ok article is drafted, dm me your email address if you want to edit / add.
Paging @drwelby @jimmythefly @JUGE_FREDD either in doc or here, would appreciate your thoughts on hacking together “gravel” (avant la lettre by definition) bikes. If you’ve said what you said upthread, I can synopsize from there.
@EndpointBraden and … anyone else here involved in small batch production, your comments are very appreciated as well.
No article on gravel is complete without a discussion of the discrimination we suffered in the early 2010s because of our small “chainrings”
I would like to see this thing!
I think social media played a big part, both on smaller scales like Alex Wetmore’s blog and tarck, as well as early “gravelfluencers” like ultraromance. Seeing real people on solo rides out in the woods on bikes that at least seemed ditherable to the average person inspired me to take old 80s roadies and stuff cross tires and fenders in them and google maps rail trails and dirt paths in my area. Having access to pictures and ride reports from the people who were already into this kind of riding definitely pushed me and probably many others into it, and at some point the manufacturers take notice. Something that would have been harder or less likely to happen before Instagram enabled such a big audience for otherwise niche interests.
Been thinking about this as well. Seems like it is part of the general trend of people going out to nature… in part because other people took pretty pictures of it. See: your absolutely slammed popular local trailhead. In that way this bike thing is to some degree part of a larger phenomenon. To add to that: we’re smack in the middle of another bike boom aren’t we?
EVOLUTION OF GRAVEL
Nearly a decade ago, Giant introduced a wild looking bike called the Revolt. At the time, gravel riding as a category was a little-known subset. Serious gravel riders of that era had to be creative with their bike and gear choices, typically choosing a cyclocross bike or road bike and modifying it to handle long rides on mixed terrain.
In 2013, along came the Revolt. With its sloping top tube, radically dropped seatstays, disc brakes, and slim carbon seatpost allowing for some flex, it was a progressive idea. Some of the Revolt’s original design concepts influenced the bikes that followed, upping the capabilities for riders looking to push their limits on variable terrain.
It will be interesting to see how long the pandemic bike boom actually lasts, but I think we’re probably in a longer term but possibly smaller boom that had already started. Tied in to eco-consciousness, a desire for freedom from car life, and the urge to get out in nature, as well as the app-ification of bikes via strava, zwift, ebikes all coalescing into a new era of 2 wheeled popularity.
I was also thinking about the detuned Bianchi urban CX bikes like the San Jose. Didn’t they have a 1x one also. And of course the venerable Volpe which was 25 years too early.
Giant invented everything.
It writes itself now.
Social media is definitely in there already, talking about the shift from Flickr and blogs to Instagram for sure.
Early weirdo noncategory bikes get a mention as well, though as an anti-category it’s hard to capture. “badass hybrids” might be another thing to write up, everyone thought the Cannondale Bad Boy (and / or Buzz) was pretty cool back in the day
Volpe was my first non crappy bike. Sheldon Brown wrote an ode to it. I think that the San Jose was the same frame but without a dangler.
I recall back in like 1994 having my MTB stolen and getting a hybrid, then trying to make it ride and fit more like the MTB did while being faster on roads. I only got so far as putting a way too long stem on and slamming it. This does not count as progress.
Oh yeah that sounds like no fun. The bikes I’m thinking of felt very much like these shots in the dark from the companies that made them. Like what if cheap brakes and mid-sized wheels and a really dodgy looking shock?
I was just following a link to see their flipchip in the dropout and it started off with the history of grav grav bit. Thought it might be listening to our convos.
It was no fun.
I first got seriously into bikes in the early 90s, right at the height of the MTB boom. So in a generational kind of way I learned MTBs as the norm and then explored my way back out to road things, thinking “couldn’t we have a bike that is kind of in the middle of this?” I bet a good number of bike newbies of that era did the same thing–rather than thinking about how we could use the older frames, some of us didn’t yet know any of that existed.
Then they made hybrids to sell to us. And we bought and hated them.
Edit:
another side of the same sickness–the MTB that I lost to theft before trying hybrid was wearing a pair of these:
I think this “boom” is more due to limited supply than dramatically elevated demand.
Anecdotally I see just as few people when I’m riding out here as in years past, although it might be that the hills keep casual cyclists off the road.
I’ve never seen even one person on an E-bike on the road and only a few on the bike path.
I’m in a small city thats generally bikeable and has also had a lot of infrastructure added in the last 15 years and just elected a very pro public transit and alternative transit mayor, so take that as you will, but I see way more people biking year over year, both commuters, people on the trails and in parks, and weekend warriors. I see a shocking number of brand new bikes for the supply issues that are going around, and I see a ton of ebikes and other electric mobility devices around. So seems good from my perspective.
The boom was very real this summer in Boise. I saw a lot of people riding bikes from their subdivisions to the strip malls on the arterials and that’s something I’d never seen before. Lots of new infrastructure in the downtown core too.
Here the bike boom is manifesting with everyone switching to ebikes.
^^^
Same in nyc. So many ebikes. Super utilitarian.
I mean I just biked all the way into new paltz on a rail trail completed just before covid. Without the pre-covid popularity of cycling, the turbocharging of the trend during the pandemic wouldn’t have occurred. Just as with highways, “if you build it, they will come.”
Yeah I’m probably not seeing it because riding a bike, even an e-bike, for transport is not practical around here.
No it def started as dramatically elevated demand and then was exacerbated by supply chain shortages that have continued. I think some of the “elevated” demand is tapering back towards what would be considered a normal or healthy forecast, but elevated demand was a huge driver in the current situation.
