2023 MADE Bike Show Coverage: Part 01 – Bender, Black Cat, Goodday + Curiosity, Ira Ryan, LaMarche, Larkin, Oddity, SaltAir, Seeker, and Significant Other – Josh Weinberg & John Watson | The Radavist | A group of individuals who share a love of cycling and the outdoors.

We’re here in Portland, covering the 2023 MADE Bike Show, looking for bikes that we thought you, the readers of The Radavist would appreciate. Josh and John have been scouring the halls of the show for bikes to document, and we’ve got Part 01 of our coverage for you to enjoy…

Thanks to 1-Up USA for sponsoring our continued 2023 MADE Bike Show coverage!

Bender Master of None Commuter

Is it a touring bike, or a commuter bike, or just a shreddy gravel machine? It’s all the above and more. It’s the Master of None by Bender Bicycle Co. With a nod to Fort Collins, where Bender is based, and the bike style favored by every local, it harmoniously fuses vintage visuals with contemporary elements. What caught our eye were the silver components, the fenderz, and casual lines. The Sim Works Hoshi Peregrine spokes are a beautiful touch. We were impressed with the overall vibe of this bike and thought you’d dig it too!

Black Cat Bicycles Fixed Gear Gravel Bike

Yes. Scorchers aren’t anything new to the niche framebuilding world. Fixed gear, dirt-oriented bikes date back to the genesis of fixed drivetrains, but those bikes of olden times didn’t look anything like this Black Cat Bicycles. Todd threw his signature fillet brazed and bi-lam construction techniques at this bike, complete with swoopy seat stays, at-home-cooked-up paint schemes, and a lot of clever problem-solving. By utilizing a Squid Oner PF30 EBB, his client would get proper chain tension, even under all the torque generated by fixed gear riding. The tires are tukt and tight against the stunning fillet brazed fork, and that custom bent-brake noodle is divine.

Goodday + Curiosity Colorado Trail-Ready Hardtail

Chris and Arly from Goodday + Curiosity live in beautiful Gunnison, Colorado with endless singletrack and gravel roads right out of their front door. This bike designed to take on the Colorado Trail, is stunningly clad in a durable powder coat fade, dons hints of vernacular notes ranging from the Penstemon plant and the almighty American Buffalo. This size XS/S hardtail was designed for a shorter rider with a 28” inseam and features a Columbus MTB downtube, inverted to give extra space at the bottom bracket cluster, optimizing every inch for a large framebag. The Buffalo motif is repeated across the bike, bags, and the crescendo for this exemplary collaborative effort is the head badge, crafted by Gothic Mountain Jewelers. Goodday + Curiosity is selling this bike at MADE, so if you’re interested, swing through their booth!

Ira Ryan Topo MTB

The Topo is the latest model introduced by local Portland builder Ira Ryan. It’s designed for a wide range of riding, from week-long bikepacking trips, multi-hour rides, and fast cross-country racing. Its geometry offers a stable yet playful ride quality and harkens back to a bygone era. The frames can accommodate a variety of fork options, from rigid carbon to suspension, and come with plenty of mounting points for gear. Designed around a 29-inch wheel with clearance for up to a 2.8 tire, Topos can be tailored to smaller wheel sizes as each frame is a custom build. This show bike features limited Astral polished rims and a plethora of blue anodized parts from Paul Component and White Industries.

LaMarche Bicycle Co Rigid 27.5” Singlespeed MTB

Philly’s LaMarche Bicycle Co rolled into Portland with a stunning selection of bikes, ranging from a track bike, a commuter, and this wonderfully proportioned 27.5” wheeled mountain bike. Designed for a rider with a low inseam, this may look like a dirt jumper but is a custom, rigid, singlespeed MTB. Tom designed and fabricated the unique track end dropouts, his signature “Capp” fork, and he custom formed the chain and seat stays to have the same profile and a matching brake and seat stay bridge. We were really impressed with this bike as it exemplifies the potential for riders of all sizes to be able to experience both beauty and functionality via a custom bicycle. Nice ass, Tom.

