Photography by Chris Michel
San Francisco is a city of cyclists. According to the 2015 US Census, roughly 82,000 bike trips are made in the city each day. This number has been increasing drastically since 2006, due in part to bike-friendly improvements to streets that San Francisco has instituted during the past 10 years. It’s also no secret that a number of city-goers are obsessed with the artisanal. While we wouldn’t want to foot the bill, we’ve always been curious about what goes on inside one of these elusive bespoke bicycle shops.
Mission Bicycle Company, founded in 2008, is one of the few bespoke bike shops to have a factory on-site. Everything is customizable — colors, sizes, speeds, frames, rims, tires and finishes—and the design is made from scratch and assembled in the studio. We got to take a peek inside their workshop on Valencia Street to see what the inside of a small bike factory looks like.
At the start of the assembly, the bare frame is set on the wall, and a bevy of options are laid out on the table. The wall contains mounts to accommodate each bike part during assembly. These parts will get added to the wall to test the look of each piece in relation to the others. The color choices run the spectrum for nearly every bike part.
Labels on the wall indicate the names of the specific parts, as well as the dimensions of the frame and wheels. The bike will be assembled according to these specifications.
Josh and Brandon test a wheel before it’s incorporated into any of the models.
Jefferson puts the final touches on a bike that’s nearly fully assembled.
All in a day’s work.
