About a year ago we sent Russ Pope three FBM Sword framesets to handpaint.  One he kept for himself and the other two were for us.  These one of a kind framesets are ready to be ridden or hung on the wall and simply admired.

They are available through your local bike shop and available direct from Last Call.

Click on the thumbnails below to enlarge the image.

You can check out more of Russ’ work at russpope.blogspot.com and russpope.com and couple recent interviews with Russ at Skateborder and Active.

Here’s a video interview with Russ from 2008.

“It is fucking awesome!” says Nick “the bike told me that it loved me and would care to be intimate with me. I’m not a very sciency person but the geometry and science of this bike are awesome. All of the folks at FBM took all of the input that we gave them and then were all like “we are going to build a fucking awesome bike” the attention to detail shows in a very real way. This is how I want to feel on a bike.” -Nick

See you at the courts!

New swords. Full super therm front end. Shorter rear end and higher bb. More Info soon…

Squid & Velo City NYC put together fun team ride last weekend, Escape from New York 2010 based on the 1981 movie with Kurt “the hurt” Russell.

If you missed out on the mayhem like I did, Tod Seelie (who is at pretty much every awesome bike related event) took some great photos. Here’s a couple I stole off his site with permission. Pay him a visit,
he’s always doing something worth checking out.

Full coverage on the race with more pictures and videos can be found over here

If you’ve never had the pleasure of attending an event at the bike lot you’re missing out. It’s a great place that brings together some awesome people, I took some photos throughout the night. The dudes from Born Ugly Magazine put together a great time, be sure to check out the latest from them with issue #666.

Dave Witte, drummer for Municipal Waste and amateur chef/foodie won over the judges hearts and mouths with his delicious Pulled Pork, Beef Brisket and Chorizo Chili. His chili won best carnivore AND chillest chili categories, killer stuff.

The judges had some tough decisions to make, all the chili’s I tasted were excellent. Announcer Mike Guedri and Organizer Curtis Grimstead deliberate on some important Chili related business.

Steve Crandall of FBM and Andy Schrock of the Hells Satans cooked up some badass chili and an even more badass sign, their Gnar Billy Sweet’n'Hot Death Chili took first place in the veggie category

Here’s Steve with the sign

I was lucky enough to take The People’s Choice Award with my Braised Pork and Bacon Chili with Local Habaneros and Anaheim chili’s. I cooked it for 20 hours in the crock pot and served it with cheddar and a lime cilantro sour cream, the sides of cornbread went quickly and I think that might have sealed the deal with the crowd.

Battlemaster kicked so much ass

Much shredding went down in the indoor bowl

This chick ripped and she looked damn good doing it, every time she lined up to drop in the dudes got the hell outta her way

Tom, Kenny and Brett chillin hard in Steve and Shelly’s temporary “front lawn”

It was a great event packed with good people and good times. Is something awesome happening in your town that you wanna let everyone know about? Send me some ideas and maybe we can post it up.
sean(dot)phenomenon(at)gmail(dot)com

We just repainted two 51cm Sword frames with the original dropouts and they are looking good. You can have your local shop order one for you or buy it direct from Last Call Distribution

Sword on a sword!

Our Friend Sean is a bike messenger, polo player, and overall cycle enthusiast. He is going to start helping out with Keeping this blog updated, and hopefully entertaining…

Check out this video of him opening a beer in his wheel. His photo sequence below of a last minute makeshift corkscrew will give him more credibility than his afternoon beer chugging antics, either way we are stoked.

Bonus, bottleneck how to posted below as well…

Edit- I forgot the How to text on the corkscrew-

“So dennis and I were on one of our many downhill trips and we had this
bottle of wine we found in the SWEET bus but no corkscrew. Since it we
were in the middle of nowhere camping on the side of a mountain in
West Virginia our options were pretty limited. Using our ghetto
mountain man ingenuity we came up with this grand idea and had the
sense to photograph the process.

What you’ll need:

1 steel keyring

2 pairs of pliers

1 (or more) bottle(s) of wine

First take your pliers and stretch out the keyring into a corkscrew,
be sure to leave a portion of it straightened out so that you can work
it into the cork. Make your spirals as tight as you can so that it
will fit between the cork and the bottle. Next, start to work the
corkscrew into the top of the cork while spinning the bottle. Once the
keyring has looped in there at least 360 degrees your ready to start
uncorking. Very carefully pull at the top of the mangled keyring while
also pulling at the bottle. Voila, break out you Kraft American cheese
and wonderbread and enjoy.”

How to open a beer using your back wheel from FBM_Fixed on Vimeo.

Living on the left coast and Repping FBM Hard, with sidewalk surfers and sword rides, this is Chris Stevenson (FBM Sales). If you or your shop is looking for some FBM gear, this is the guy to talk to, and now you know what he looks like…