WeThePros

It's a cut-throat business the re-posting of bmx product news. It's the quick and the dead. You snooze, you lose. Post something up 12 hours after it drops and you're nothing. Nothing!

The WeThePeople 2010 completes have already been levitating in cyberspace for days, but now there is this nicely re-packaged official release that allows me to keep my dignity:

What can you say other than that WeThePeople are the rulers of completes. Even the most salty of critics would struggle to come up with legitimate complaints about the above flip-book and bikes in it. Maybe it isn't exactly your flavour, but the package as a whole is pro. The bikes, the spec, the artwork, the photos, the info, the presentation. Pro.

They've broken the range up into series, which start with "Novice", and then in true marketer-speak jump straight to "Expert" and then mangage to find 3 more levels above that. So it's: Novice, Expert, Pro, Master and Elite.

They also give a pretty good rundown of what you actually get from the frames at each different level. For example if you buy a Novice Series bike you know that at least your down tube is Chromoly. On an Expert Series you get CrMo downtube and chainstays, on a Masters you can the top tube to the CrMo list, until you work your way up the range to full heat treated CrMo of the Envy. On top of that you can check the spec tables at the back of the book to see at which stage the bars step up from hi-tensile to CrMo, or whether the dropouts on your forks are heat-treated or not.

It seems like a pretty obvious thing to do - to give people all the information so they can make the choice of what they want to buy for their money, but it just doesn't usually get laid out like that - in fact the more suspicious conspiracy theorists amongst you might even believe that manufacturers were trying to hide exactly what their completes are made of. (?)

So there is a lot of information about the bikes. That's good. But there is also some nice details: Some integrated pivotal posts that you can lop off if you're not into them, plenty of integrated seat clamps of course, bikes with front and rear specific rims, seat / post combos, removable brake mounts, 8.2" rise bars and female front hubs. Plus loads of nice eclat spec, especially at the top end.

A couple of interesting details are the "Salt Mid sized BB sealed bearing (polymer bb)" on the Zodiac and the polymer bearing in the "Salt Cassette 9t sealed bearing / polymer bearing" on the Envy. What's going on here? I don't know, I'm going to bed, so I'll just leave you to speculate on that with some firey and informed banter in the comments. Ha..... ha.... ha.

Once Was New Shit

Verde are taking the style points with their 2010 completes. They've put out photos of the full range - on Defgrip of course - and they are looking damn fancy. Fancy good that is. Chrome, fats front and rear, tan-walls, built in pivotals, minimal decals and flangeless grips. No spec yet:

Colony have also put up a couple of preview shots of their two completes for 2010 - The Endeavour and The Decsendent. The Decsendent is built around the low, low slung Hell Stallion frame and will, as a result, make people raise their voices and talk angrily about scooters. Or they may raise their voices in lively debate about whether or not Colony have deliberately used Australian/English spelling for both of their completes so as to confuse their American market. Either way, no spec yet:

United have their four completes and two logos for 2010. They are nice enought to tell you how much hi-ten steel and/or how much CrMo you're getting on your complete, but they have not made it clear which logo they would like you to primarily recognise them by:

And just to keep things confusing, as all the 2010 bikes start appearing Lotek have posted up a 2009 "back to school" range:


They look nice, but there's been talk that the quality of the last batch of Loteks was pretty average, with the soles requiring very little persuasion to separate themselves from the uppers and seek a happier life on their own. But on the other hand, the Lotek team do have a lot of tattoos... so you should probably just buy some anyway. And if you do, you can be safe in the knowledge that there is now a Lotek warranty policy - if your shoes fuck up, you can pay $20 to get another pair - if you live in the US. If you don't, you could always just put your $20 towards a new pair of Orchids.

I don't think I should say too much about the MacNeil 2010 stuff. They've put their "Cruiser" bike and frame right at the top of their product menu and the bitter taste of negativity it's left in my mouth is just going to get all over any other words that come out.

Maybe it's just a personal hang-up and maybe it's just the label "cruiser", but I can only see them are the drunk uncles of bicycles - loud and obnoxious, styleless and bloated. The MacNeil incarnation is actually one of the less lame examples that you'll see. It doesn't, for example, have any flame decals and it will probably never be ridden by Paris Hilton. But really, couldn't they have just done a fixed gear like everyone else?

Last but not least is some Fly prototype spotting. See I notice, that Pijin notices, that Bike Guide notices these things.

Americana

Pics of FBMs full range of 2010 completes are up. Specless as yet, but looking mighty fine. And... some of them even have stoppers.



Here’s a video check of two of the 2010 fit completes. Specs are at the end.



Odyssey are now doing their Vermont sprocket in 25 tooth. That’s not exactly big news, but I’ve always thought that was a fine looking piece of sprocket – maybe doesn’t translate as well to 25t, but what d'ya do?



On the Light v.s Heavy, Old v.s New front, In the Gnar have weighed in with some sensible words on the new T-1 GB frame. This is very un-American of me, but since I’m not American… I think it’d be cool to see T1 move more of their production offshore so they could put out a bit of post-weld heat treated trickery with a T1 flavour. But you see Australian manufacturing died years ago so we don’t get patriotic about that shit.