Kenny's Kids

Our pal Kenny (not pictured here) is an expert at trashing bikes! One of the best ever and proud of it. Here we have his hoopty that we converted with his pal because he was racked up in bed recovering from hitting a jay walker and then narrowly avoiding being flattened into his bike by a bus. We sold him a used front road wheel and new Cro-Moly 700c Chromed fork with a refurbished 39mm reach 1989 Shimano 105 caliper. Then we got him an affordable crankset that worked with his cartridge bearing Campy bottom bracket. Since his old Italian frame was Italian threaded we could not replace it easily to accomodate the Suginos. We gave him some track grips to go with his green frame. Some MKS Sylvan Track pedals with MKS single strap steel toe-clips and a KMC Kool Chain to hold him to the Dura-Ace cog and Wheels Mfg lock ring spun onto a Formula hub that was laced to an Alex rim by DT spokes.

We hope Kenny recovers nicely from his bumps and bruises. He helped us so much with our July 4th party where Japanther and Ninja Sonik played a benefit show for a local DJ. We had so much fun serving hot dogs and beers to our beloved customers and friends.

Rain is growing flowers in the poopy lawn

We have been enjoying a momentum that has developed in the coelescence of the shop. We recently rebuilt the flatbed trike and put it to use carting some urethane, paints and solvents for the shop that a super was throwing out from one of these new condos going up in our neighborhood. Thanks to Jim's keen eye we have some more of the key ingredients needed to seal the dust into the exposed beams and joists of our ceiling.

Seen here is the greeting party on the right side of the basement great hall before we cleaned it out into the last 30 yard dumpster we filled. A typical scene to the old basement. Notice the mumified rat rounding out the ensamble.

That is like the neighborhood dogs who leave little nutrients for our lawn outside. The recent rains have cleansed some of the stench out of the air infront of our shop and delivered some nutrients to the grasses and flowers that happened upon our dirtbed of a sidewalk.

Thus the basement's filth has born some fruit. See the newest Kinfolk creation unfold below:

That is Maceo's whip that he rides for flash, this is another whip bearing the sample paint job that Kinfolk got back from painters:

Angel has been perfecting his trike and his trike is having a baby. Soon there will be Flat-bed trike and mini-flat-bed trike kicking around the shop. We had our first customer ask to rent the trike out for hauling some cement. We cannot wait to see the cement bags sitting on our freshly tuned suspension and drivetrain; rebuilt differential and all.

The Dogs are on Spring vacation with my mom. They went to the Adirondaks camping backpacking with her. Hope they are keeping her warm and safe.

By the way, we actually have a phone in the shop now. We had stashed away somewhere a cordless phone so I could blab away anywhere, but in the fog of war (we have been waging and winning a war on dust trash and debris) the phone vanished. So it was back to the basics with the classic old phones we salvaged from Cox Industries where we got our awesome Hallowell benches and rolling carts. PHONE # for LIT FUSE: (347) 442-1672

Thanks to all you who have been bearing with our construction and irregularities. Happy primavera!

The light at the end of the tunnel

Tunnel vision we have beamed into the peerless winter paying its dividends like drops from icecles on your cement digging slowly a pocks.

The maglite to the grill narrowly avoided perpetrates a scowl in my brim.

We are now like Marlon Brandos in Apocalypse Nows unique to our own flavors. The economy is stupid but we are prepared.

Reconstructed windows, full tiled bathroom, cleaned and pointed bricks and patched and sealed plywood floors. Bikes are starting to congregate in our first third. The fuse sparkles in the spring breeze. See the Kinfolk flagship visiting our port? Go to wegotways.com for details on your own Kinfolk or Vivelo NJS framesets.

Look Closely and you will see the impact that dogs have had on our society. We had a party to celebrate our opening and several die-hards came out from the West Village to see us along with our close friends and family. We look forward to seeing you at our nekst grand opening celebration. Japanther is playing so stay posted to our pres-releases here.

Look to brim and cosi to be in our next post.

race to the sun

We have several new additions to the formula. The signage is going up, the crapshack is becoming a brick shithouse, and the brick walls are coming together as a strong foundation for the building. We have some really fine Keirin bicycles coming from Japan. The Artisan behind the Vivelo name has agreed to produce his bikes for us under the name Kinfolk. For furthur details see wegotways.com.

The windows and a handicapped ramp are the last touches that we shall be doing while we are open for business. If anyone has a line on some Glaze to install windows, let us know.

We also have the flat-bed work-trike of the century here that we use to transport materials from the neighborhood suppliers. Photos soon. Bring us by your repairs now so we can get them ready for springtime.

D

A Start

Litfuse Cyclery, this being our first blog post let us introduce you to our situation, check back often as we will keep it updated weekly with how the process of transforming this space into a bike shop will go down. Locaded in an abandoned chicken down-feather plant located in what was formelry considered Clinton Hill and now is claimed by the Bedford Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn is a 4 story red-brick warehouse building at 409 willoughby avenue. The mortar is turning to dust from age and abuse inside and out. Floors of massive timbers hewn from the 19th century old-growth forests of New England. These ancient forests nurtured strong and long-lasting timbers that are the back-bone of the building. Years of abuse and neglect turned this noble down feather sanitizing factory into a dangerously dusty, filthy, rat-infested, mess with dead pipes covering the ceiling; covered in feather dust and chicken lice exoskeletons and rat fecal chloroform dust. The basement was like something out of Saw with the exception that the saw movie sets were much cleaner and didn't have the sheer volume of dusty trash. In the real world when old factories are abandoned they sell the valuable heavy machinery and replace them with their trash All the drain pipes leaked into the basement, there is still a swamp there after we fixed most of the leaks in the plumbing. But the amazing thing was when we started to remove the garbage. It kicked up a feather/dust storm. It was like a blizzard with muddy rivers in the basement. We took several tons of metals to the scrap yard and over 90 cubic yards of dust heavy garbage. Those dumpsters aren't cheap so we squeezed every last drop out of each cubic yard. A few tenants in the building have brought their bikes by but we are not at full capacity as a repair shop yet. We have no windows, the bathroom is not finished and the store still is quite dusty. We have repaired the floors extensively and cleared space for storage and workspace and hope to be open in 2 weeks.

  Bathroom under construction Damian, Angel, and Jerry the three man team behind the renovation/construction.