney Boomdata’s “Cookies” I did myself.
Listen here:
137mb /// 60 min. /// 320kbps
Track list after the jump… Continue reading
Chris Macro, the mixologist behind the awesome Macro Dubplates series (download here) has a new track up on his site. “Brooklyn Slow Motion” mashes up Jay-Z and Lil’ Wayne’s “Hello Brooklyn” with one of the most famous riddims in dancehall history, the Stalag. The results are excellent:
Brooklyn Slow Motion by MACRODUBPLATES
Download here (right click and “save as”) 3:52 /// 9.08mb /// 320kbps .mp3