Larkin Cycles Gravel Road Bike

There’s custom for customers and then there’s custom for the builder themselves. Darren Larkin brought a prototype bike to the frame builder showcase. A true “just for me” creation that embodies the true nature of design ideation. The bike features a carbon fiber seat tube, custom lugs, a custom machined top headset cup, an integrated lower headset cup on the 1” head tube, a custom steerer tube to facilitate this, butted 3/4” chain stays, and custom lugs to strengthen the flat mount brake mounting. This size 59cm bike weighs a scant 22lbs and features approximately $200 worth of used parts that still have many years of life ahead of them. Darren’s experimentation, testing, and fabrication on this bike will undoubtedly inform future custom client projects.

Oddity SSMTB 29er

Burnsey of Oddity Cycles needs no introduction to regular readers of this site. The Fort Collins, CO fabricator and artist is consistently cranking out wild frame, fork, and handlebar designs and always brings fire builds to bike shows. This year marks his tenth year building bikes under the Oddity mark and, to commemorate the important occasion, he built a single speed mountain bike that is equal parts retrospective and contemporary in that he started building in chromoly steel and eventually graduated to using titanium. For this bike, he combined the two materials into the style Oddity is known for with house-shaped tubes, a single crown truss (Squid) fork, and the original handmade moto-style handmade handlebar, the Oddmone. Steel and titanium aren’t directly weldable, so Burnesey worked with Oakes Manufacturing to build a two-part titanimum/steel tube splitter enabling the use of both materials on the build signifying a love for one-speed and Oddity’s timeless style and modern performance.

SaltAir Rigid Singlespeed MTB

We recently featured a wild build from SaltAir Cycles that received a lot of positive feedback – Clint’s Twentysixie Fixed Gear MTB – and builder Matt Nelson is here at MADE with some other super fun creations. Designed to rip anything from singletrack to tarmac, and bike paths, this singlespeed MTB is both fun and comfortable. Matt had been wanting to incorporate a belt drive into one of his builds for some time and this shreddy commuter was the perfect opportunity. Ronnie’s Ortho Bars, which Matt plucked from the recently available batch, offer a comfortable and compliant riding position while the handmade stem and fork are simple yet elegant. Gold Paul Klampers, White Industries wheels, and Geo Claw tires round out the build.

Seeker Bicycles Gravel Bike

Seeker Bicycles is the new brand from Olympia, WA-based fabricator Chris McGovern who has worked for years under his own name McGovern Cycles. A long-time bike racer, coach, and builder, Chris launched Seeker with the intent of offering approachable performance-oriented bikes without a long wait time. All frames, including this showpiece, are available in steel and titanium, feature a 44mm headtube, T47 Bottom Bracket, and flat-mount disc brakes. Prices and upgrade options will vary, but Chris’ goal with this project is to have no more than a two-week wait.

Significant Other Fixed Gear

A true show stopper, we’re going round out this gallery by handing off the mic to Ashley King of Significant Other bikes to detail her stunning first show bike/personal dream build:

Cutting my teeth on the streets of NYC as a messenger and commuter, and expanding experience to exploring the dusty fire roads and single track of Colorado, I’m an adventure cyclist through and through. Fixed gear stage race around a volcano? Yes, please. 230-mile gravel ride through the desert? I am f*cking there. After a few years as a welder/fabricator for other bike manufacturers along the front range of CO, I started Significant Other Bikes; a place for me to explore, play and create that which brings me the most joy as a cyclist: all terrain adventure bikes.

For Made, I took inspiration from my first bike and work fixie; re-imagining, designing and fabricating it as I would have loved for it to have been: a light, wide-tired ride with wide bars and a buttery smooth pedal stroke. Edgy without being intimidating. A bike capable of ripping a work day over the bridges in the snow with confidence, and equally as capable of spending a day off exploring Rockaway Beach.

I kept the fixed gear drivetrain and road cranks, but updated the clearances to allow for a combination of 42mm tires and a 40T chainring. Using 3D-modeling software to draw out my ideas allowed me to design and print a custom yoke which provided for a healthy amount of space for All The Things. Custom drawn and laser cut dropouts coupled with custom-designed and printed chain and seat stay plugs rounded out the rear triangle. With the exception of the speed holes, I kept the front triangle relatively straightforward. The speed holes were placed in the seat tube as a personal challenge and as a nod to another fabricator I admire and a show bike of theirs. And, hey, you can fit your U-Lock through it! But I’m sorry, I will never do those again!

The frame and Sig-O components are all TIG welded titanium, with frame paint by Flux Customs and Sig-O components finish by Mara at Metal Ink.