Thursday Bicycles

[jon_norstog]

Here is a blast. I made this bike for my great-nephew who is 5 YO and showing promise as a BMX racer. He oputgrew the 16' wheel bike I made him so I followed up with a 20" "Fallen Angel" mini. Decided to badge it as a "Vida Loca" 'cause it has a lot of expensive BMX stuff on it - the budget BMX forks and equipt were sold out and I was hesitant to put this kid on a 5-piece brazed-up fork. So the lucky kid gets a SuperCross CF fork on a Vida Loca frame. You can compare it with the original Dirt Rag bike below.


jn

"Thursday"




vidalocaX2a.jpg vidalocaX2 (4).jpg

[jon_norstog]

Here is another 20" mini I made for my youngest granddaughter. I asked her if she wanted to paint and she was all over that so I shot a black epoxy primer coat, put on the "decals" and bought a bunch of small bottles of acrylic at Blick'sart supplies in Portland. Took the whole thing to Idaho where she and her sister painted hell out of it. I took it back and shot a clearcoat over, then set the bike up. The girls stopped by with their mom and dad coming back from a road trip and picked the bike up. It actually looks pretty cool, and of course the kid loves it.

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She got right on it and started jamming up and down our street

noelle_new_bike (4).jpg


jn

"Thursday"

And he older sister had to take a run. She is outgrowing the last bike I made her and think the next one might be a 24'-er

noelle_new_bike (3).jpg

[jon_norstog]

I satrted making these kid BMX bikes years ago, and saw at least two of those children become consistent winners once they had a bike that worked for them. I built them with butted chrome-moly tubing and set them up with race-quality equipment, Good brakes, wheels with sealed bearing hubs, bars that wouldn't bend or break in a crash. The bikes were not cheap, but I sweetened the deal by offering to buy them back at 50% trade-in on a new one when the kid outgrew the bike. No one ever took me up on it! I think the kids would not give them up, or maybe they got handed down.

Here is the web page for the "Fallen Angel" bikes.

https://thursdaybicycles.com/bicycle...en_angels.html

The more adults I know and the longer I know them, the more I like kids.

jn

"Thursday"

[jon_norstog]

Welolo I finally did it - set up Thursday Bicycles as an LLC in Oregon. Thursday was incorporated on Navajo Nation for the first few years, but I let it lapse. I never made much money on the biz, but I had a lot of fun and always had a nice bike to ride. The business has a lot of intangible assets.


I sold one bike last year ... the kind of people bought my bikes - young (and not-so-young) extreme riders - either already have their bike or they are too broke to buy one. I just set Thursday Bicycles up as a LLC and I'm going to try and sell the company. I never made much money, but I've got some killer intellectual property and street cred/goodwill. Nineteen named models, each with its own backstory, design concept and memorable name. A long history of carrying product liability insurance with never a claim ...

It's all there for someone who wants to tear up the bike biz. The new owner even gets to use the louche "Thursday" character as a mascot or an alter-ego.

I'ma buy one more year of coverage and put up an ad in BRAIN, see what happens.

In the meantime I learned how to TIG weld and may start doing that on some of my bikes - like where I don't want so much heat going into a welded joint.

jn

aka "Thursday"

[bigbill]

Were you fabricating on the Navajo Reservation? I see you on Garro's FB posts, but you're one of the people I have yet to meet in his fab shop/garage. I'm a fan of purely functional bikes that can take the wear and tear of daily abuse.

[jon_norstog]

Were you fabricating on the Navajo Reservation? I see you on Garro's FB posts, but you're one of the people I have yet to meet in his fab shop/garage. I'm a fan of purely functional bikes that can take the wear and tear of daily abuse.

Thanks for the post. Yeah, I made bicycles in the back yard where we lived in tribal housing in Window Rock. 7,000 ft elevation, you could build outdoors 10 months of the year. You can see the various bikes I make/made at www.thursdaybicycles.com. They are all functional - there is a story behind the design of each one.

[dvancleve]

Hi Jon, are you still building?

[jon_norstog]

Thanks for asking! I am still building. I've got grandchildren plus nieces and nephews and they keep growing out of the bikes I build for them. I learned how to TIG weld over the cold months and am thinking of using this new skill to make a batch of cruisers on spec, plus I've got some design ideas I want to try out.