Bike portraits Philly 06'

When I first moved to Philly in 05,' I was amazed how many people rode track bikes. In Seattle riding track bikes for work was considered dumb, crazy or just plain stupid mainly because of the steep wet hills.

After a year or so working as a messenger and seeing people build up, flip, sell and trade their track bikes, I decided  to document some of the bikes that messengers were working on at the time.

With the introduction recently of colors for track components some people went funky, while others kept it classy. Some rode clip less, a lot rode with cages and straps, and the "crazy" rode bmx flats.

With Trexeltown Velodrome near by Philly has a deep rooted history of buying track bikes at the bi annual bike swaps and using them for work bikes.

I forgot some of these guys names as its been 5 years since I've seen them, if you see your bike and I didn't mention your name please message me and I'll put it up.

As always, click image to view larger.

 This is Frankie's whip, for a while he was known as NJS Frankie because like a lot of us he LOVED Kerin bikes.

 A lot of the bike were mixed NJS, Italian, and production.

 This was Matt's bike, One of the only messengers I used to see that wold actually ride in the drops during work. Notice the angle of the bars.

 This was Jeff  O'neal's bike, I remember he was so stoked to find yellow clip less pedals to match his saddle, tires, and grips. 

 A beauty, this broke a couple of weeks after it was built, while a lot of track frames were light and pretty they were also very fragile. 

 This was Katie's mini Fuji. One of my favorite builds. We worked together for a bit, one of the only female messengers in philly at the time.

 Julius Reeves bike, a great skateboard photographer. I believe he bought this of of NJS Frankie.

 Mark Makos track bike, a mix of american, Japanese and italian. 

 He came up on this frame at the T-Town swap for 400$!

 With a very talented frame painter in town, a lot of people took getting funky to a whole other level. This is Marco's GTB repaint. He had the matching orange front wheel but he got doored and smashed it. http://www.myspace.com/manifestbikepaint Take the time to check Santana's work out!

 A lot of people liked to go matchy. 

 While some went bare bones. This is Eshers bike Campy everything, he was so stoked to show me the Record carbon bottom bracket through the shell. He rode a 50/15 with flats and killed it.

 Bare bones and production. This guy did not give a shit about bikes and it was awesome. Enough years on the road will do it.

 Jason from Ct.  He was the first person I saw no handed wheelie on a track bike. He would do footplant 540 spins, and a bunch of other crazy shit. I watched and took photos of him wheelie around a square block with a lot of traffic on this bike. He was a fun guy to ride with, while Dustin and I were getting down in Seattle it was nice to find someone to ride with. 

During this time I started to work under one of the best mechanics I have come across. Over time and through multiple "beatings" grew an everlasting friendship. This is a bike that Bryan built at Bicycle Revolutions http://www.bicyclerevolutions.com/ 

Another example of Bryan's work and patience. This was a road frame that a particular customer wanted to make a fixed gear. As always he provided. 3 leaving 3 trailing spoke cross pattern, with some Phil, Paul and brooks action.

Back then most people thought it was stupid to do tricks on a track bike. While it might have 

been, it sure was a lot of fun. It was also awesome to have a great mechanic and old school messenger shaking his fist at me because I was breaking a lot of track parts along the way!

If your in Philly, please check out Bicycle Revolutions!