Hasta La Ideas

It should come as no surprise that Vitsœ—a company that employs cycling enthusiasts on both sides of the Atlantic—were happy to host “Built to Last,” an exhibition of beautiful bicycles by New York’s own Kinfolk Studios. The short talk by Kinfolk co-founder Ryan Carney last Thursday was among the first events to mark the ICFF festivities in town this weekend, which run through tomorrow, May 22.

Carney started the Brooklyn- and Tokyo-based design studio with a few well-traveled buddies who all happened to be into skateboarding and, of course, Japanese track bicycles (also known as Keirin bikes, after the track cycling race). The latter has become their claim to fame, and while the Kinfolk Bicycle Co. remains their most successful enterprise to date, they’ve since expanded their practice into designing interiors, as well as a bit of client work on the side.

Ryan’s Kinfolk hangs in the window; image courtesy of Vitsœ

Over the course of the talk and Q&A session, Carney—a math major who worked as an aerospace engineer prior to launching the brand—shared a brief history of the brand, which he founded in 2008 with John Buellens, Maceo Eagle and Salah Mason when they wanted to get ahold of some Keirin bicycles from Tokyo, where John and Maceo had been living. (It’s an obsession that I can relate to: contemporary craft builders notwithstanding, the Japanese are rivaled only by the Italians when it comes to traditional steel track bikes.)

Maceo supplemented Ryan’s gloss with a bit of insight into the enduring appeal of Keirin bikes: since spectators bet on the riders (as opposed to the bikes), each and every component is made to extremely strict standards and approved by the NJS, the regulatory organization responsible for ensuring that the only variable is in the competitors themselves.

Co-founder John Buellens

(more…)