SIDE NOTE 1: Just going to start them out right off the bat. Can I just say that I have never owned an Independent Fabrication bicycle? Hell, it has taken me about six years to stop saying “Independent FabricationS.” Do not worry, I fuck it up in paragraph three here. I just thought you should know. Don’t think that it is is not that I haven’t lusted after one. It is not that I have not come very very close to owning one. Just never been able to pull the trigger. And for this fact I am sad.
I was trying to think back the other day as to when was the first time that I started to have some connection with the Independent Fabrication Family. I really, really want to say that it was before Clint was a part of the family and maybe it was. Maybe it was not. Maybe he was just the one that made that connection and my insertion (of myself into their space!) easier.
SIDE NOTE 2: One time, when I was working at Cambridge Bicycle Tyler and his wife came in looking for some supplies for a trade show booth that they were making. They were milling around the shop and I was creeping up to the other employees at the shop and nudging them in the ribs and pointing out these two; “See them?” hushed tones they work at Independent Fabrications. Maybe I was more excited than everyone else (I did the same thing when Rob Vandermark came in one time as well, Chris King too). But, that is because my reverence probably trumped most of the other employees that were working there at the time. Did I know Rob and Tyler and Alessandra at the time? Nope. Not at all in fact. But, I knew what they stood for and that was this.
They stood for people that were making something in this industry. Making something of this industry and for the record are two of the most crazy talented and creative people that I have met..in this industry. They are people who could use their skill for building, their skill for doing and put it to use making something that no one else could do (specifically titanium mountain bikes). So, they got a wide berth, they got the benefit of the doubt.
So, here I am trying to think back on on the times that I met them, hung out with them, pushed around hi-fives over cold, cold beers. And I totally mean “pushed around” like refused.
SIDE NOTE 3: The first time I met Tyler was because he had put a bottle of shampoo into a hot tub at the NAHBS San Jose hotel where everyone was staying. A precursor to the Hot Tub Club without even knowing it. I was in awe. How devilish. How daring. How perfectly IF. (The above photo is one of my favorites of Tyler that exists, or that I have seen. Taken by Daniel Wakefield Pasley).
How did we come to have such reverence for this company? For this brand?
Well, I cannot speak for you. I tried that part already and it didn’t go well, so I scrapped it. Me. I can speak for me, so I can try the best I can to do that.
It looks as though Independent Fabrication is moving into a new era. Not the baseball cap either. A new direction. A new state. A new state of being. And with Great Change Comes Great Responsibility (to pay tribute to the old guard?) Not sure really how this goes, but every time it happens it seems to go poorly. Now, before someone gets offended and someone gets — as a friend of mine is fond of saying — butt hurt let us stay calm. The jury is still out on what this (butt hurt) actually means, but it feels like it has some sort of importance to it. So, let me put it this way – Breakups Fucking Suck. I know it. You know it. Dogs know it. But that does not mean that they are not important to the whole “growth and development” factor of something, in this case, a company.
What I am trying to do is see it from both angles. Seriously, I’m trying to do this. Try with me, lets see how it feels. Feel good? Not right now? Ok, I get that, but let us hold hands and give em the benefit of the doubt.
I am trying to do this because I do not know what really goes on behind the scenes. None of us do really, do we? We do not know the ins and outs of what makes up this company. We know the people and we love them for their contribution to the sport, to the whole idea of bicycles in general but that is about where it ends. Ok, that is enough for me, but still not the point.
There might have been a conversation with my pal Clint this morning that made me think otherwise. That made me think that people’s souls are being crushed in all corners of the world and that this little corner of Somerville is not exempt. But, I had a good cry (silently behind my computer monitor so that no one would actually see it) and then I decided to get on with my day. I am guessing, hoping, that he went and got on with his as well. Because he is great and going to be great at whatever it is he is going to do. Even if (and this is the part that honestly makes me so fucking sad) he is going to move into a phase that does not involve painting bikes. Because I think that Clint paints a mean – mean – fucking bicycle.
So, thanks goes out to everyone at Independent Fabrication for all the years of entertainment that you have given us in your current form. Thanks for the ones before that in the other forms that you have taken. The snow covered PBR races and the Matty B interviews doled out. You know what I’m talking about.
And here’s to the future. May it be bright for everyone no matter what you choose to do. I have to think that if G. Smith is behind it, it can do nothing but succeed. Sure, it will be different than it has been, but then again it is a new year.
Here is what I propose:
Just to pay tribute to this current phase AND at the same time look to the future I will post up any and all photos of that people send of their bikes. Pick one and send it to me here: Jeremyddunn@gmail.com. Next Friday I will post all the photos. Photos like the one below.
And I want some old stuff. Like Tim Johnson and Mo Bruno-Roy on IF’s. That type of stuff. In the meantime I’ll see what other stories I can dig up from my own decrepit memory bank. Also, for another take on this. See the much more concise, less flavored with swear words James Morrison in Rife With Change.
photo by Tyler Evans (presumably)
