A Japanther 4th of July

JAPANTHER AND TIGHT PANTS WERE UP TO THEIR OLD TRICKS AGAIN!

As the white shirts drove by shaking their fists from the aire condicionado comfort of their partol car. We started off the loading dock with a hot girl band and some local talent from Queens that go by the name Ghost Mall. Pictured here to the right, I have the early part of the show. This girl band got the crowd into the mood of the day and set the mood for the next band:
NINJA SONIK

Ghost Mall was KEY in helping me clean and clear some space and they went to get the hot dogs and ice that were essential to our success that day.

Their music was fun and energetic.

Here is a clip of their show.

We really enjoyed all of the fun and good will from all of you and our great neighborhood! If anyone has more photos of the show please email them to me because by the time JAPANTHER and NINJA SONIK came on the stage I was too busy running around to get any good shots. By the way, during the show, some prick scribed "HAVE SEX" into our bathroom mirror. If you should be inspired to do heed their call our bathroom, PLEASE DO NOT DO IT ON THE SINK. It cannot support the weight... yet.

Tricycle Dreams

This is the pedi-truck cradling the mini flat-bed trike as it develops to a young work-horse for the shop. Angel meticulously removed the paint with the grinder and a hot new stripping disk that was clean and fast and precise. Notice the park stand bolted to the flatbed mothership. The mover-trike sat in El Barrio on Pleasant Ave. for the winter under a tarp. We were too crammed to fit her in the shop. It pained Angel that his first trike workhorse love was rusting away in the salty winter air. He braved the snow of January on the pedi-truck to resurrect the work-horse that got him where he is today atop New York's finest journeymen and craftsmen.


The red trike in the foreground came from our loving benefactor Steph at Red Hill Farm, a CSA in Aston PA, where it suffered weathering, but Sean from Recycle a bike, Times-up, our old bike shop, and A-Bicycle fame has brought it through here for us to rehabilitate and test. We believe in a strict testing regimen in order to assure the vehicle we repair is safe and sturdy.

Angel is developing an emergency bicycle transoprt bolt-on attatchment system to tow broken-down bicycles and even a rider back to the shop.

Like flowers after the winter, our business has blossomed over the last few sunny days. We have muchos jobs waiting but we are keeping up.
Hopefully we will be able to keep this up with our new resoursecful ideas. We seek to validate cycling as a legitimate form of transportation and elevate it past the internal combustion engine. Cycling is a healthy affordable way of getting around. This is a great alternative to the rising cost of public transportation combined saving on a gym membership.

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!

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.