A Glimpse into Handmade Bikes with Fast Boy Cycles

We were walking  around SoHo in New York during Bike to Work week and happened to pass by the Patagonia store. In the window, was the most beautiful bike I've ever seen.  We went in, and it turns out the bike was handmade by Ezra Caldwell, a local guy, who happens to be Hillary Nanney's boyfriend. Hillary works in the store.

I picked up one of Ezra’s cards and later, I asked him to tell me a little about himself.  He said he got started in the hand-made bike business after a nearly 10 year career teaching dance:

" I realized that I really didn't like dance very much.  Maybe that's a little coy.  I was pretty sure that I wanted to stop teaching several years before I managed to pull the trigger.  I'd been assembling bikes for friends and students for several years with a growing level of seriousness.  At some point I started making wooden fenders and selling them on the Internet.  I finally decided that I wanted to be doing the WHOLE thing.

"I went down to Austin, Texas to take some brazing lessons with friend and builder, Whit Moyer.  Spent about ten days with him and then came back to the city and spent every penny I had on getting set up.  The rest is history, though very recent history, I guess."

On Ezra’s card, it reads:  "ezra caldwell. designer.fabricator.janitor."  I asked him about the janitor part:

"I own the business, but I also take out the trash (and do the bookkeeping, ordering, marketing, etc..).  Maybe one day I'll get some help.  No. Probably not."

I asked him where he rides in the Manhattan area:

"Back when I was still teaching dance, I was riding from my place in Harlem down to Tribeca a handful of times a week for work. Now that I'm in business for myself and have a shop in the basement, I need to invent reasons to ride. I ride down to SoHo a couple times a week to pick my girlfriend up from work (at Patagonia.). I'm not really so interested in the bike as a way of exercising.  I've got no problem with folks who are, I'm just more interested in the bike as a replacement for your car.  But when the farthest you really need to go in your day to day life is the supermarket a half mile away, you need to get creative.

"Hillary and I have ridden out to City Island a few times.  She used to live there and we ride back to visit.  It's a pretty cool ride, that takes you places you might not go otherwise.  But to me it doesn't matter TOO much where I'm going..  when I'm on a bike, getting there, I'm with the one I love.  We spend some time in the summer at our place up in Nova Scotia. I think I'm going to build a trailer for my dog so we can do some touring up there.  It's SO beautiful."

Finally, I said, "So, Ezra, ever had a close-call in the city of New York?"

"I've been riding fixed gear bikes in cities for nearly 15 years now. I've never been knocked off my bike.  I'm really asking for it, I know.  I've been doored, side swiped, forced to the curb, run into by unpredictable pedestrians on the bike path, but somehow, never knocked down.  (I ride like a grandpa.  I'm never late, though!  OH..  and don't get me wrong.. Every time I've ever gone mountain biking, I've fallen off at least once) I did have a pretty funny one once, though.  I was riding in rush hour traffic on 8th Ave, I think.  I was behind a big truck with a lift gate. The truck was entirely blocking my view.  I decided to get around it.. looked over my left shoulder to see if I could get in that lane, and when I looked back the truck had stopped dead and I was already on top of it.  Magically, the lift gate was at JUST the right height so that my front tire wedged right under it.  So there I was completely stuck, but upright!, in the middle of rush hour.  It was such a good fit, that I was able to take my hands of the bars and just sit there.  Without ever getting off the bike, I reached forward and pushed myself back and rode off. I guess if the lift gate had been about six inches higher I could have been in real trouble."

Visit Ezra Caldwell at fastboycycles.com.

[Photos courtesy of Ezra Caldwell.]

Comments

[sheridan bartlett]

whee-ha! way to go Ezzie!
Your mama

[Brad Gantt]

Nice work! I love the raw-ish finish on this here bike. It's lug-tastic!

[Skot Nelson]

Beautiful machines. Would that I lived in New York and/or had the budget to clean up my fixed gear world. (Other bikes are well taken care of...)

Nice to see artists at work.

[nimum]

Ezra is an artist in ever sense of the word. Really great to see him featured here!

