The Salt Palace hosted Salt Lake City’s inaugural North American Handmade Bicycle Show last weekend. The annual exhibit is the world’s largest and oldest hand-built bicycle expo, attracting designers and exhibitors from as close as Portland and Denver, to as far away as Japan and Russia.
Based in a different American city every year, the Handmade Bicycle Show is a close-knit community consisting of both novice and experienced frame builders, celebrating creativity, ingenuity and artistry.
Bicycle designs are divided into three award categories – Riding, Construction and Overall Design, with each division appointing sub categories, such as ‘Best Road Bike’ (Riding), ‘Best Fillet Frame’ (Construction), and ‘Best of Show’ (Overall Design).
Crowd favorites were as diverse as the bicycles on display. San Francisco’s Low Bicycles are specialists in lightweight, aluminum composition racing bikes, while solo artist, Max Burson of B3 melds craftsmanship with innovative engineering to build bespoke wood frames. Risse Racing demonstrated their automated bike. A weighty 76-pound frame, powered by a raspberry pi – a miniscule device that detects varying pressure applied to the foot pedal, providing appreciative boosts of power when required.
Salt Air Cycles led the local contingent, displaying a bright purple model with electronic gear changer, culminating in creator, Matt Nelson winning ‘Best New Builder’ and establishing his own kind of purple reign. Perhaps his design is an homage to recently departed musician, Prince? You can check out Matt’s handiwork and pose the question to him in person by visiting Salt Air Cycles, situated near Liberty Park.
‘Peacock Groove’ of Minneapolis was the eventual overall winner. Check out this year’s event via our collection of stunning images captured by our talented in-house photographer, Colton Marsala. You might also want to start planning your border hop to beautiful Hartford, Colorado for 2018’s handmade bike show from February 16 to 18.
The wheels continually turn in Salt Lake City, and the Muve Group is always amongst it. Call us on 801.474.2274 and we’ll happily share what’s going on, as well as our many property listings (urban, suburban and commercial) with you.
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