Matt Bailey's custom Grand National polo bike

Great welds and solid design from Kyle Poose of Indianapolis (making bikes under the Grand National moniker). The rectangular steel, as opposed to traditional circular, is really interesting to me. I'm told it should hold up better to lateral contact better but i'm not expect. Wishbone seatstay is beautiful, decently sized dropouts, and integrated headset to boot. Look out for more quality bikes from Grand National in the future!

-W.

Rustbelt Marcos popping up around the Midwest

Lou from Cleveland has been a busy man this year. He's already made more than a few Rustbelt "Marcos" but this year it seems like they kept popping up everywhere! He's always refining the design and i'm really liking what i see nowadays. Of course they're still a bit heavy but making a bombproof bike has always been a primary goal of his. You just don't hear about these things breaking.

Head over to rustbeltwelding.wordpress.com and check out the plethora of things they make in addition to awesome bikes.











-W.

Smiling Lomax + Equinox photos

I'd say it's cause he just moved to Chicago but this was taken a couple months ago. I just loved this picture so much i thought it deserved it's own post!

Also, i never did post the few photos i took at this tourney (Columbus Equinox II) so if you wanna check those out head HERE to see the full album. And no, i'm not posting anything from Friday or Saturday night... :)

-W.

St.Louis Lock-In's of years past...

Seeing as how the registration for the St.Louis Lock-In is tomorrow, let's just go ahead and take a stroll down memory lane...

Year One photos

Year Two videos

Year Two photos

Year Three photos

Year Three photos by Urban Brad

SO. FUCKING. EXCITED.

-W.

"Hipster Hockey": an awesome polo + meme tumblr

Trying to clear double goals out of the crease-

EXPECTATIONS

REALITY

Holy shit this is the best bit polo-related internet i've seen in a while! Seven pages of hilarious and specific polo references... i love it. Go check out hardcourtpolo.tumblr.com RIGHT NOW!

Judging from the page four Bellingham jest and Donnie Pepper cite i'm guessing this site is made by someone out west. Whoever it is they're fucking funny as hell- i had bookmarked that thing by the time i hit the bottom of page one!

Anyway thanks to Zach from Louisville who first brought this across my path.

-W.

Tim A's Fixcraft prototype polo bike

Fixcraft and Tree Bicycle Co partnered up produce this polo specific prototype. Tim A from Columbia, Missouri is friends with the owner of Tree, so a while back when Sean from Fixcraft had a vision of a bulletproof frame with flexible options to build it up the connect-the-dots of the poloverse brought these two awesome companies together.

Now you've probably already seen pictures of Malakai's massive frame floating around the interwebs (running 700c's) but i particularly like these shots of Tim A's size small frame (running 26's). Tim comes from a bmx background and looking at this bike i can't help but think "oversized bmx bike"! which is kind of what some of those fixed-freestyle frames have been going for, but we all know the problems inherent when those types of bikes get used for polo (too long of a toptube, too long of a wheelbase, etc). This frame seems to be a happy medium of flexibility and indestructibility (is that even a word?). Beefy bmx style integrated headset and mid BB, with removable v-brake mounts at two levels depending on if you're running 26's or 700c's. A scalloped cutout on the seattube for clearance- nice. The dropouts are plenty long and both fork and rear have disc tabs ready to go if that's your thing. You can really see Fixcraft trying to cover all their bases here, so instead of having to order a custom bike you can get all the options in one shot with this frame. I can already see players buy this for 700 then borrowing a friends wheels and giving 26's a try. Or someone who's always run v-brakes deciding to throw a disc on the front fork just cause they can.. or vice versa! That's Fixcraft for ya, always thinking ahead while still leaving the DIY/details to the player.

Obviously i haven't gotten a chance to ride this thing yet, but you better believe i'm going to the moment i get the chance. I'm particularly interested in how the handling changes when going from 26 to 700, and/or if one setup is preferable to the other, but just the fact that you can do both on the same bike is already pretty exciting.

Thanks again for the photos Tim! Hope to make it back out to COMO soon so we can hit that skatepark!

-W.

"It's ok buddy"

Quentin posted this on facebook and it got a smile out of me.

Not sure exactly who's making them but there's a few more here. Bloody awesome if you ask me. Kinda remind me of a watercolor version of Hardcourt Comics.

-W.