[joy]

Can't wait for mine!!

[Mark]

I love Ezra's green handlebars. I was lucky to get a set brfore they went out of production. Beautiful Bikes.

[Ice Pack]

He is the man.
Ezra I love you bikes + the site looks great.

[act developpement]

awesome bikes and green lifestyle

[angry punk chick]

sick ride dude, sick ride.

[frank]

where do you get a rear bike bag like that picture?

[thomasina regular]

Though Ezra seems to be producing some works of art, it would be nice if he actually interacted with the NYC bike scene. So far he hasn't in the slightest to anyone's knowledge and seems he has no problems taking advantage of the visibility it lends him.

I do not think it polite or fair on his part to even consider continuing to produce anything without acknowledging the community that has inspired him to even begin his work in the first place.

This ego-centrist behavior isn't much of a surprise though, as most people don't post cheesecake shots of their girlfriends or nudes of themselves on the internet. Nice photos Ezra, I'm sure the 14 year olds of the world rejoice daily.

Whoa. Wanted to weigh in for a second to say that Ezra did not seek any notoriety. I saw the bike in the window and I was the one who followed up with him. I asked him if it was ok to appear in the Patagonia blog and I wrote about it. I imagine, by the way, that there is not one but a lot of bike scenes in New York. Pretty big place.
Thanks,
enviro editor

[thomasina regular]

Yes, the New York bike scene is not small, but it is segmented by style of bike and style of riding. The fixed gear scene, despite its visibility is not gigantic.

There are very few people building artisan steel frames within the Five Boroughs. Fact is, it is a very small segment and Ezra has seemingly done nothing to introduce himself or support the scene that he clearly draws from.

[Free]

@frank

We asked Ezra about the bike bags. Here's what he said:

The bags on the back of that little bike are made by a company called ortleib. Really nice stuff. Very well designed and built.

You can see their stuff at http://www.ortliebusa.com/

[anonymous pansy]

In what way does the fixed gear scene in NYC lent Ezra visibility - indeed, how has he drawn from it - if he's had no interaction with it, hasn't acknowledged it, etc? Can he really be accused of riding the coattails of a scene he's not part of? Is this a "we were here first" argument? What have his photographs got to do with his bicycles? Are you simply jealous, or is there something insidious going on that is totally unapparent to us folks from outside who aren't cool enough to be part of the "scene"?

[thomasina regular]

AP-
You're missing the point. I'm not saying that he isn't allowed to do what he is doing, just that he needs to pay dues a bit. He secludes himself from a group of people who would surely love to meet him.

However, as soon as I enough credit, I will make sure to exclude you from my 'scene' as I have no room for kneejerk high school social stylings.

[Anonymous Pansy]

Thomasina - I think you may have just demonstrated why your scene is so small, and why Ezra hasn't knocked on your door to pay his respects, or his dues. You plenty of credit - consider me excluded.

[andrew heist]

Congrats Ezra. It is great to see things moving along for you. Hopefully someday I can afford one of your masterpieces. It is too bad that this blog has turned into an argument about a bike scene. Keep trucking Ezra, you dont need anybody's permission.

[TimmyC]

Yup, Andrew, it is a bummer, but not at all unexpected. Thomasina's opening salvo said more than any of her subsequent comments: criticizing Ez for his "cheesecake" photos while at the same time saying that he doesn't interact with the NYC bike scene. The knee jerk (to borrow her bon mot) of he-doesn't-hang-with-us-so-he-can't-be-OG transitioning into well-he's-a-dick-anyway-cuz-he-takes-photos-of-his-nekkid-gf tells us all we need to know of her argument.

How could Thomasina have noticed the nudes but missed the "here's a cool pennyfarthing outside the NYC bike film fest" shot? How could she had not noticed that he has literally HUNDREDS of photos of bicyclists, the vast majority in NYC? Are Ez's friends not in the "scene?" Is his cadre of daily commuters not in the "scene?" What constitutes membership?

The local scene in my area (Seattle) is dominated by 20somethings. There is heavy and obvious drug use, quasi-religious respect for PBR, an emphasis on anti-establishment behavior of wildly divergent and occasionally conflicting flavors, and a strong, strong exclusionist social temperament. Theirs is a close clique. I have a social in, and am tolerated for brief periods, but I clearly don't belong. From a purely sociological standpoint, the Seattle fixie "scene," such as it is, is fascinating, but it is also very much a scene to which I would not want to belong. Too young, too focused on D&A, too focused on making noise rather than making change.

The scenes in many other cities share many of the features I've listed, to varying degrees. From seeing posts on flickr and reading NYC-local bike blogs, my understanding is that the fixie scene(s) there is much the same. If Ezra's aesthetic sense doesn't line up with the vibe of this scene, is this Ez's fault? Of course not.

Thomasina's accusation of stealing inspiration is likewise baseless. If NYC's scene is anything like the scenes elsewhere, riders would much prefer a Yanagisawa or a Makino or a 3Rensho. A radially laced Phil on a Campa Montreal rim for a front wheel? Hell no! They want white Aerospoke! Wooden sweep-bent bars? Hell no! Nitto NJS kerin bars, beeyotch! Ezra's fixies aren't built to meet the aesthetic requirements of Thomasina's scene. His inspirations are the classics, not retro-neogomi, much more René Herse than Hiroshi Fujiwara. Just so that it's been said, I'm not jumping on the alt.fixie crowd. It's just a different aesthetic, and it's clearly not an aesthetic from which Ezra borrows nor is it a customer base he appears to be courting.

My only advice to Thomasina would be this: if she is interested in having Ezra in the scene, INVITE HIM. Given the cliquish, exclusive nature of the scene, he may never have felt comfortable popping in and saying "heylookameImakebikesandthey'recoolcanIbeyerfriend?" because of the strong possibility of rejection. That's not snobbery, Thomasina; that's just human nature. Fear of rejection is universal. The only issue I can see is that since Ezra has been, on this thread at least, pre-rejected, the invite might not be received as openly.

Note to Ez: you do lovely work, truly, regardless of scene.

Note to Thomasina: tldr, I know, but please consider my suggestion.

[thomasina regular]

I didn't intend to mention Fixed Gears only my friends, I really meant the core bike scene of people with similar aesthetics. I didn't see Ezra at Bike Fetish day but I did see a righteous Bilenky and some crazy Schwinns.

Glad to see you have some taste TimmyC, I'd much rather an ANT rando then a Pista as well.

[Free]

The comment by thorpy has been removed because it was derogatory and didn't add to the conversation (see About in the left nav for comment guidelines).

In essence, thorpy did not agree with the post above.

[Jeremy Bechthold]

Wonderful story and even better bikes. I don't see where all the animosity comes from - the way I see it the more bikes the better, regardless of the "scene".

[localcrew]

Amen, Jeremy. There's many old timers out there who were building lifestyles around bikes long before fads and trends swept through and "scenes" developed. Far as I can tell, these folks aren't griping about being owed a thing. These smiling, stoke-spreading pedal-pushers are the ones who inspired me to get in the saddle, and seeing them on the daily ride is what's kept me committed for the past 14 years--I can only hope to live up to their example when I'm old and grey :)
-lc

[willow naeco]

I thought you might like to help cheer Ezra up as he fights cancer ( http://www.fastboycycles.com/teachingcancertocry/ ). There will be a sneaky guest post there or just e-mail me willow naeco at gmail dot com. I'm looking for people who know Ezra or just want to send him well wishes. I'm making this month's Chicago Critical Mass zine for Ezra -- thoughts about/for him with a Get Well Postcard as the back cover that people can cut off, decorate, and mail to him (the project is a secret -- he's been told to stay away from his blog for a day while people have a chance to comment at the sneaky post). I'll make a postcard sample available at my flickr and Blogger sites ASAP ( http://flickr.com/photos/willownaeco/ ) so people can print them or at least get his addy from there...I think he'll really like this and it'll probably cheer up Hillary too.